Twice-Exceptional Children: Meeting Their Educational Needs

In recent weeks, the only constant has seemed to be that there is no normal. Every day we are inundated with reports and numbers and projections that do little to quell the collective anxiety we are feeling. Parents, in particular, are struggling to balance suddenly having to homeschool their children in addition to keeping up with whatever demands their work requires. It can be hard to see past the immediate uncertainty and fear, but once we do, we find that much can be learned from this situation about our children, how they learn, and how to educate them most effectively. Remote learning opens up new possibilities for individualizing education.  Individualizing education, in turn, allows us to encourage curiosity, internal motivation and learning beyond studying for tests. One population in particular that can benefit from this kind of individualized approach to learning are twice-exceptional children.

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Twice-Exceptional Children: Why Making Friends Is Hard and How to Support Them

“I want to know: how do I compare in the world of 12-year-olds? How many people in the world are there with a personality like me? Where do I fit in?”

All children need connections in order to thrive. Learning to establish and maintain friendships is a crucial part of every child’s development. Sharing, turn-taking, trusting, communicating, and compromising are some of the vital skills children practice while interacting with peers. Although for some children acquiring these skills comes naturally and making friends is easy, others struggle to find and keep friends. Twice-exceptional children—because of both components of their exceptionality—often have difficulty finding a peer group and maintaining friendships.

Twice-exceptional children are children who are identified as being gifted while also having a disability. While “disability” is not the ideal word, it is the word used by schools and other agencies and, for sake of consistency, will be used here. The disability could be a learning, emotional, physical, sensory, and/or developmental disability (The Twice-Exceptional Dilemma, 2006). Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder are just some examples of disabilities that impact a child’s functioning.

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Twice-Exceptional Children: Who They Are and Why We Need to Talk About Them

Is my child gifted? Is my child delayed? What is my child?”

Gifted and ADHD, how can it be both?“

These, and similar questions were asked by parents of children who were eventually identified as twice-exceptional.

Twice-exceptional children are a misunderstood and under-identified group of children. Many educators, professionals, and parents are not familiar with this term and do not understand the challenges and experiences of these children. It “can feel so overwhelming that you do not know where to start,” stated a parent of several twice-exceptional children. The first step in helping this group of children is to understand what it means to be twice-exceptional.

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