My verbally gifted twice exceptional son is really fun to be around because of his sense of humor, especially his ability with improv and imitations and also his love of music. He is very articulate and teachers and doctors, like the neurologist he saw yesterday, often tell us they notice this about him. He always has interesting things to add to the conversation because he is interested in a wide variety of subjects and has done a lot of reading about a lot of different things since he was 2 1/2. He also watched a lot of educational television. He likes to watch Cash Cab and sometimes Jeopardy to test his knowledge.
In spite of some sensory issues and a mild disability that affects motor ability and endurance, he seems more mature than kids his age because he can also see the big picture and even the positive things about having his disability. Because of his intelligence he can be an active participant in getting an accurate diagnosis for his disabilities because he has done a lot of reading about neuroscience and now microbiology. He often knows a lot of the material in his science books before we read them.
He often wonders out loud about things and whenever he does this we look it up. Because he wondered if his grandmother's disability might have been caused by an allergic reaction to anesthesia, we read about malignant hyperthermia which can happen if you have central core disease, a myopathy with some symptoms that sound similar to some of my son's symptoms. The neurologist that we went to for my son's migraines ordered tests to see if he was possibly misdiagnosed with motor dyspraxia because there are so many things that don't fit. The neurologist told us myopathies can sometimes be caused by genetic mutation when we told him there was no family history of my son's difficulties. I think my son was 8 or 9 when he first asked me if his disabilities were caused by genetic mutation. He had been reading about genetics and he had observed that none of his family had the disability.
He is very intuitive and very observant, but also has a good sense of aesthetics, good at knowing what colors look good together. My daughter emails pictures of different outfits when she is trying to decide which would look better on her and she does it because he gives really good advice. My husband and I value his opinion when selecting new furniture and tile and just about everything else. This is one of his gifts that I find a little ironic since he didn't like to color and couldn't or wouldn't color in the lines in Kindergarten.
