Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021: Tame The Overwhelm was a 5-day free online summit which aimed to help twice exceptional (2e) children - gifted children with ADHD, autism, learning differences like dyslexia, anxiety and/or depression. The conference featured 28 educators and psychologists who shared science-informed actionable strategies that promote social, emotional, and academic thriving even in tough times. The summit was hosted by Debbie Steinberg Kuntz, a licensed marriage and family therapist as well as the Founder of Bright & Quirky. Day 1 focused on taming stress, anxiety, and worry.
A Quick, Shareable Overview of Twice Exceptional (2e) Kids - Dan Peters, PhD
Dr. Dan Peters, licensed psychologist, is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Summit Center, specializing in the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and families with special emphasis on gifted, talented, and creative individuals and families. Dr. Dan speaks regularly at state and national conferences on a variety of topics including parenting, gifted and twice-exceptionality, anxiety, and dyslexia, as well as writes for the Huffington Post and Psychology Today. Dr. Dan is author of Make Your Worrier a Warrior: A Guide to Conquering Your Child’s Fears, and its companion book, From Worrier to Warrior: A Guide to Conquering Your Fears. He is co-author of The Warrior Workbook: A Guide for Conquering Your Worry Monster, as well as co-author of Raising Creative Kids. Dr. Dan is also co-founder of ParentFootprint.com, an on-line interactive parent-training program, and Camp Summit, a sleep-over summer camp for gifted and 2e youth.
Dr. Dan remarked that the term 'twice exceptional' is rarely heard in teacher, psychology, or medical training. However, it is an important term that is slowly gaining traction. When we look at a bell curve, most of the population fits into the middle norm and has typical skills. On the right side of the bell curve, fewer people have advanced abilities; they are the 95th percentile and beyond. On the left side of the bell curve, fewer people have lagging abilities which are delayed or behind what we consider typical. A twice exceptional child has both advanced skills on one end and lagging skills on the other end. In reality, these children are multi exceptional, because they are exceptions to the norm in many different skill sets which interact with one another.
When you have seen one twice exceptional child, you have seen one twice exceptional child. Everyone has their unique profile. However, in general, Dr. Dan explained that there are some characteristics of twice exceptional children.
There are some common strengths in twice exceptional children.
Thinking skills; e.g. thinking deeply, making connections
Vocabulary and expressive skills
Visual spatial problem solving skills; e.g. patterns, puzzles
Creativity
There are also some common challenges in twice exceptional children.
Executive functioning; e.g. organisation, time management, focused attention
Self-regulation; e.g. becoming very emotional very quickly, having meltdowns at things which seem to be minor
Handwriting deficits; e.g. sloppy handwriting
Social processing; e.g. understanding the give and take of social relationships
Auditory processing (not to be confused with attentional challenges)
Visual processing; e.g. eyes have trouble fixating on the letter or the number to be able to read fluently
Asynchronous development is where a child has a mixture of some advanced, typical, and delayed skills. For example, a 10-year-old child may have the verbal reasoning skills of a 15-year-old, emotion regulation skills of an 8-year-old, and handwriting skills of a 6-year-old. If a child has challenges, it might be a weakness, but it does not automatically mean they have a diagnosis. It is only an actual diagnosis if the asynchrony is very severe, impacting the child’s ability to perform at what we would expect for the child's intellectual ability. Possible diagnoses include ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, auditory processing disorder, and visual processing disorder.
Most school systems are split into gifted, general, and special education. The problem is that twice exceptional children are complex and do not fit neatly into any of those titles. In fact, the same child can have advanced, typical, and lagging abilities in different skill sets. It is a misconception that disabled children have problems across all areas of development. Likewise, it is a misconception that ‘gifted’ children are good at everything,
Twice exceptional children appear very bright with high verbal and reasoning skills. When we see these strengths, we may create expectations that they can perform or achieve at such high levels across the board. However, this places the child in a tough position, because they cannot necessarily meet all the expectations. Moreover, we might not see their underlying deficits at first glance and these issues may go undiagnosed, as they figure out ways to get by. However, as they go through the grades, their usual way of doing things may no longer work. They may become overwhelmed in school and experience increased stress, because they lack some fundamental skills that we are unaware of.
Dr. Dan shared that if parents see these signs and want to get the child assessed, the first step is to talk to the child’s school teacher. The teacher may or may not notice the same challenges in school, as the child may be masking the issues such that the frustration and meltdowns only occur at home. Regardless, the parent can request an Individual Education Plan evaluation through their local public school or public district. This usually leads to a student success team meeting for all the stakeholders to discuss the child’s strengths and challenges, as well as determine if the school will do testing to see if there is an underlying learning or processing challenge. This might be a difficult proposition to make with twice exceptional children, because when they are advanced cognitively, their delays in other areas are usually at or just below grade level, which might not be in the school’s range of what is considered a significant problem. Thus, although the child may really be suffering in certain areas, it might be difficult to show the school that child has legitimate issues. If seeking assessment through the school does not work, parents can turn to the second step. This involves going to community counselling centres, university-based assessment centres, or private practitioners and private centres that focus on neuropsychological and psychoeducational assessment.
When parents talk to the teacher, it can sound like parents are boasting about their ‘gifted’ child being wonderful, which can turn the teacher off. The goal is to help the teacher understand and empathise with the child while still empowering the teacher as an expert in education. Parents may find more success by talking about the child’s whole profile. Dr. Dan suggested a possible script. 'My child is bright. He is good at thinking, is highly creative, and loves to learn. However, he also has tremendous challenge with staying focused on a task which is not of interest. He has a lot of trouble getting his thoughts out on paper, which causes him to be frustrated and shut down. What we have found out from others that we have consulted with is that this profile is called twice exceptionality, where the child has strengths but also has challenges that sometimes go unnoticed. So we are wondering if we can collaborate to figure out ideas on how to support the child with their challenge areas, while utilising their strengths and interests to ensure that they still love to learn.'
Dr. Dan recommended teachers to adopt a whole child approach, considering the child’s overall package of strengths and challenges before choosing suitable accommodations to utilise. There are some common accommodations used in school classrooms that twice exceptional children may find helpful, though they need to be fine-tuned.
Preferential seating in a classroom for children who are distracted easily by materials, other students, or the view outside the window.
Extended time for children with processing issues, because although they are often quick at intellectual and critical thinking, they are often slower at producing work which is supposed to become automatic.
Giving copies of lecture PowerPoint notes or other students’ notes to children with processing, working memory, and fine motor issues, because it can be stressful for them to copy off the board and take their own notes, since it is difficult for them to simultaneously write fast and follow what the teacher is saying.
Providing information through auditory modalities for children with visual processing issues, because they may learn better by listening.
Providing information through visual modalities for children with auditory processing issues, because they may be distracted by all the chatter, and they may learn better by looking at the whiteboard and watching the teacher’s demonstrations.
Unfortunately, our society often focuses on what is wrong, and a lot of training is about remediating problems. Doctors are trained to look at pathology, psychologists are trained to look at deficits and disorders, and special education teachers are trained to look at learning disabilities. Although it is important to provide support, scaffolding, and intervention to develop lagging abilities, we should not lose sight of a child’s natural talents and interests. Therefore, it is critical both in and out of school to continue to focus at least as much – if not more – on the child’s strengths as we do on the child’s challenges. It is important for teachers to think about how to remediate the child’s challenges while blowing on the embers of their strengths. For example, if a child has advanced verbal reasoning skills but has trouble expressing themselves in writing, the teacher can encourage the child to be a group leader while another student is a scribe, or encourage the child to present the research work via an oral report instead of a written report.
All blogposts on Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021:
Day 1 Talk 4 A Quick, Shareable Overview of Twice Exceptional (2e) Kids - Dan Peters, PhD
Day 2 Talk 8 Understanding High IQ Kids With ADHD and Co-Occurring Diagnoses - Thomas E. Brown, PhD
Day 3 Talk 13 How to Know When It's Time to Change Schools or Homeschool - Colleen Kessler, MEd
Day 4 Talk 17 How to Help Bright Kids Avoid Autistic Burnout - Kieran Rose
Day 4 Talk 19 How Different Kinds of Minds Can Become Inventors and Engineers - Temple Grandin, PhD
Watch this space for more blogposts from the Bright & Quirky Child Summit 2021!
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