Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional 2e VLBW child?

I have an 11 year old boy who was born at 25 weeks and weighed 1 lb 15 oz. He is in a gifted program, but has some kind of LD, or emotional imbalance, that is hard to pinpoint. Anxiety is there, dysgraphia maybe, ADHD maybe, some indicators in many areas but doesn't fit one diagnosis very well. It's hard enough to decipher giftedness and LD, but lots of preemie characteristics also look like both of these, OE for one.

Anyone else out there with a 2e preemie?

Benny

Hi Benny,
Welcome! My son was a week late, so I don't know much about preemie-hood, but it seems to me that '2e' could easily refer to that type of struggle. If you haven't seen the book 'Uniquely Gifted' you might enjoy it. It is sort of the bible of '2e' and although I don't remember anything about 2e in it, it has a very wide variety of experiences.

So VLBW is 'very low birth weight?'

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thanks Grinity,
Yes, VLBW is the newer term for "extremely premature" as it's a litte more all encompassing. Thanks for the tip on the book. I'm reading up a storm right now!

Benny

I don't have a premie but thought I'd respond to your post anyway. I do have twins but was fortunate to be able to carry them nearly to term despite being on bed rest from 26 weeks.

As you probably know there is a lot of documentation of cognitive problems for very low birth weight babies. Here's just one article I pulled up by googling very low birth weight cognitive disabilities

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/154/10/895

Has you child been assessed for special ed? Is he being followed by a neurologist?

I'm not familiar with OE - does this refer to eye problems?

If you haven't done so already, I would ask his pediatrician for a referral to get him a thorough neuropsych assessment which may help you a lot. If possible you want a neuropsych who is familiar with the long term cognitive effects of VLBW.

Your very brief description sounds like executive function problems. Have you read up on this area? It's a relatively new area of LD that has largely been written about in terms of ADHD, Autism spectrum disorders and psychiatric disorders like early onset bipolar.

I am a 25 year old female who was a preemie-33 weeks, 3 lbs 15.5 oz. I have cerebral palsy as a result of complications of my premature birth (or perhaps cerebral palsy caused prematurity--doctors still don't know the answer to that question. My mom had a threat of miscarriage her entire pregnancy with me). As you can probably imagine from cerebral palsy, I am not gifted (although I do have strengths)and have a severe LD. My cognitive profile is as follows on WAIS III (adult Weschsler IQ test): Verbal IQ 135, Performance IQ 73, for an average full-scale IQ. My deficits are in maintaining interest on task, learning and understanding new information, reading comprehension and combination and structuring. I am better at things that follow a more linear logic.

I hope I don't offend you by that, but I think you should be fortunate that your son is gifted enough to get into a GT program, because things could be much worse.

My ds6 with the most issues of my three older kids (he also has a twin brother, who was/is bigger and had far fewer issues), was a small for gestational age premie (3 lbs 13 oz at 33 weeks). He's gotten through a lot of stuff, and OT for SPD seemed to really help (wondering if we should go back for a booster - now he's petrified of bugs in his bed?). He's quite a late bloomer. But for now I'm pleased with his recent progress. I'm sure some of what he's endured is related to prematurity, but I can't say that it all is. (ugh, my one totally "normal" child, almost 3, is starting to have his moments - crowded room, certain kinds of noise, very particular about the order of things, etc.; *sigh* LOL. he was full term and about double the birthweight of ds6.) ds6's twin brother was more than a pound heavier and while he had a speech delay also, he never had any sensory issues that were significant enough for me to bother paying for OT. Sometimes I regret that a little bit, but the OT we did was pretty expensive.

I have also heard that kids who have been through surgery as infants can be affected in a similar way. DS6 had a kidney surgery at 8 months, but I remember my friend saying something about SPD in her dd who had heart surgery at maybe 4 months (she was also IUGR though so who knows) - she kinda blamed the surgery.

I don't think I know anyone with micropremies (is that term applicable) well enough to know whether they are dealing with SPD now. (sorry, I tend to use SPD and OE interchangably)

Maybe it's kinda like Silverman hypothesizes a bit about in Upside Down Brilliance - some sort of insult or injury to the later developing parts of the brain (usually the left brain) result in VSLs with left-brain weaknesses. So many different things can cause this - I've seen something as simple as pitocin fingered by both Silverman about VSLs and also by Dr. Miller in her book about SPD, "Sensational Kids" (query: to what extent is SPD occuring in VSLs vs. auditory-sequential learners?). But I asked Dr. Miller and she agreed that anything causing growth problems late in pregnancy would go under a theory similar to their pit theory - that somehow oxygen is compromised (in my case I have a clotting issue, for example). It would seem that premies in general would have an issue with growth in the left brain, but then wouldn't they all, to the extent of their prematurity? Or maybe only those with some sort of minor brain bleeds? Just wondering out loud. (clearly preggo brain has gotten to me once again )

FWIW, on adhd, for a while I wondered whether ds6 possibly had it, but now I think not.

Thanks for the replies! I'll try to respond to all.

To rlsnights - By OE I was referring to Over Excitabilitis (Dubrowski??) which can be characteristics of giftedness but also look a lot like some aspects of SPD.

I've been reading a lot about executive function since I got onto this list (less than a week ago!) and like much of it, some of it fits and some doesn't.

asiral - not to be disrespectful, but with a Verbak IQ of 135 I might rethink you comment "I am not gifted"! From what I understand, LD and output are not the measures of giftedness. I wrote this on another thread about processing speed, but we were told that having high scores in one area and low in another can be extremely frustrating for the gifted child because they don't even each other out.

We do feel extremely lucky with our son. I imagine you have heard the analogy of the roller coaster ride for the parents in the NICU. For 3 months we never knew what to expect - one day healthy, the next strep in the bloodstream, the next healthy, the next a hole in the intestine which almost killed him, surgeries good, surgeries not so good. We were the lucky unlucky ones, (not the unlucky lucky ones) if that makes any sense to you.

And snowgirl, yes medical background alone provides enough hypotheses for any kind of LD possible. He had excellent OT,PT & Speech from birth until 3 years of age, at which time he tested out of all special services. Two years ago he went through testing at a place called neuroeducation with psychologists. That's when the ADHD, dysgraphia & anxiety were diagnosed. He had enough x-rays in the first three months to possibly result in left hemisphere damage, but no bleeds. There are a few studies coming out on the effects of pain in early childhood on the emotions later in life. He went through daily pain (almost lost him to morphine after a surgery, so no pain killer of any kind after that.)

So - I've never gotten too stressed about his lack of productivity at school because I know how lucky he is to be all that he is today. However, I'm at a point where I need to know which way to go for modifications and adaptations at school.

All the comments are helpful to me right now. Thanks!

Benny

If anyone else is following this thread, I have found an article which has solidified a lot of what I have notice and we have hypothesized through the years. I'm sure there is more out there, but I need to stop the research for a while!

http://www.nature.com/jp/journal/v23/n8/full/7211010a.html

thanks everyone!