Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional How can an former twice-exceptional child help?

Ang, Thanks for your view on the personal assistant. We were considering trying to get an aide for our son, but yours is the second personal account that was negative about them. I think we will try to keep going without one. I'm so sad you have gone through so much time without support. I hope you are finding more now. Nan

Sometimes there is no way to avoid emotional stress. My 11 year old son and I are responsible for looking after my mother who has dementia whenever my dad has to leave the house to run errands. My son has seen and heard things that no kid should have to deal with, but there is no choice. My dad would have difficulty paying $4,000 a month to put her in a nursing home and because of some of my mother's behaviors he is afraid she would be hurt by other residents or staff or they would have to keep her sedated. Family is supposed to take care of family, but it is very, very difficult sometimes.

My son, who has motor dyspraxia and low muscle tone, has also had to deal with being different in a family that watches sports any time there is a family get together, including Thanksgiving, and has to listen to all the other boys in the family talk about football. To fit in with the family and the most of the rest of our town, he would have to never talk about things he enjoys and pretend he is interested in their conversations about sports. My son at least has musical theater and he fits in very well with that group, except that he has to work around some physical issues there.

My son is probably at high risk for depression for lots of reasons--family history, chronic pain from migraine headaches and pain from wearing a scoliosis brace, not fitting in because we live in a sports obsessed community, sensory issues, etc. but he does not seem depressed. He is able to count his blessings--he is homeschooled, can learn what he wants to learn and we have the freedom to go off on a tangent in our discussions about whatever he is learning. He would not be able to do this if he were in school, since teachers want to get the lesson over with and they want to teach nothing but the lesson. He and I have learned some really interesting things because in the middle of our discussion or while reading together, he said something like "that reminds me of something I heard" on the news or read online or saw on YouTube. If we didn't stop to look at and enjoy those interesting things he "went off on a tangent about" life would be harder for us I think. The neuropsychologist that tested him mentioned that he went off on a tangent about something when she talked to him, and when I told her that I allow this in our homeschooling she seemed to think it was a bad thing, that we should do things more like the public school or he might have holes in his learning when he goes to college. I think she has some holes in her learning. She told us he was probably too old for therapy, but my son and I both read enough about the brain's ability to make new neural connections that we knew it wasn't true. He did things on his own at home and both the piano teacher and the musical theater teacher noticed.

To cope with stress, my son and I listen to more music together now. We started really looking at what people here think of as normal and decided that it looked a little boring. My son developed an interest in neuropsychology after my mother's illness. Because he developed scoliosis he met his very interesting orthotist who was a mechanical engineer before going into prosthetics and fitting people with scoliosis braces. This guy takes the time to show my son pictures from his anatomy book and gives him a lesson on the structure of the foot and possible reasons for his foot pain. So instead of just seeing the pain, my son sees how interesting all of this is.