Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Philosophical question

So, I've been thinking and am wondering what some of you might think. My youngest has ADD and is gifted to some degree (HG+ or MG depending on which IQ test one wants to go with). If her older sister were not also HG without any corresponding disabilities other than slower processing speed, I don't know that I would have ever thought "gifted" or worried about 2e with dd10. She would have just been a good student with no issues on either end of the board (at least appearing that way).

If not recognized as gifted, she would be a very good student in typical or somewhat accelerated classes even taking into account being significantly younger for grade due to having changed districts to one where she didn't quite make the cut-off for the grade she is in and redshirting being somewhat common where I live. She would appear neither LD or gifted, basically, but like a good "high" kid who can get straight As without a lot of work (what her 2nd grade teacher saw her as at the start of that year).

With some definite work in dealing with ADD issues (O-3 supplements, caffeine, gum chewing in class, physical exercise, study techniques that break things into small parts for easy memory...), she did manage straight As at the end of this past year (5th grade) in a GT reading class and an accelerated 6th grade math class as well.

However, I wonder what the experience would be as a 2e person to never know that you are either gifted or LD. Would it be a problem to never be challenged to your ability level in school and would you know that something was off if you were getting all As and just not taking accelerated classes?

From what I am seeing with dd, I don't think that interventions for the ADD are needed if we just don't challenge her. Granted, I imagine that an average kid might be challenged by being the youngest in the grade and being grouped in somewhat accelerated in class groups, for instance, but the feel I get is that it is still easy enough for dd at that point that she doesn't need to deal with the ADD and can still get As.

Just one quick consolidation in case anyone doesn't want to read my whole longer rambling post!

Basically, would it be a problem for a 2e person to never know that s/he was gifted or LD? Would s/he know the difference?

I hear you Cricket2 -
My son is currently a 14 year old 9th grader. Last year this time he was a 13 year old 9th grader. We reversed his gradeskip because with the ADD he was getting graded on his organizational skills, and the local public school with it's honors program with the 1 year acceleration still wasn't meeting his intellectual needs at all.

Luckily we found a school were there is lots of small group discussion and very intelligent teachers and a reasonable amount of homework (2 hours a night) and he's really enjoying being 'a bit younger' but having any skip.

Will we miss the money later? Will this last 4 years? Who knows? I'm just happy he's having a good experience now. He has friends, is learning good work ethic, and is intellectually stimulated by his schoolwork. What a relief!

Crick - just because interventions for ADD aren't needed in 5th grade, doesn't mean that they won't be needed later. It took us until DS was in 8th grade to be 'really sure' we were seeing ADD and not the lingering effects of enforced underachievement. It sounds to me like the path she is on is a good one for her. Flexibility is the number one thing that is needed in parenting, moreso in parenting kids with very spiky profiles.

Peace hands bow,
grinity

If the person is leading a happy and fulfilling life, if she has an understanding of her strengths, weaknesses and interests (without scores), then this would be ok in my book.

We chose not to use medication for my non gifted, high average daughter. Sometime she gets frustrated with her concentration issues and the length of time it takes her to complete work. But, she is achieving mostly A's in a competitive HS taking a mix of Honors, AP and college prep classes. She is comfortable in her own skin, learning to self advocate, understands her learning style. She will be applying to college next year and should have some great options.

Would medication put her in a different bucket? Maybe, maybe not. And maybe when she can make decisions for herself, she will try medication. But for now, she is happy and doing well. Maybe I would feel differently if she were highly gifted - but I don't think so.

And I'm not against medication. My complex, gifted, 2-E son takes medication. But he has so many challenges, we felt it was necessary to address the attention issues and take at least one challenge of his plate.

I spent a lot of time going back & forth with dd as well. Even with the dx earlier this year, it was only in re-reading the chapter on ADD in the Misdiagnosis book that left me pretty sure it is ADD. He has four things listed @ the end of the chapter that basically say, 'if you see this, it may be a bored gifted kid not ADD.' Dd didn't hit any of those. Ability to entertain herself on things of interest such as building lego forts, reading, etc.? Nope, she is totally not self-entertaining and no one gets any downtime around her b/c she wants our attention constantly. I can't recall the other three things right now, but dd came out clearly ADD not just gifted and bored.

Short answer--for me, from my own experience, I would say yes. I was identified as gifted, but not really appropriately challenged. I diagnosed myself with inattentive ADD (or maybe Executive Function Disorder? must read more) as an adult. It would have made a significant difference in my life to understand what it meant for me to be gifted (i.e. idealism wasn't something youthful that I would grow out of, it is who I am) and to understand the weaknesses wrt attention and focus. An appropriate challenge at a younger age combined with actively being taught executive function skills would have made a difference. Learning more about giftedness and adult ADHD has been extremely enlightening for me, and it would have been helpful to have this information at a younger age.

I would worry that keeping the 2E info from your dd would be harmful because she surely knows she is different somehow and she is probably working much harder than anyone realizes just to appear average. This alone could lead to major depression: "life is so hard and it's just going to keep getting harder, what's the point?"

A lot probably depends on your school and your child. My experience was that my DD sailed through 6th grade (with math acceleration and Orchestra instead of reading due to testing out). In 7th grade she hit a wall and her grades just went from straight A's to totally random. My DD stayed in the most advanced classes available and aced all of the tests and quizzes in those classes but she just didn't have the organizational/time management skills (EFs) to handle all of the assignments and deadlines.

We discussed putting her in the regular classes since they were less demanding (at that time we didn't know about the ADD) and she was horrified, she explained that she was passing the advanced classes because she already knew most of what was being taught, so the regular classes would have been even more boring. Her biggest objection though was that the other kids in the regular classes were...well... I don't know how to put it politely, but basically there was no potential for finding anything in common with those kids. She was pretty peerless in the advanced classes already, she would have been even more lonely and depressed in the average classes.

My DD already knew she was gifted because every time we moved to a new school district, her teacher would recommend her for the GT program within a week. I think knowing she was smart but her grades not living up to expectations was frustrating for everyone and having teachers questioning her work ethic and calling her lazy was demoralizing. Once we found out about the ADD, it was so good for her sanity (and ours) to finally know what was going on. She knew that she was the smartest one in the class but she didn't know why it was so much harder for her to just remember to do the work and turn it in.

Sorry for going on...

Nik, I've not kept the dx from dd. She truly doubts that she is gifted and I've not shared her exact IQ scores with her other than to give her a general idea of her profile and that, one of the times, her IQ came out higher than anyone else in the family who has been tested b/c she thinks that she is the slow one in the family. She thinks that must be inaccurate and doesn't matter.

I've also shared the ADD dx with her and she was part of that process. I just wonder if we had never sought either dx whether she'd be better off as a high-avg kid in her mind rather than questioning the gifted id.

She does have to work harder than dd12 has in the GT and subject accelerated classes so I'm assuming that she has to work harder than the average gifted kid in GT placement. However, I don't think that she has to work harder than the average kid in an average class. She daydreams and gets As in those types of classes.

My dh, also ADD, on the other hand struggled in the more typically paced classes due to his deficits. He thought, and still thinks, that he must be stupid b/c he had to work so hard. I am kind of thinking that dd is more able than dh or dh is more disabled by ADD than dd. I do think that dh is likely 1-2 SDs above the mean and more likely 2 than 1 with significant impairments that kept him from performing as such.

I think that sailing through average classes on stored knowledge and then suddenly hitting classes in high school or college or grad school where attention and organization were actually required in order to master the material, without knowing ahead of time that there was a disability that might need accommodation or intervention, would be devastating and incredibly frustrating, and could seriously derail a person's career prospects if the problem wasn't recognized immediately, which it almost certainly wouldn't be.

I also think that the other issues that go along with giftedness, including the issue of needing to be around peers who get your jokes, would be unaddressed in that scenario. You still wouldn't fit in, but you wouldn't know why, and you wouldn't know where to look to find what you needed.

I didn't mean in the academic sense, I was referring to the mental energy it takes just to get through the day like a non 2E person.

If she has real friends that "get her" in the regular classes and she wants to be there I see no harm in it. If she is getting by and happy, I certainly wouldn't advocate medicating her so she can be pushed to achieve more academically. She can make that choice herself when she is older. I personally think learning how to work with the particular strengths and weaknesses you have is the most important thing you can do.