Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Is this a 2E thing or what?

Oh gosh, yes, this is totally 2E and G! It's a matter of thinking about things differently, literal thinking, and being so far ahead of something in one's brain that the obvious (to other people) doesn't even occur to them.

On some test or other, my son chose "items that belong together" as a newspaper, bicycle, and lock, because "the newspaper boy might want to lock up his bike" -- totally missing the water and ice cube and steam that were the "correct" answer. You have to have a test-giver who can see that he's thinking above and beyond the obvious, as a symptom of giftedness and not just a wrong answer.

I can't even tell you how many times I wanted to tear my hair out when he was that age, trying not to scream, "how can you do multiplication and not be able to tie your shoes?"

BTW, the color thing might be synesthesia, which some believe may be more common among the GT population.

Here's a couple threads that might be interesting to see if anything resonates:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....8353/Assigning_numbers_to_nouns_is_.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....187169/Number_Color_Association_etc.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....5419/Synesthesia_seeing_colors_with.html

Both DS9 (2e) and DD8 (gifted, not 2e) have aspects of what you describe in your son. There are times when DS seems to be "dense" and answers questions as he hears them literally. But other times doesn't. I think it depends how engaged he is in what he's doing, but I haven't found a pattern yet.

Both my kids will give "non-standard" answers to simple questions, or just be unable to answer them. They are used to thinking big, so if someone asks them a simple question, they often overthink it. How are a bush and tree similar: do you mean biologically, or as a habitat for animals, or growth patterns, or where they're found, or how I like them, or if they're both in Minecraft, or ....

As for peeing one's pants, DD8 still has accidents (although they are becoming increasingly rare, thank goodness!) She gets very involved in her work, and doesn't want to stop for something as trivial as peeing. I also suspect she doesn't feel the sensation of having to pee until it is quite strong (and sometimes too late). I haven't figured out how to help her with this, other than to remind her to use the bathroom frequently throughout the day.

Thanks so much everyone. Very interesting and entertaining to read all of these responses and I feel a lot better now.

There is so much I still don't understand about my son. I did ask him some lightly probing questions about synesthesia stuff, but I got hilariously mundane answers. I asked if numbers ever have a color to them when he thinks about them, he said "Only if I'm using colored pencils or crayons." I asked if he ever sees anything while listening to music (I went with this one because when he hears music he freezes and stares into space until it stops) and he said "Well, if I look, I see the CD spinning." That answer was somewhat odd to me as we don't own a CD player where you can see the disc spinning, plus I don't recall ever mentioning that the CD's even spin in the player. Guess it's just something he picked up on.

My son has moments where he seems so bright and capable and then moments when we wonder if he will ever be able to live independently.

We went to a restaurant yesterday and after we finished eating I asked DS to give me his hand (to wipe it off as he tends to eat with his hands, even with constant reminders to use utensils). I had to ask 5 times. While staring in the distance he slowly moved his right hand over and lightly wiped it on the napkin I was holding. I prompted for the other hand. He did it with his right hand again. Repeat 2 more times. I tapped his left hand and he wiped his left hand. Then he picked up his water, which wobbling disturbingly in his hand. He bumped it against the table twice when drinking it. He hit it against the table again when trying to put it down. I got up to leave and asked him to meet me on the other side of the table. With prompts (and lots of readjustment of the table position) he got up and started towards me, then decided he needed another drink and stopped for that along the way. He then went to leave the restaurant with the cup still in his hand. When I pointed it out he seemed surprised and put it back. His dad said "It's like he's drunk." I had to agree. Then on the way home he talked about one of his latest interests, mold spores, for 20 minutes, asking and answering questions and attending to us with no issues.

Occasionally on a good day he will do something amazing, like go get himself dressed and get his shoes on with no prompts when we are going out. Normally I have to force him into his clothes even if he really wants to go where we are going. There are days he takes his plate to the sink as if it is nothing or gets up and brushes his teeth first thing in the morning like it's the norm around here. Then there are days he spends the whole day being difficult, throwing tantrums, giggling maniacally while terrorizing my home, screaming in frustration about every little thing, hitting us when we end up having to pick him up and move him, and generally making me think none of this will ever work out.

Everyone has a different idea what is wrong with my son. No one can offer any explanation for the good days and bad days and all of the regular days in between. I'd love to be able to say that I KNOW he is smart. The IQ test helped with that somewhat, but some of these moments make me doubt it all. He was a kid who hit intellectual milestones years early and was a very early talker, but all of this was always attributed to asperger's by the experts and I guess it will take a long time until I am confident that he really is gifted.

I just don't see a lot of those traditional gifted traits, the great sense of humor, the wordplay, the amazing ideas or philosophical thoughts. Maybe that is his age, maybe it is a limitation due to his very different brain. I do know that I can carry on a conversation with him without having to compensate for his age, vocab, or understanding and he almost always picks up on concepts very well. He loves to learn new things and he loves to challenge himself with difficult puzzles.

I'm really not familiar with what average 5 year olds are like and I have a group of "helpful" people surrounding us constantly focusing on everything that is wrong with my son and refusing to acknowledge anything that might be good. It's almost like they don't want you to have any hope. It's all let's focus on the problems and fix the problems we have right now. They are so negative and spend all their time with my son thumping their behaviorism bibles and bringing out the worst in him.

My son is a nice child and he is extremely empathetic. When I had a headache yesterday he helped me lay down and rubbed my head and gave me lots of hugs. I could see the real concern in his face. When my eye hurt last week he ran and got a washcloth, ran cold water on it, and brought it to me to put on my eye. If a kid needs help climbing something, my son is the first to offer a boost. He walks up to babies on the playground and helps to stabilize them so they won't fall over. OTOH, if someone is crying loudly, he runs away. If someone is quietly sad he will try to help them or give them something to make them feel better.

Right now he is crying with tears streaming down his face because his dad got him a drink, but put in on the wrong table. He refuses to ask his dad to bring it to the table he wants it on. And after a few minutes of that he just laid on the floor and slithered over to it and carried it to where he wanted it, whining the whole time. He also is currently obsessed with his Perplexus maze globe. Of course every time he falls off he flips out. He is generally miserable the whole time he uses it, but it's all he wants to do. I'm debating right now whether to take it from him even though he earned it for the rest of the day.

I could complain about my problems forever obviously Honestly this whole post just started as a thank you for all of your replies! It's great having a place to go where other people have had some of the same problems and experiences. We have a few special needs friends and a few NT friends and a GT friend, but this is the only place I know of to talk to parents of complex and difficult 2E kids like my own. So, thanks for all of your help!

Well one thing that also comes to mind is that the "absent minded professor" is a cliche thinking all these big thoughts doesn't leave a lot of room for the other stuff sometimes.

Also, I also tend to think my kids should behave like adults "often" but they are children, they just don't have it together. A book I recently read that helped a great deal was "The Whole Brain Child". Just because they can talk like an adult about some things doesn't mean they aren't five. Also all children develop differently at different times. With G you have A LOT of asynchrony.

I recently picked up "The Whole Brain Child" as well and would also recommend it. It's been interesting to read and think about in terms of each of my children (9yo PG DD on the spectrum, 5yo DS w/ likely ADHD).

Is your son going to K in the fall? Try volunteering in the classroom... you'll soon get to know a bunch of other 5-year-olds.

Another poster who thinks what you are describing sounds completely normal, in fact could be older DS at the age of 8. FWIW, the answers your son gave to the math problems In your first post made total sense to me, all of them! It is exhausting, but frankly, once we had our ASD testing out of the way and it was clear that wasn't it, I did not focus on the 2e thing anymore, just asked myself "how is this impacting his functioning/our family/everyone's happiness and tried to find what worked for the very specific problem. Did he seem as if he had pragmatic speech disorder/ADHD/OCD/anxiety? All of it, some of the time. I did describe him to others as the "absentminded professor" and it helped reframe stuff,, even for people who had no reference for the G part of it until then.
Starting school early helped as did maturity. A lot of these problems have gone away or morphed into something else that is easier to deal with because it is easier to talk about...uh...non-linear stuff, for lack of a better word.
DS8 still has this odd thing that he gets super giggly when he needs to go, and will pee his pants then - so when he starts giggling uncontrollably about something only moderately funny, we yell at him to go! Go! Go! To the bathroom already. It's really this way round - not that he pees himself because he's giggling so hard, but that he giggles so hard because he has to pee. Go figure.
The distractibilty and the clumsiness...I am still that way, a bit, myself. I'm mostly functional, myself (though it drives my DH nuts, at times). I'll tell myself he will be okay, and theses days, most of the time, he is.

So... I would stop listening to the "helpful" but not experienced with gifted kids people around you posthaste. :-) My other advice, just relax and trust that the IQ testing results are correct. And that asynchrony is real, so very real. As is being so totally focused on whatever is in one's head, that one tunes out everything else. I'm not saying there might not be a 2nd E cause for some of these things that worry you, but that there are some strange (compared to neurotypical) things that can accompany high giftedness.

Our five-year old (not tested, very bright, but normally less intense than his older PG brother, that is to say, much easier) has started bawling at the drop of the proverbial hat lately. So that may be an age thing. The other night, he was crying for about 15 minutes because a parent heated up his sandwich roll and he wanted it cold. Seriously, 15 minutes, at least. Red face, uncontrollable crying. Something similar happens a few times a week and has for the last month or so.

Just a thought, but might he have sensory issues with some of his clothes? Some ASD kids are really hypersensitive to certain types of touch (usually the light, fleeting kind), and hyposensitive to other kinds (often weighted blankets and strong hugs).

Why does an explanation need to be offered? Isn't it like that for all of us? We have good days, we have bad days, and we have days in between. It can depend on so many things just what kind of day we're going to have... what we've had to do or think about recently, how much sleep we've gotten, what we're thinking about. It's likely not different for him at the core, it's just that: 1) he's 5 and hasn't developed the coping mechanisms that an adult has and therefore suppresses less, and 2) he likely feels the world much more strongly than most of us and gets easily overwhelmed. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of ASD being called Intense World Syndrome, but in a nutshell, the notion is that someone on the autism spectrum feels everything more intensely, and that this is often so overwhelming that it can send the personal into personal withdrawal (i.e., "shutting down"). Rather than being incapable of possessing empathy (something you hear a lot), it's more that the person is so overwhelmingly empathetic that it's painful and so not dealing with it is often easier.

It doesn't make sense to attribute high intelligence to ASD as a means of discounting the validity of a cognitive test. Being gifted is having high intelligence, no matter where it came from.

If other people are trying to "fix" your son, you should find new people to consult with. Many things labeled as an "intervention" in ASD world are from the "fix" mindset (meaning trying to make your son's behavior look "normal"), and this can cause a lot more harm than good. Not surprisingly, it's more effective to look for therapies that help your son cope with the way he interacts with the world. I've had friends have success with various forms of OT, and if you haven't looked into it, it might hold some promise for you.

Yes. This sounds exactly like the characteristics I was describing. He sounds extremely empathetic but gets easily overwhelmed.

One of my absolute favorite resources for ASD online is the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism (http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/). There's a ton of insight on there and it's worth checking out if you haven't already.