Wow - I am really enjoying this thread - thanks madeinuk! The short answer is that I have two 2E kids (DS 12 and DD10), and I have found that the expertise and advice on this forum for identifying, understanding and supporting their needs is better - more accurate, specific, relevant, and concrete - than any other source on 2E I have found, bar none. I can't convey my gratitude to all of you enough. We couldn't have made it this far without you.
The long answer - - - well, I'll try not to go on too long, but I suspect you all know that's not my strong suit
. I went to school in a time and place where gifted identification and programming didn't exist, and for whatever reasons (parents? school? not quite sure) acceleration was never an option. While it was always a kind of unspoken obvious that I was gifted, it didn't really mean anything. I was the teacher stereotype and thought "gifted" just meant school was really easy and boring and I got straight As while sitting in the corner reading a book and exerting not the slightest effort ever. (I hated school and wanted to get out as fast as I could. I found a way to compress 5 years of high school into three, thus starting university at 16 despite everyone's efforts to keep me in an age-appropriate grade. Then almost flunked out of university as I hadn't the faintest notion how to study or work hard. I am very motivated to give my kids a better school experience - and work ethic - than I had).
Then DS came along. Extremely high needs, outlier in every possible way, from literally the day he was born. I used to joke that he read all the baby books in the womb, chortled evilly and tossed them over the cliff. Nothing worked for him the way it worked for other parents around me. I lived with a constant barrage of advice that if I simply stopped making him so high needs, he would be like all the other kids. As others have noted, it was exhausting and isolating.
It wasn't until he was 8 and the school told me to test him for giftedness that I started researching, and realized that actually, I knew nothing whatsoever of gifted. And I started, for the first time in my life, to find descriptions of kids and child development that actually related to my experiences with DS. It never, ever, occurred to me that gifted had anything to do with it. But I then realized that those 8 extraordinarily difficult years, and even that insane babyhood, were actually described as common experiences - among HG kids. However, DS tested (barely) MG, and I lurked and researched and felt like a fake, because all the experiences I could relate to were for kids who were dramatically greater outliers than mine.
Fast forward two years, and DS10 and younger sister DD8 are now both struggling in school, anxiety ridden and back to the psych to explore writing problems for DS and reading for DD. Psych re-does the WISC, and DS is now scoring HG with enough discrepancy to suspect that may well be an underestimate and misses his actual main strength, math. No explanation for writing problems. DD is diagnosed MG (which fits in her case), dyslexic and ADHD (also visual processing deficits). That's when I started a massive research binge, and actually signed up to the forum and started reading regularly while seeking advice on remediation and support for DD. And got amazing advice and support. (To DD's original list I would now add probably dysgraphic, and deficits in math.) Still trying to understand what DS's challenges are - but most of what I have learned/ suspect came from this board. (Definitely extreme ADHD inattentive, and fine motor issues; probably expressive language deficits; retrieval issues affecting both language and things like math facts/ rote calculation; haven't ruled out ASD).
I don't talk about my child IRL. The advice that applies to neurotypical children sometimes is counterproductive in parenting an outlier
Having a safe place to talk about my kids have been a life-saver. For many years, there was absolutely no one in real life I could discuss my kids with, even family. And being surrounded by people who think you created your kid's challenges, rather than that you are trying to parent in ways that respond to their challenges, is very hard. I sometimes think having an extended family probably full of MG folk makes it even harder to deal with an outlier like DS, who really seems to live in a different universe than the rest of us - they all think they know gifted, that their experience is applicable to him, and that he could be like all the rest of us if only I stopped treating him like he was different. This forum gave me the confidence to advocate for what the child in front of me was showing me he needed, regardless of what everyone else said he was supposed to need.
We've spent a ton of time and money trying to identify, support and remediate our kids' challenges. For DD especially, simply being properly taught how to read changed her life in such profound ways. I am acutely aware that most families could not afford the time or the specialists we consulted, and out city is full of kids like mine that are still in misery, dying inside, getting further and further destroyed by a school system the isn't teaching them in ways they can learn. So now I also work with our local LD and gifted associations, and our school board, to try and change things, so that all kids like mine actually get the same kinds of opportunities that I could provide to my own. (Not working yet, but I'm still trying.)
The other big discovery has been DH's own - in retrospect obvious - experiences as a 2E kid. I struggle to understand my kids' challenges because learning was always too easy for me. Not his life at all. DD's diagnoses led us to realize DH too is almost certainly dyslexic, dysgraphic and ADHD - but he spent his life being berated for laziness and underachievement. Every report card he ever got says "not trying hard enough". And then friends began crawling out of the woodwork, sneaking me off into corners to admit their dark secrets they've been embarrassed and hiding all their lives - that they can't spell, that reading is painful, that they couldn't learn their times-tables to save their lives. So I talk LD everywhere I go, long and loud and matter-of-factly. And I hope that just maybe, possibly, perhaps, a few more kids will learn that they are perfectly capable of learning, if only they are taught the way they learn. And grow up without the misery and fear of getting caught that plagues their parents. And to help their parents see that silence and stigma won't help their kids, and that we can talk openly about LD and do something about it.
OK, total soapbox. Went on forever. Apologies. Love you all for putting up with my rants!
