Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional "She doesn't need to be good at EVERYTHING"

Just wanted to vent for a minute on the "attitude" I sense from so many people regarding my 2e kids, DD in particular. Not from other parents (probably because i don't talk about her), but from school staff, medical personnel, etc. DD9 hardly ever writes more than 3-4 sentences which obviously isn't meeting the lang. arts standards for 4th grade. Since she writes well on a sentence level, she scores average, at least, on standardized tests for writing like the WJ. Basically, the giftedness covers up the disability, and even though she is completely unable to do things like write a report (even a short one), a journal entry, or a story, all people can see are composite scores like 110 on the Woodcock Johnson. They see the general ability index of 150, the state/district achievement scores for math and reading that are all in the 95th-99th percentile, etc. and that's all they can think about... and therefore I look crazy and am a whiny tiger mom who must need her child to be good at everything. Someone actually said that at a meeting (she doesn't need to be good at EVERYTHING). I don't care if she's good at everything but it would be nice if she was operating at grade level and there had been progress in writing in the last two years, which there has not been. For some reason, it didn't seem to bother the 3rd and 4th grade teachers that she hardly ever writes more than 4 sentences. I don't get it.

Because of EF issues, slow processing speed, and ADHD she is excessively slow at almost everything. She may score in the 99th percentile for the district math test on the computer, but she is sent back 3 times to do it, and the other kids do it in 45 min. When I asked the school to test her math fluency as part of a comp. evaluation, they actually refused (and sent me a prior written notice refusing). It's a 5 minute subtest! They finally agreed when I called the spec. ed director and wouldn't sign the evaluation plan. Of course, there was a huge gap between fluency and conceptual ability but the school made no mention of this in the report or meeting. All they care about is overall achievement and if she does/does not qualify for special education. Finally, when the school denied services and wouldn't even meet with us about the 504 plan, I took her to an actual neuropsych/educational psych to be tested and he saw the low fluency score on the school eval and said "I'm surprised they didn't do a full math cluster because this fluency score is so poor." FINALLY I found someone who isn't a complete nincompoop. But is it going to matter anyway? NO, because none of these fools in the schools understand 2e kids. They don't understand that 2e kids can have average scores and still have a disability that can cause them to actually fail or give up at some point if nothing is done. Already DD has shown a lot of anxiety and passive aggressiveness about both math and writing.

I guess I just needed to vent and see if anyone has had a similar experience. I did give the school an article about evaluating 2e kids before DD was evaluated and I don't think anyone bothered to look at it, or if they did, they disregarded it. The last person they want to give services to (or make accommodations for) is a kid who scores as high as she does on math and reading standardized tests. That's ALL they care about. She could be asleep all day at school and as long as she keeps getting those good scores for overall math and reading achievement, they are going to ignore the concerns.

I do not have a child like this, but I can tell you that it is a concern and a very frustrating one for some children at my child's GT magnet.

I have a similar kid but the opposite problem with the school. He's in grade 3 and all they can focus on is that his writing is slow and up until recently below grade. This year he finally managed to approach grade level but they are still freaking out because it doesn't come close to match his ability. We had to pay for our second full psych assessment out of pocket (the board's waiting list is years long) because the first one in grade 1 (that we also had to pay for) couldn't confirm an LD. He now has an official LD diagnosis and the school is going to provide a laptop and software.

That is all good and I'm glad they are on top of things but the downside is that they have used it as an excuse to not provide gifted services for him. It doesn't help that DS isn't exactly a cooperative kid sometimes and the school refuses to do any gifted stuff until he behaves better (which honestly will be a challenge until they give him something at his level). This year I finally managed to get them to differentiate a bit in math but it is still far from what he could or wants to do. The teacher just can't see it because she is so focused on the fact that he doesn't write out his solutions in 15 steps which goes back to the writing LD.

Anyway, that isn't really any help but you aren't alone in your 2e frustration.

This may not help at all, but I recently saw this article in the news and thought of it when I saw your post.

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2015/05/01/idea-twice-exceptional/20260/

Thanks for the article. I had given something similar to the special ed dircetor, who actually attended the meeting, and he said that nothing will be done because she is not failing. So even though she qualifies as having a SLD according to the discrepancy model, she doesn't have a composite score below 80 or whatever they consider below average. She actually qualified as having a math calculation disability as well but with achievement scores (untimed tests) at 99th percentile, giving her any services for math would be considered ridiculous. They only looked at one classroom sample of writing and it was 2 sentences long (probably the best sample they could find), and they determined that was sufficient. She was supposed to write a letter, and they said since her sentences were "long" her writing is fine. Basically they were looking for ways to disqualify her. With the independent eval. she was given the TOWL-4 and for the "story" she wrote had so few words it couldn't even be scored. I think she wrote 3 sentences in 15 min. I'm not sure if the district has seen the report yet. They'll probably say there has to be a number and it has be below 80.

chay--sorry to hear about your own difficulties. So far we haven't encountered that, the teachers just blew off the concerns and inflated her grades rather than helping her. They disregarded the 504. The language arts teacher in the gifted program said "a lot of gifted kids write bad and they always improve." I said "If other kids write as bad as her they should all be evaluated" and she rolled her eyes at me.

blackcat..we are in the same boat. 10yr 2e DD w/adhd. Except my DD's teacher said all she needed was some tutoring, of which we are paying for ourselves. I can pay a tutor for 20 years and I guarantee it won't make a difference on her writing but I can show the district that I am at least trying. Your comment about the schools not understanding 2e kids is spot on. The tutor we are using is a gifted class teacher at DD's school. When asked how many twice exceptional kids she had in her class, she didn't even now what the term meant. I explained to her and she said "I don't know if I have any". Can't offer suggestions, just camaraderie in this same ship we are in.

blackcat, I'm so sorry you're facing it, and also can empathize so much as we have faced so many of the same roadblocks advocating for our dsypraxic/dysgraphic ds. In fact, I am sitting at my desk this morning re-reading a book on dyspraxia looking for info to share with teachers.

My ds also couldn't get enough words down on the TOWL to be scored when it was given to him the first time (he was in 4th grade). This was something the school couldn't just write off as "he's ok". I am not sure what advice might help to respond to the school in your situation, but what worked for us was understanding the tests that our ds had been given so that we understood why he scored high on some of them and lower on others, and just continually - over and over and over again - explaining what the test results meant. For us, that non-score on the TOWL made all the difference in the world. DS had "advanced" scores on all of his state-testing except for writing, and on that test he was one point away from scoring "advanced". The reason he scored so high on the state testing was the nature of the test - the majority of it was multiple choice questions about spelling and grammar, which he can easily answer when he's not in the midst of trying to actually produce written expression. Same for WJ-III achievement tests - he had some subtest scores that were very high, but when grouped based on ds' challenges you could see clearly where the challenges were impacting subtest scores. I made a chart from the WJ-III showing how the grouping of subtests showed the disability, and collected all the work samples I could both from school and home and had those in reserve to show at our team meetings. Although the types of data I collected at home couldn't be considered "scientific" or done under controlled circumstances, they made a point, and I knew that if the school tried to say they didn't believe them I could always respond with "that's ok, you run the same test/etc" because I knew they would get the same results.

We were successful in getting an IEP for our ds in elementary school, but as you've probably read here, just having the IEP didn't make it any less difficult at school - teachers and school staff still didn't believe ds really needed help, and there was a lot of trying to "blame" his difficulties with writing on ADHD (which he doesn't have, but even if he did, he still needed *appropriate instruction* in writing), laziness, inattentiveness, checked out student, whiny parents. The best thing we ever did for ds was find a private school where the teaching staff listened to and respected what we had to say as parents, and took at face value what was said in a professional report. That didn't get ds the *extra* help he needed (we still had to send him through years of SLP therapy for written expression), but it did at least give us an environment where blame wasn't being thrown around and teachers weren't trying to accuse us (parents) as over-inflating our ds' intelligence.


In situations like this, I reply with a really nice, polite email summarizing the situation/discussion, restating what the teacher said that includes documentation from someone/somewhere/somebook/somepaper/whatever, a brief paragraph, a one-pager at most, that explains the impact of ds' disability on the specific skill that the teacher is thinking will just improve on it's own. I try to make the tone of the email entirely non-confrontational or lecturing, but with the tone of just trying to help the teacher understand. The teacher may not understand it or care, but if he/she *does* read it it does sometimes help to understand. Even if they don't read it and/or don't care, you have one more piece of documentation showing how the impact of the disability is being misunderstood in the classroom.

Best wishes,

polarbear

[/quote]She actually qualified as having a math calculation disability as well but with achievement scores (untimed tests) at 99th percentile, giving her any services for math would be considered ridiculous.[/quote]

Part of the key to an IEP is qualifying - once you've qualified, no matter what the qualification category - the school should be able to provide individualized instruction and accommodations in areas where she needs it. Does your school district ever qualify students who have ADHD diagnoses as OHI (Otherwise Health Impaired)? When we were advocating for an IEP for our ds, the school wanted us to keep his ADHD diagnosis (even though it wasn't correct) because they felt it would be easier to qualify him - didn't have to follow the same strict guidelines that they do for SLD. Second thing, those guidelines (minimum scores etc) for qualifying under SLD are just that - *guidelines*, not barriers. The decision for eligibility is supposed to be a team decision. FWIW, the SPED teacher at ds' elementary school did not vote to qualify ds because she felt *very* strongly that giving an IEP to a student who wasn't poor and wasn't low IQ took away from other students. Everyone else on the team though felt he qualified - a previous year's teacher, parents, school district rep. Is there anyone else who is a resource who might be in favor of getting your ds qualified that you could call in to participate when you have a team meeting?

polarbear

Laurie918, I can so identify with your frustration, having a 2e ds who struggled tremendously with written expression and still does. I can't help but wonder though - if you were able to find a tutor who understood the root of the issue with writing for your dd, if tutoring or some type of therapy wouldn't help? Speech therapy targeting written expression helped our ds tremendously, and although he still struggles with it, it's been extremely worthwhile having pursued it. One other thing that happened with improvements in his written expression - it didn't all happen smoothly and obviously - there were many times he'd go for long stretches seeming to not be making any improvements and then suddenly all the work leading up to that point would click and he'd make a big leap.

The gifted class tutor might not be the person that your dd needs for tutoring at this point, particularly if she doesn't understand 2e or if she doesn't understand what is at the root of your dd's challenge with written expression. Have you ever had your dd evaluated by a speech pathologist? Speech therapy targeted at written expression is what helped our ds the most, and it's not something the school suggested or I ever would have thought of had I not read some obscure reference to it in one of the Eides' books and then read about others online who'd approached written expression challenges through speech therapy.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I do have a similar kid. Essay writing is like pulling teeth. For DS16 his problem is in creating content to write about and not about the execution. He has written only a few sentences on essays that teachers are expecting pages on because 'he has nothing to say'. First day of his gifted pullout in 4th grade and the teacher assigned a 'tell me about yourself essay' and my son wrote one sentence.

I have not had the same attitude but rather the reverse. Since he struggles to write essays, he couldn't possibly be gifted. He can't take the honors high school English & Social Studies because he can't write well enough. So he is stuck in regular English classes bored to tears with most the the material. Gets mad because he has to read the abridged version of the book. Thankfully this isn't necessary for math class, but it has hurt him in science.

It is important that your child is writing AT grade level. And you should keep pushing this because it will come back to bite you at the later grades. I don't have a lot of suggestions except to keep pushing. And if you can get her outside help in the meantime. What I've found is not a lot of people know how to help DS with the 'having something to say' part of writing.