Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Interesting Article on the Twice-Exceptional

Great article. Now I'm trying to figure out who I may want to forward it to...

Thanks it's very interesting. I'm going to have to bookmark this. I particularly find interesting. Wish I had this back when my son was in 6th grade.

"The greater intensity and overexcitabilities of the highly gifted may result in episodes of intense emotional displays, which research shows are normal in the gifted (see Dabrowskiís overexcitabilities for more on over-emotionality). These frequent intense displays of emotion in the academic setting, along with off-task behaviour, lead to a label of ADD/ADHD."

I'd really like to forward to my son's psych, teacher and iep team and say this is my concern - I am concerend that I have a DS who is gifted and dysgraphic and it is being mistaken for adhd. But I am not sure how to do that without looking badly or appearing nutty, etc. Any ideas on how I could word it without rubbing people the wrong way? (Not sure why I am that concerned about it - I'm sure they already see me in a poor light.)

This is a great article, and I am trying to come up with a way to send it to my DS6's teacher without offending her. She has been complaining to me that his focus is getting worse as the school year goes on. I really believe it is because 1) he is bored and unchallenged. She said she would differentiate for him, but I have yet to see it; and 2) he has difficulty with fine motor skills and has difficulty writing (and doesn't like it). She agreed to reducing the writing workload, but that only seemed to last for a week.

My favorite part of the article...
"To further this explanation, research also found that in the classroom, a gifted child's perceived inability to stay on task is likely to be related to boredom, curriculum, mismatched learning style or other environmental factors (Webb, 2000"

Irena, I am thinking about how to do that as well. This is a dead-on summary of what we're seeing from DS7 in the classroom right now. We've just moved from the 504 process into assessment for an IEP and while we've asked for academic challenge and accommodations for the dysgraphia, the school is proposing all kinds of assessments because they're sure there must be more going on. I'm bookmarking this and will strategize when to add it into the mix.