Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional how can I rise my 2e son self-esteem ?

Really we do. Having a child with special needs kid is known to be very hard on a marriage. Maybe just keep things with DS as they are for the next month and just put energy into loving the wife.

My favorite book on parenting is called 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Lisa Bravo and Howard Glasser.

Breath. Love. Take care of the whole family which includes you.

If possible make a list of all the ways you spend your time and all your obligations. Seeing it on paper might help get it out of your head. My DH and I did couples counseling when the going got particularly rough.

Hope that helps
Grinity

Raoul,

This is a really small point with all that you are dealing with. And I could be wrong. I am no neuroscientist. As I understand it, the physical or genetic trait most strongly associated with intelligence is the quality of insulation (myelin) on the connections between brain cells. It's almost as if the functioning of your computer can best be explained by the quality of the insulation on your ethernet cable.

For some reason, I find this idea oddly comforting. It helps me get over the difference between myself and people with lower IQs. Some of them may still get freaked out by me reading upside down or speaking Chinese, so I try not to do things like that in front of them.

One day, when you can sit down and listen to something in English for twenty minutes or so, you should sit down and listen to the Black Hole Son portion of this program:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/207/special-ed

Or you can read the transcript for the whole program, which is found here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/207/transcript

Hi everybody,

I finally find the time to answer. It does not mean that everything is back in order (indeed till my son was born, nothing is in order), but the situation is less critical right now (for how long ????). Anyway, thank you for your support and understanding…

My "wife" (we are not married) cried several times last week, feeling lost by my son's behavior. … She is so anxious about school also … So I am, but in a different way … let's say with less guts.

Concerning the drugs, it looks like that there are only three medications available in France from normal drugstores (not easily). They are all based on the same active molecule as Ritalin. And, up to my knowledge, they are the only ones our neurologist prescribes … And honestly, we do have hesitated giving those drugs to our child.

Before answering SIaSL in details, I will deal with the Asperger issue. Indeed, we are in the process of passing diagnostics by a specialized psychologist (in April). Many of its behavior lead to think about that (it is surprising that after just 2 posts describing my son, Asperger is quoted … many psychiologists in France would argue the mother with her too huge love for his son, claiming that high potential, ADHD are just fantasy, while taking the money and making the parents losing their time … we lived that for 18 very painful months). Nevertheless, my son has rather good social skills. He can talk with anyone easily .. OK, the way he communicates can seem rather weird. Besides, he is not afraid of changing routines. He also has a lot of humour (he very easily understands wordplays and formulates ones of his own). His present psychologist said us that there are different Asperger level… Honestly, I do not know what to think about this hypothesis and I am unsure that passing the diagnostic will convince me that he is or isn't Asperger. What do you mean SIaSL about being Asperger in France ?

Thank you aculady for your interesting comments. One of the big problems of transitions with our son is that we work as you propose for the homeworks (advance warnings, fun stuffs after the homework and other hard things). But that does not work …

As far as hiring someone for the homework, we tried that but several home-teachers simply quit after a few tries …

Now, the answers to SIaSL :
1) "can you outline a pattern for the current behavior, when did problems start appearing, what the evolution was and how/when you got the diagnosis (ADHD/dyslexia)? Who did you see, when (how old was he), and did you get all the labels at the same time? Do you have detailed scores for the WISC-IV (all domains and subscores)?"

My son had problem to sleep when he was a baby. I remember his first full-nights at the age of 18 months and our hope … Well, it lasted 3 days or so and he finally left us sleep normally at about 2.5. He started walking at 11 months, started to speak rather early but not very early, but he was described as having a pretty good vocabulary at the day-care center. Problems really started appearing at the "maternelle" school (guess it is kindergarten in the US). During these 3 years, all his teachers told that he was very kind, had friends but he did not work at all .. He was just here doing nothing else than being bored. It started seeing a psychologist during these years at 4.5 or so… This f**** (sorry can't find anything else to describe her) psychologist just told us that there was nothing to do except waiting he stopped being immature. Told that we were just too anxious, that the mother was too close to our child, that we did not do the good things … My wife was on therapy, I was and we were on a couple counseling. All these so-called professional were just in a deny of High Potential when we talked about that. Indeed, at the age of 5, his teacher told us that she understood nothing to our son and that she thought about a High Potential. Anyway, my wife accepted this denial and I had to struggle 6 months to make her recognize all that. After she had acknowledged we were running in a dead-end with this psychologist, a pediatrician sent us to a good psychologist who sent us to a speech therapist. Our son was them measured as being late in reading learning. A WISC IV was passed at the age of 6 and 2 months. The scores were :

VCI : 155
Vocabulary : 19
Similarities : 19
Comprehension : 19

PRI : 135
Block design : 14
Picture Concepts : 19
MAtrix : 14

WMI : 115
Digit span : 14
Arithmetic : 11

PSI : 83
Coding : 7
Symbol search : 7

Based on that, a neurologist diagnose ADHD ( last year at the age of 6) and gave him a long-delivery Ritalin equivalent. Things then improved at school, but not that much and definitely not at home: it was the beginning of rebellion, violence, tantrums …. But, the progresses at school were not as expected. He refused to write most of the time, had a lot of difficulty to read compared to his school friends. The big thing with the drugs was that he stopped making the clown and disturbed the class (an important point for the teacher who was so disappointed just after 3 weeks of school in September 2010). It also clearly helped him in having a readable writing. This school year (CE1 indeed as suggested by SIaSL … 2nd grade in the US I guess ?) was getting really bad .. No progress. We changed speech therapist for one of the best in our countryside. She told us that he is dyslexic and dyscalculic (at the age of 7). He presently sees her 3 times a week and it seems that he finally starts reading not as fluently as the other children, but he reads much better now …



"2) what's going on at school? What grade is he in? CE1/2nd grade? What month was he born in (is he young for that grade?)? Is he showing the same behavior issues there? How are the teachers handling his differences -- both the giftedness and the learning disabilities? If you are about to get an AVS (note to other participants: special assistant = 1:1 aide within a mainstream classroom) I am guessing the situation is not good there, but... more details?"

What's going on at school ??? What a huge question …. He was born in july. As I said the drug helps him controlling himself and probably focusing, but most of the time the teacher writes in his place and tries to question him verbally. I guess she is doing great job and as much as she can, but he is not alone in the classroom. That is why we and she asked for a special assistant in the classroom, but we are still waiting for her coming. His giftedness is definitely not taken into account. But as SIaSL who seems to know how things work in France should know, it is quite dangerous in France to stress on giftedness care. Indeed, the reaction of many teachers can be kind of "if you are so intelligent, you should succeed. So leave me alone". So we prefer insisting on the difficulties to find some help. One of the big anxiety source of the mother is her questioning on his possible grade repeating … French schooling is much based on writing, so my son is facing a lot of problems. The reason for this thread is precisely on the giftedness care at home, just to overcome this lack at school.

"3) How does he do with other kids? Does he have siblings? Friends? At school? Outside of school?"
Everything did work pretty well with other kids till the end of kindergarten. He had a lot of friends, boys and girls, although he was different. He was kind of with them but not at the same place (on the moon or somewhere else). As an example, when neighbors played soccer (you know the strange game where you just can touch the ball with the feet), he could run in any directions or played bumping the other players or simply take a chalk-stone and draw things on the asphalt. Last year (when he was 6), he had less and less boy friend but still had a lot of girl friends. But with the girls getting older and gathering between girls, my son is more and more alone. He is definitely not interested by the same things as the others. Outside of school … no friends although we are living in a small village ( he used to have some)


He has a sister, 5 year-old. She is a magic girl, understand his brother difference, often hide things she can do to her brother ( I guess she is quite intelligent and that is much more easy to acknowledge than for his brother). She starts reading almost by herself, uses a very elaborated vocabulary. (she starts also being bored at school).She easily entered her brother imagination and can play for a long time with him until things get bad (but I guess it the case in every family). That gives surrealistic discussions between them during meals where the mother and I cannot say a word …


"4) You said you went through 3 dyslexia specialists. What didn't work with the previous ones, what works with this one?"

The first one was too young. She did too simple things with our son. The second one was better but did a lot of things by playing. She said our son is exceptional ...Such assertions were not what we were waiting for. We wanted our son to enter reading. We did not see any progress with both of them. Moreover, our son is very strong in obtaining what he wants: he simply turned these specialists as he wants. Now, the specialist is very experienced and succeeds in making him work on exercises he would have refused to do with the others.



"Re. reading, how did he react to the higher level texts you reqd to him? Did you try books on tape? Books that are appropriate for his probably low reading level might be excruciatingly boring to him."
During reading higher level texts, he is always very attentive, asks questions on the terms he does not understand. He anticipates a lot. For example, when I read him "around the world in 80 days" from Jules Vernes in its integral version, he quickly told me that the thief was phileas fogg before I even thought about that (well at the end of the book it is not phileas fogg …). I guess I should try books on tape, but the mother does not truly agree with that.


"And I would definitely talk with him about his exceptionalities -- if only to say that you understand how frustrating it can be to have so many ideas and such a hard time getting them out."
Well, we did not have done that .. We should think about that …

Well it is quite late. I go to sleep

Thank you again for your answers.

Your son's verbal scores are so very high. It's going to make 'figuring him out' very difficult. What does Aspergers look like in a kid with 155 verbal IQ? Do you know how many kids you'd have to gather to find 10 more with both Aspergers and Verbal IQ of 155 or over?

Wordplay is a classic favorite of Gifted+Aspergers folks.

If you can get through reading - Different Minds: Gifted Children with AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits
http://www.grcne.com/

I think you will find it useful long term - but believe me, it's a difficult book to get through in my native English! Very Dense.

Smiles,
Grinity

This 155 is quite weird ... Honestly, I am quite surprized with that result (moreover he was not yet on ritalin then) and it is quite hard to believe and I am doubtful with this score. I wish I would have been there during the tests. I do not know how the psychologist did work with him. The fact is that the psychologist did receive our son something like 10 times before the tests and enter a good relationship with him. I think that if he had passed the tests the first time he met her, his verbal score might have been less than 100 (I am quite sure about that). If you do not know how to manage my son, it is very hard to get him do something you want him to do, unless he wants it too.
He is so disconcerting....
Anyway, he is smart and intelligent, but that intelligent just leave me stunned ...

this book (Different Minds: Gifted Children with AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits )seems interesting, but does it deal with how to manage with those kids or does it rather deal with theoretical things ?

I have some limits in reading English. I can easily read books like "the wave" or scientific books (physics, chemistry) (I mean without the need to open a dictionnary every minute) but I tried to read "the human stain" in English and it was too hard for me (at least for the time I can spend on reading)

just a point for aculady about hand-eating ... I had a lot of problems in accepting that, I "fought" a lot. The psychologists (the bad ones) told us not to deal with that problem and said that he will stop one day or another ... So I stopped bothering him with that. I just tell him to take his fork 3 or 4 times a meal.

Anyway, at the kindergarten (from 3 to 6 year old), he ate normally !!! His eating-towels were almost clean. And up to now, nobody complained about how he eats at school (except for he is very slow and eats almost nothing).

Just a little question from a French ignorant ...What are those DS everybody write about ? I guess DS10 is something like my 10year-old child ... Do DS stand for Daughter/Son ?

DS stands for Dear Son (other adjectives can mentally replace Dear, if desired). See this thread for other abbreviations:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....of_Common_Gifted_Acronyms.html#Post13990

Different minds is very theoretical....If your want a book that just teaches what to do now, try 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook'....strangly the Workbook has all the theory that the original book had but more concise. So you only need the Workbook. It is by Lisa Bravo.

I find the hand eating worrysome because it wasn't always like that.

Here is a sample of how Transforming Workbook works using the hand eating:

Some children find any attention reinforcing...positive or negative. Stop comments to 'Use Fork' at the table since they are providing a positive reward for a negative behavior. Then look for ways to make comments that notice any good table manners, such as
You wiped your hand on a napkin...what shows good table manners.
You looked at your fork, I wonder if you were thinking about using it to eat your potatoes.
I see you are using a spoon to eat your soup, good job of using utensiles.

Of course if you are silently fuming about the bad behaviors while mechanically saying the words it won't work. The workbook really helps with that. My idea is to start the experiment by keeping tracks of how many positive thought you have about your child during today on a little piece of paper and see if tomorrow you can beat your score.

Your son can not possible fake getting 19 on his IQ test even though it is quite true that some children clam up with strangers. Especially children who have learned that adults might react negatively to their vocabulary level. Is your son any good at reading body language in adults?

I have also had the experience of being told that my kid's problems were because I was 'too close' to him as a Mother. Looking back I would guess that 65% of what caused that was that having Verbal IQ over 140 is very stressful to a toddler and I was reacting to his pain and fear. 10% was because I missed having close friends who I could deeply connect with and I was delighted to interact with such a fine mind and 25% my own unidentified giftedness leading me to do everything I did so intensely. I didn't read 3 parenting books...I read 37 books. I didn't make resolutions to follow the good advice and then forget to do it...I followed through. So those are the reasons that caused me to end up acting in a way that looked to some like I was overinvolved.

If you want to print this out to share with your partner I would be honored to be a guest in your family.

Love and more Love
Grinity