Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Smart kid w/ issues. Teacher says 2E...help please

Hi~
This is my first post. So far, I've done a lot of lurking and have learned a lot reading your posts. We are struggling with our 7 year old son, and I'd love to hear some thoughts or suggestions about where to go with his education.

Our son is in 2nd grade. We had him evaluated last year, because his teacher felt he was ADHD, mainly due to attention issues. Findings were significant dysgraphia and dyslexia, plus ADD. He also has coordination issues and huge sensory issues. I am not even sure if he would qualify as gifted, but his WISC scores were described as "gifted" for the first portions (Verbal and Perceptual) and low for working memory and processing speed (which was in something like the 5th percentile.)

He also took the Woodcock-Johnson, with variable results. As expected, reading skills were very weak. His achievement in math, vocabulary and a catagory for general academic knowledge was better than expected (scored 3-4 grade levels above 1st grade, when he was tested.)

At a recent parent-teacher conference, his teacher and LD teacher brought up that he may be gifted, along with his learning disablities. At the same time, they said he'd never pass the test to get into the gifted program, because he'd have to read the test himself (which he is currently not capable of doing.) This really bothers me but I don't know what can be done about it. I can see their point about needing to read the test on his own.

I apologize if this is coming accross and jumbled and incomplete. I really have no idea where to go with all this, should we just focus on the reading & writing now, and explore the gifted "stuff" at some time in the future?

I'd love to hear some suggestions from those who have been there.

It sounds like he has an active and involved teacher. I'd work with her to see if she can independently provide him with more challenging work in the areas where he needs it, and worry about the official gifted program next year. Most school districts only do a pull-out program which simply gives the children additional work, which may well cause more problems for your son right now.

Welcome Sher,

I am the parent of a 2E child with developmental coordination disorder, dysgraphia, and stealth dyslexia. It sounds like you're in a good place in that your ds has been tested and you have quite a bit of info, in addition to having teachers that care about him - that's huge!

FWIW, our journey in the world of 2E started in late 2nd grade when our ds' disabilities were first diagnosed. My advice is to start with learning as much as you can about your ds' challenges - which it sounds like you already have. Then be sure you have accommodations in place in the classroom and for testing. For instance, is your ds required to read the questions on standardized and classroom tests or does he have an accommodtion to allow someone to read the questions to him? Once you have your accommodations documented either through an IEP or a 504, you could advocate for those same accommodations to be used when testing for the gifted program at your school. Also fwiw, don't take the word of the regular classroom teacher and the LD teacher as final in terms of what the gifted program will accept as proof of giftedness, the gifted program staff may be very willing to read the questions to your ds, or they may do that anyway if they do individual testing.

Next thing, as epoh mentioned, the gifted program may not be worth the hassle to get into depending on how it's administered. If it's additional work with little intellectual challenge, it might not be that important to your ds. We chose not to send our ds to our district's magnet gifted school because we were told by parents there that the homework load and writing expectations were huge and took priority over nurturing the children's intellectual creativity. We felt that wasn't a good fit for our ds, although we also know it's a good fit for many gifted kids - high IQ or not, all kids are different in learning styles and needs We were discouraged by our ds' teachers from enrolling him in the gifted pull-out program because they felt it is too much of an interruption in the school day. We had some worries about doing it because we were so focused on understanding, accommodating and remediating his areas of challenge in early elementary that we gave up on it for a few years (we also had a teacher in 3rd grade who tried telling us you can't be in gifted and sped at the same time - simply not true!). Anyway, in hindsight, that wasn't our greatest parenting decision - we finally went ahead, ignored his teachers and enrolled him in the gifted pullout in later elementary and it was the first time ever in school *ever* that he came home excited about something, and the gifted teachers were much more understanding of and willing to accommodate for his disabilities than his regular classroom teachers had been.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I�ve only recently found my way to the 2e forum, and find that Polarbear has loads of helpful experience and thoughts to share. I can�t provide much helpful advice at this point in our journey, but I can share where we are, and my thoughts about our current path.

We are just at the beginning of suspecting dyslexia in DS6, whom we know is gifted through previous IQ testing done when he was 5. DS6 is in 1st grade, is doing well with reading by grade level standards, but his reading is far behind his other abilities, and his IQ testing identified low processing speed (55th percentile) compared to other IQ subtests (98th and 99th percentiles). We're just now researching testing options for dyslexia.

DS6 did not pass the districts' gifted test last year because he couldn't read the test on his own, and we sat out this year's test because his reading skills still aren't strong enough. He will have to take it next year in 2nd grade as part of state-mandated gifted identification testing, but whether he will be reading well enough to pass it, I don't know.

At this point in time, I don't feel he's missing anything by NOT being identified as gifted through the district testing. Even if he passed the gifted testing, we wouldn't pull him out of his current school to go to our gifted magnet program school (which serves 98th percentile and above) until/unless we have problems getting his needs met at our current school.

In terms of our school's gifted pullout program, the kids automatically get to do it if they score within top 10% through the district's gifted testing, but teachers send other kids to our pull out program, even if they don't test in the top 10%. Our pull out program is only an hour or two one day a week, is geared toward 3rd grade and up, and I don't know how much benefit it really provides.

All this to say that, as I've examined our options, it currently doesn�t matter as much whether he passes our district's gifted test. I might feel differently if we were at a school that were less accommodating. Thus far, he goes to math with the next grade up, and that's working okay for us. Although he misses FAST phonics � which is a phonics program originally created for dyslexic children � to go to 2nd grade math�

Here are some questions for you to consider, born out of our own similar situation. If you assume a worst-case scenario of your DS never passing your district�s gifted test, what would you want for him out of your current school, or even a different school that might be a better fit, even if he�s not in the gifted program? Can his needs be met through the regular program? Would your school�s gifted pullout program, if they have one, work with him even though he hasn�t passed a gifted test? Can he accelerate to another grade for some subjects? Would teachers be willing to work with his reading level if he went to the next grade for math? Dyslexia affects 20% of our population. Surely they have children in the next grade up with reading differences, and could accommodate your DS for some subjects too. Are there any schools in your area that cater to 2e children? We have several private schools in our area that do, but none public.

I supposed I�d encourage you to think about what your ideal scenario would be for your DS, and think about how you can come closest to that even if he doesn�t pass your district�s gifted test. Willing teachers and administrators can make a lot of difference.

Thank you all for the replies. You have given me some good things to think about, and questions to discuss with my husband and DS's teachers.

The gifted program the teachers talked about was at an entirely different school. For some reason, I'm thinking they do not have a pull-out option, but even if they did, I'm not sure if it would be an option for my son. With his issues, he already has quite a bit of pull-out time to address his dyslexia and OT needs. (Note: we are new to the school district this year, I'm still learning about the programs they offer.)

Mostly, I want DS to keep the love of learning he's always had. That is my overall main concern. We are already having self-esteem issues due to the reading (saying things like "I'm so dumb!" and wondering why he can't read when everyone else can.) He is very aware of his "issues". Ultimately, I am not 100% sure public school is going to be a great fit for him due to his "extremely unique learning profile" (a quote from his eval report done last year.)

In addition to his regular classroom teachers, I have hired a great teacher to work with us as a home tutor a couple hours a week. Mainly to address the dyslexia (she is trained in Orton-Gillingham methods.)

Thank you so much for the input. We have a lot to think about.

This is something that can easily happen with children who have learning challenges - they are surrounded at school by children who aren't struggling and they in turn feel like they are "dumb". We know they're not dumb at all - but it's a real challenge to help them survive with their self-esteem intact when they have to work so hard at overcoming their challenges.

The things that helped our ds the most were:

1) Being sure that he had opportunities to spend time working in his areas of strength, either inside or outside of school. We did a lot of outside-of-school activities such as fun (for him) science camps, etc - things that didn't involve anything that had to do with his challenges but were instead all about things that he was interested in.

2) Just giving him other activities, whether or not they had anything to do with his areas of intellectual strengths. He's taken music lessons, participated in a few after-school clubs, etc. The key is once he's outside of the classroom keep him active and engaged as much as possible without time to think about what happened at school that day, plus give him places to make friends outside of his classroom who won't know him as the student who has a challenge. Truthfully most of the kids *in* his classrooms never spent one minute thinking about ds' in terms of his challenges, but ds perceived that they did and that bothered him tremendously - still does.

3) Exercise. Our ds is a couch potato plus he has developmental coordination disorder, so he's not a kid who's inclined to *want* to get outside and exercise. It helped for us to semi-force him into that through family activities so that we were able to find him two individual sports that he's competent at as he got older. The exercise really does help.

4) Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Mostly that would be me doing the talking And listen too. At first, it was mostly me talking, talking about all the reasons he really wasn't dumb, reinforcing his belief in himself and his strengths etc, and listening when he shared with me. Eventually he shared more and more, and that made it easier for me to figure out what to say when I talked to him. And... even though it took years for it to sink in, those early messages I fed him to help his sense of self-esteem *did* help. At the very least (yet very important too), he knew that he *always* had his parents believing in him even when he didn't think anyone else saw him that way, and that did help. It's not everything, but it's a big thing!

5) We found some good simple books that explain LDs, dyslexia etc to young (early elementary) children. He sometimes didn't want to look at them, other times they helped a bit. I don't have them out anymore so I can't remember the names of any of them; maybe you could post a topic specifically asking for book recommendations, or search around on Amazon.

6) Be sure he's with a teacher who is supportive and not sending negative messages without realizing it. Our ds' 2nd grade teacher was so insightful in that she really is responsible for seeing that our ds was struggling due to *something* being up that wasn't "normal" - yet she was so not a good teacher to be in the classroom with him because she contributed to him feeling hopeless and dumb. He had a new teacher in 3rd grade who didn't really help at all with ds' learning challenges but who helped him get excited about learning again, and that probably made much more of a difference in his life at that point than overcoming his challenges.

Sorry for all the rambling - hopefully some of it helped a little bit!

polarbear

There is no standard universal definition of gifted, so it means what ever you and who you are trying to communicate can agree on. To me, the 'first portions' of the WISC address intellectual giftedness, and the working mem and processing speed talk about support functions. A less informed person might think that gifted=quick responses and have a different idea, but as you can see, I disagree. If you can, start using the language of 'my child is gifted and has learning challenges' at least in your mind.

Then only way to see if a school option is worth persuing is to sit in and observe a classroom in action. It would be nice if you could get to meet the parents of the kids in the gifted program because those kids might be good for playdates, or know of afterschool fun that would be fun for your son.

Welcome - so glad you spoke up!
Grinity

My son tested gifted on parts of his test, missed it by a few points on others and showed gaps which we expected since he has dysgraphia.

I tried to get him placed in gifted in 5th grade but am not sure I would again if I could go back and do it over. Because of being 2e, he is struggling right now just to adapt to the faster chaos of changing classes, dealing with multiple teachers and a larger homework load now that he's in mid school. If he gets to the place he is bored and not feeling challenged, I'll push it again. For now, the special ed accommodations are giving him the options for creativity that go to meet some of the gifted needs and limit the busywork inherent to regular ed classrooms.

So this only applies to my own experience with my own child, but my thoughts would be to focus on services, accommodations, etc. to help him gain new tools to deal with the challenges of being in a class first and then push for gifted classification if he needs the additional mental stimulation. My son's teachers did that without the classification, so the legal part hasn't really mattered yet.

All the best - it's a challenge, but it's also a wonderful road you're traveling as a parent of a 2e child.