When Gifted Kids Need Accommodations, Too [Video]

By Understood

Twice-exceptional (or “2e”) kids have learning and thinking differences AND are gifted. In this last episode of Season 1, Lexi and Amanda speak with guests Penny Williams, a parenting trainer and coach, and Debbie Reber, author and creator of TiLT Parenting, about the unique challenges of meeting the needs of 2e children. For these moms, their kids’ giftedness doesn’t make things easier — it adds a layer of complexity.

To find a transcript for this episode and more resources, visit the episode page at Understood. https://www.understood.org/podcast/in…

We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at init@understood.org.

Understood is a nonprofit and social impact organization dedicated to shaping a world where the 1 in 5 people who learn and think differently can thrive. Learn more about “In It” and all our podcasts at u.org/podcasts. Copyright © 2019 Understood for All, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

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foreign a parent to kids with learning issues
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and a writer for understood.org and I’m Lexi Walters Wright Community manager for understood.org and we are in it
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is a podcast from understood for parents on this show we offer support and practical advice for families whose kids
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are struggling with reading math focus and other learning and attention issues
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and today we’re talking about supporting kids who have learning issues and who are gifted that’s something we’ve heard
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from teachers for a long time you know he’s he’s being told I don’t understand why you can’t do this you’re so smart
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as a writer best known for her book boy without instructions the boy she’s referring to is her son Luke who is now
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a teenager so Lucas 16 no he’s not driving yet we are not ready for that
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yet Luke is intellectually gifted he also has learning and attention issues and he and his parents have had to
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figure out how to deal with these gifts at home at school and just in the world Amanda we’re going to get to Luke and
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Penny’s story in a minute but first I want to ask you there’s a term that people often use when kids are both
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gifted and have a disability it’s twice exceptional or 2E for short and I’m
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guessing those listeners who are hearing this term for the first time are thinking well what’s the big deal isn’t
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it just like a kid has a learning disability and that’s tricky but hey bonus it’s not so bad because he or she
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is gifted wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy right so twice exceptional or 2E
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um I think the key there is the exceptionality we’re talking about exceptionalities that are rare in both
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ways you have a kid who has a learning disability which means they’re struggling with some type of processing
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or learning issue or or that kind of a thing and then you have a kid who’s like sort of off the charts really smart in a
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way that separates them from the rest of the kids in their class also and some of the concern with twice exceptionality
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that makes it really tough is oftentimes one e will mask the other right so a kid
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who’s really strong in one area gifted the learning disability or the learning issue gets in the way and it makes them
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look average or sometimes you’ll only see the giftedness because they can really do a good job of masking the
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disability and this is a topic that you know a lot about Amanda so not only as a
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parent advocate but also as a parent oh yeah definitely I have two twice
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exceptional kids at home um I don’t know what the math on that is but exponentially it’s a challenge and
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can you give us an example of how or when you know that you have two e-kids
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in my house well I can give you an example in my house it looks different in everybody’s house so for example yesterday I live here in Maine we had a
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snow day and my nine-year-old who is one of my choice exceptional children I said to him hey it’s a snow day and he says
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to me great I’ll be sitting here reading this interview with the CEO of Mitsubishi and Motor Trends magazine
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um whereas I expected it to be like cool I’m gonna put on my pajamas and just
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hang out playing Legos you know right but this is your son who also has other
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learning and attention issues yeah he also has ADHD and he has autism and and he sort of all wrapped up and then I
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have a teenager who is also twice exceptional who thinks in these amazing
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ways we can have deep conversations and yet he can’t seem to grasp the idea that
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if he left his hat in his room and it was the last place he saw his hat his hat literally has to be in his room
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somewhere it didn’t walk up that sounds like a lot of teenagers but literally it’s that idea that it is still there is
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hard for him to keep in mind [Music] um foreign
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[Music] kids and one of the stories I was when I
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was very aware my kid was struggling was with my son when he was about three years old
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he had been reading uh pretty much word since he was two but I noticed that he
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was also having a really hard time keeping it together in nursery school and I said to myself he’s either gifted
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and bored or he has ADHD and it actually turned out he has both
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both are true in third grade I started getting calls from my son saying I think I’ve tried
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hard enough today Mom it’s time for me to come home people were always focusing on his deficits or challenges or
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misinterpreting his actions reading in class was actually a way for him to calm his nervous system and to pay attention
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it was his brain’s way of doodling the hardest thing to get people to understand about my 2E kid is that he is
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not lazy or unmotivated and I actually have a story when he was in ninth grade
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he was finally able to get into their advanced class which was a math class and the teacher was so upset that he was
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able to get into her class that she went to the principal and told him that my son was too unorganized and immature for
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the class that was when the principal pulled out my son’s file and showed the teacher my son’s math scores not only
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that but he told her that my son has the highest math scores in the entire K-12
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school and that he does deserve to be in the class and he also let her know that
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she will teach my son [Music] foreign
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episode we’re going to draw on your experience Amanda and we’re also going to hear from two moms whose paths have
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taken many twists and turns as they try to make sense of the learning strengths and challenges that their children have
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first we’re going to go back to Penny mom to Luke when Luke was Little Penny and her husband didn’t know about gifted
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learning disabled 2E any of these labels all they knew was he was a sweet smart
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curious kid then he started school kindergarten was a disaster it was one
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of the worst years that we’ve had he is in October birthday kid so he was
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still four but we could all see that he was super super intelligent so you know
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not knowing anything we went ahead and we started him and by the end of the
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second day I was in a parent-teacher conference the morning of the second day she had
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already called me you need to stay after you pick him up we have to talk like oh this is not great and I thought well
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he’s just not prepared you know he didn’t go to preschool he stayed with his grandma when I was working and so I
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thought you know they just really need to give him some time the calls and notices kept coming he’s not sitting
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still he’s wiggling too much during carpet time he’s flailing with scissors endangering other kids you know so the
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onus was put on us that we hadn’t prepared him and we had more work to do for him to fit in this classroom you
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know no one ever said hey there might be something else going on you know this could be a learning disability this
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could be a developmental disability you know you might want to go to your pediatrician Penny and her husband figured it was the
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school that was the problem so the next year they switched and the new school seemed like a much better fit he had the
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most amazing teacher in first grade and she had differentiated instructions she
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was so kind and sweet and understanding and very flexible with kids needs and
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the same sort of notes were coming home Luke can’t stay on task Luke is behind
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in Reading Luke doesn’t have control of his body you know the notes were Kinder but they
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were still the same issues and that’s what ultimately led us to the pediatrician to the developmental
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pediatrician to the ADHD diagnosis the team that did the evaluation recommended that Luke try medication for
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ADHD Penny hated the idea but she could see that they needed to do something for
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Luke he was really really suffering he was sad all the time he was crying all
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the time I mean he was really severely affected by the fact that he couldn’t
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meet expectations and that people didn’t understand him so Amanda can you relate to any of this
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story I can relate to all of this story and it really hits home for me anytime your
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child feels like they’re not meeting the expectations is really hard but when they can’t meet them and people don’t
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believe that to be true it’s so much worse and I don’t know about you Lexi but I’ve never met a kid who wants to
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stand out from the crowd in a negative way and it can happen with both giftedness and learning issues and you
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know penny and I we have these quirky amazing kids who think differently in so many ways and it’s so hard when that
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makes them stand apart when they just want to fit in well Luke began taking medication for
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his ADHD and that did help some but Penny could see other things going on with Luke and a few years later he was
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given an additional diagnosis of autism that diagnosis was useful in that it helped Penny understand why being in
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school could be so challenging for Luke part of it was difficult and it’s not just a problem for kids like Luke was
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that his school didn’t seem to know how to deal with a student who was lagging in some areas and leaping ahead in
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others you know we don’t even have a program here for twice exceptional kids in our school system at all you have to
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choose one tract or the other gifted or special needs so Amanda I know that there are private
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schools specifically designed for twice exceptional kids are there ways to meet the needs of Tui kids in public schools
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there are definitely ways to meet those needs in in public schools some schools
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and it’s fairly rare some schools have specific programs to to meet the needs of Tui kids and most of the time what
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should and can be happening is putting into place the same accommodations you
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would put into place in any general education classroom for a kid with a disability in advanced placement classes
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now we know though that this doesn’t always happen hmm why is that
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I think schools just aren’t prepared to see sometimes that it’s possible to have
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accommodations and be excelling one of the most frustrating things about
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having a 2E kid is that people are constantly
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underestimating her even she gets very frustrated because she says things like
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people don’t think I can do anything but she can do lots of things and people
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are often blown away when she’s allowed to show people exactly what she’s
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capable of people were thinking and saying if you can do this why can’t you do that
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instead of since you can do this I bet we can find a way for you to be able to do that
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it just makes me so angry because I feel like he falls through the cracks on both sides he falls through on the classes
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and interesting enough for him because they don’t think that he can be smart enough because he has an IEP
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and the class isn’t supportive enough of him because they know that he is smart
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and so they don’t provide the accommodations that he really does need it’s so frustrating and I often don’t
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know what to do about it
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so to get around the tracking issue that’s common in schools some parents of Tui kids decide to homeschool at least
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that’s what one mom found out when she shared with a teacher friend All the Troubles her own son was having at
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school the friend said why not give homeschooling a try and I was not having
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any of it because I was hopefully leaved when he left the house every day because
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he was so intense you know and and angry a lot of the time and just a lot and I
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really like to be alone and I work for myself and I had my little routines you know Debbie Reber hosts tilt parenting a
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podcast an online community for parents of what she calls differently wired kids which is also the name of her book and
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Debbie is Mom to Asher who’s 14. and what does Asher love to do
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right now he’s dipped back into a his typography font phase and he’s also a
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gamer guy like he loves you know Minecraft but making not just playing Minecraft but like making mods for
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Minecraft and light maps and kind of the inner workings Asher’s parents picked up pretty early on the fact that he was
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gifted he started reading when he was three but there were other things about him that also caught their attention
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things that worried them you know he was just a very intense human and so
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initially it came out as just a lot of inflexibility and rigidity and
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strong-willed um very sensitive in terms of you know to changes environment and schedule and
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things once Asher started school those behaviors got even more pronounced you
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know he’s not a real follower if he disagrees with an assignment he’s gonna let you know that he thinks it’s stupid
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or he’s not interested or he doesn’t see the value and just constant pushback Debbie finally decided to give home
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schooling a try At first she had as hard a time with Asher as his teachers did it
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was like a battle of the wills because I am a very organized person and I was
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like okay if we’re doing this then I’m gonna rock it you know I’m gonna like we
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are gonna have the best home school that I’m gonna have curriculum and plans and schedules and
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it was about four months of me trying to impose my vision on someone who who was
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pushing back on everything and it was it was a it was horrible it was really horrible
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eventually Debbie realized she was going to have to stop trying to do things her way and figure out what it would mean to
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do them Asher’s way I just started to completely lean into
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the way that he learns and to what he needed and if he you know and so I
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stopped kind of trying to enforce my vision or my Approach for homeschool and
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instead try to get him out of that fight or flight mode and sometimes that meant
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if he was having a bad day saying you know what this day is completely shot let’s go to the movies yeah I just had
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to you know continually meet him where he was Debbie’s been homeschooling Asher for
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six years now and it seems to be working for him Amanda did you guys ever try homeschooling
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no did we ever think about homeschooling yes um you know I’m a teacher by trade you
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know that uh I am not a teacher of my own children it would not have gone well in our house I have a feeling many many
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people hear that and shake their heads in agreement yes not all parents realize that homeschooling doesn’t have to be an
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either or proposition you can do it for a few years and then pick back up with regular school or as is the case with
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Luke you may find it works to do both so Penny it sounds like your son is now
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in 10th Grade yes and and what does a typical school day look like for him
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it’s actually really different for him um when we hit freshman year last year the environment was a big issue for him
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um the noise the the other kids not following directions you know just all
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of these things that he was perseverating on and getting really emotional and upset about and angry
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about and so he wasn’t participating in school at that point he was sitting there and feeling kind of assaulted
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honestly um and it was a fairly new thing for us
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and we didn’t know quite what to do with it and um after six months of that you know after
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the first semester I asked if we could do some of his school at home
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um I didn’t want to just pull him out and homeschool him he didn’t want to get pulled out he he liked being at school
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sometimes and being with his friends and stuff but all day was a real problem and
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so he goes to school for two periods in the morning and then I pick him up around 11 A.M and I do to online classes
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with him in the afternoons virtual Public School online at home
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um and I have to sit with him and go through it with him or he will not
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he will not do it he will pretend to do it but he doesn’t really do it and he
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would fail them um we learned that the hard way with the first class as you both have kids who are twice
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exceptional I’m wondering are there specific roles that you find yourself
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playing that maybe only other parents of twice exceptional kids play
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I think we do a lot more monitoring right do you feel that way penny that you’re you’re on you’re monitoring
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things and keeping track of yeah I mean I think I’m assisting a lot more than most parents I am my son’s frontal lobe
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for him even at his age because he doesn’t have those skills and so you
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know for us it’s really hard for him to show what he knows and what he’s learned the output and the executive functioning
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the management is super poor for him and so he has all
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this crazy knowledge and he learns really well um and so I’m kind of that mediator that
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tries to help him keep it together and be able to show it in the ways that he’s required
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oh that’s such a good word that’s that’s the word I would use it for our 16 year old too is that mediator role where I
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find myself a lot of times being the translator or I’m trying to explain to him things that he doesn’t understand
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social interactions and those kinds of things yeah or referee feels like
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referee more often maybe yeah we need the whistle [Music]
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there’s no magic formula for all of this but Penny feels pretty good about where they’re at at this point
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you have to figure out what’s going to work for your child and find people who
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are willing to think outside of the box too and go with it and I you know I have really battled with our school system
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our IEP meetings have been horrendous for many years and I thought that I
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would get more resistance by asking for this part-time situation than I had
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gotten for anything else and they actually were like yes let’s do it at
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that point they really could see at least a special ed teacher to really see
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how much duress he was under you know he was texting me constantly pick me up now you
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have to pick me up come now and so a lot of input from him they just really could see that he wasn’t learning when he was
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there if he was going to be there all day and he wasn’t going to learn anything he wasn’t going to progress he
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wasn’t going to pass his classes what was the point and there was no forcing
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it you know we all knew that we just couldn’t force him um out of these feelings out of these
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sensory sensitivities and social struggles and you know all of these
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different things that were really kind of piling on into this
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foreign
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hey Amanda now’s the time when we play feedback from our listeners about our
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recent episodes but first I hoped you would answer a question that several parents have written in about why have
20:51
you sometimes on this show identified yourself as a recovering teacher
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it’s so funny because it didn’t occur to me that that sounded like I was saying I was trying to get over teaching so I’m
21:04
glad that people are asking I don’t like to say former because teaching is always a part of who I am and what I do and I
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truly think once a teacher always a teacher got it okay so here’s what we
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heard from all of you Following episode three the legit fear behind please don’t
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call on me to read hello my name is Kelly Hinkle and I’m a
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speech language ecologist and a mom of four dyslexic children ages seven seven
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nine and eleven so I’m definitely in it and I am also dyslexic
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I remember struggling in School definitely counting how many people
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ahead of me before it was my turn to read I remember being in grad school in my neurology teacher at Vanderbilt
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telling me I’ll never be a speech language pathologist because of a language learning disability and here I
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am 20 years later successful speech language pathologist but lo and behold
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apple does not fall far from the tree and here I have four kids who are
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struggling in school the most severe dyslexic is my oldest who’s failing math
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and reading and it wasn’t until earlier this year through a settlement that
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we’re finally getting some appropriate intervention and trying to get that scene from the other three
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foreign [Music] in Baltimore Maryland and I just
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appreciate so much your podcast that you’re doing I am a middle school teacher I’m dyslexic myself I have two
22:50
dyslexic children um and it just it’s poignant it hits home and I just appreciate getting the
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message out there so just keep doing what you’re doing we appreciate it so much thank you
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[Music] thanks again for your feedback on that episode now on with the show
23:13
Lexi one thing we haven’t really gotten into yet but I think about a lot is how having Tui kids forces you to
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examine your assumptions about intelligence and what it means and what success means too
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will you say more about that well for instance with my sons I know that both of them are always going to be
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academically successful even if it means they’re teaching themselves but I don’t always feel confident that they’re going
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to be successful in the life that they want for themselves or the life that other people expect for them so I’m
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working on that more in our house um you know we work more on self-sufficiency and self-advocacy and
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how you learn to get along with other people even if you really don’t want to get along with other people
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um which I think is a skill we all work on and to me that’s just another aspect of intelligence that I think a lot of us
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learn innately and that for my kids I need to teach them explicitly because
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it’s a skill they don’t pick up on and they really need to learn right and in fact Penny had something to
24:14
say about that too yeah it you know we all kind of Bob around in the world thinking that
24:21
intelligence equates to a person’s capability so if my son has an IQ in the 130s his
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capability must be you know off the charts as well and I have figured out over time that
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that is not true that’s very not true that there’s so much more that goes into
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functioning and that functioning play is a big part in in showing your
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intelligence you know you you can have the knowledge and then you can show the knowledge and I think a lot of kids that
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are twice exceptional they definitely have that capacity for a lot of knowledge but they struggle in showing
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it they struggle in in showing it in the ways that our schools and our society expect them to show it you know
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um if my son could take his test in English or whatever it is verbally he
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would get an A every time um you know he has strengths several of them but
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um those weaknesses just tend to be those things that look like that someone is not capable but then you you have
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this intelligence and you think oh but they are capable Debbie what do you want listeners to understand about your
25:39
journey with Asher well that I’m still in it I think you
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know I don’t have all the answers it’s not like I have figured this out and now
25:52
we’re just coming along everything is great you know I still am very much in
25:57
the trenches and a work in progress and that is uh can be a challenging place to
26:03
be but uh I would say that I you know I wake up every day and I set that
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intention just like I encourage other people to do like who do I want to be as a parent today how can I help this human
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today um more fully develop into who he’s meant to be how can I continue my own
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Journey and and just kind of move through this as gracefully as I can and I have I
26:28
still have really bad days I have dark days and I just get up and start over
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again the next day with a clean slate that’s a really hard thing for people
26:38
who are maybe on the outside of it a little bit to understand that the giftedness
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doesn’t make things easier right no it adds a layer of complexity right
26:51
it sure does I feel a tremendous responsibility for this person you know
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he his potential is so high and his you know challenges and executive
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functioning areas and things are equally high and I feel a lot of
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pressure honestly to make sure that I do right by him and I know every parent feels that
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um but I often just feel question myself like is this is this working am I doing
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right by him is this what he needs and will this help him get to where he wants to be someday Penny what would success
27:27
for Luke look like to you success in life success in life would be taking
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care of himself being able to pay the bills being able to see the floor in his apartment
27:41
and you know have a few good friends and
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to be happy you know to have some joy in his life um I learned a long time ago to really
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throw out those Norms that we all kind of grow up with with expecting
27:58
and you know the path can look much different for him the outcome can look much different for him
28:04
what matters is that he’s happy and he’s successful in his own way
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well here’s the question though what does success look like to Luke right exactly and that’s what we’ve been
28:17
trying to figure out you know over the years we’ve come to the conclusion that four-year college is probably not right
28:24
for Luke um and so what does he do in the interim
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and and what we’ve been exploring is what is he interested in what is he good at
28:34
um he has really gotten into music in the last oh two years maybe he started
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creating his own digital music on his iPad and he’s really starting to get into that and so now our conversation is
28:49
hey we can find a certification program we can find a two-year degree for Sound
28:55
Engineering he sounds like such a cool kid he just he’s the sweetest kid I mean the
29:02
sweetest kid that’s that’s part of what’s so challenging is in the school environment teachers don’t
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really see that um unless they try to get to know him unless they look past some of these
29:17
other issues but I mean he has a heart of gold and he is super kind to others
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and he’s very empathetic you know and um I think that’ll take him really far
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[Music]
29:38
Amanda what are those of us who are new to Tui need to really understand
29:44
and what about this parenting experience can we have maybe a little more
29:50
compassion for I think that there are a couple of things that are really important for me
29:55
as a parent of kids with Tui to have other people understand and that’s the fact that these kids really do need help
30:02
in some areas and you know sometimes the problem is as soon as people hear your kid is gifted
30:08
they stop listening and I just want people to understand that as a parent
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when I’m talking about my child’s challenges and how that worries me that’s still real and and that the
30:21
giftedness doesn’t erase those challenges I think one of the other things I would love people to understand
30:26
is sometimes the thing that’s most challenging is the giftedness when my
30:31
son is trying to have a really in-depth conversation about something he’s read and the other kids aren’t ready to have
30:38
those really in-depth conversations yet he’s frustrated and he feels really alone
30:44
and that gifted isn’t always as much of a gift as it sounds like
30:51
that makes total sense to me because it doesn’t sound like he’s in a space always where
30:59
people can meet him where he’s at because clearly he is maybe a couple steps ahead yeah not as
31:07
many easy things sometimes [Music]
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you’ve been listening to in it a podcast from understood for parents our website is understood.org where you can find all
31:24
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on in it [Music] production of understood for parents our
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it with us [Music]
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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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