Photo Credit: Rifka Schonfeld
What parents can do:
- Don’t ignore the giftedness while trying to fix the disabilities:While it’s true that modifications to curricula are often needed to accommodate twice exceptional children, parents must also feed a child’s need for knowledge. A gifted child will get depressed if he or she is not learning.
- Don’t ignore the disabilities while trying to feed the giftedness: Your child might have exceptional intellectual capabilities, but if that becomes your sole focus, he or she will get extremely frustrated.
- Trust your child:If your child tries to do something several times and then tells you that he or she cannot do it – believe it. Do not think that he or she is being lazy, stubborn, or unmotivated. Instead, attack the problem from a different angle. You are the one who knows your child the best – and should be his or her biggest advocate.
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Siblings
The issues that accompany twice exceptional children can often take a toll on the whole family. Because twice exceptional children require significantly more consideration than neuro-typical (NT) children, siblings of twice-exceptional may feel frustrated. Here are some ways to help siblings adjust:
- Schedule alone time with each individual sibling to allow him or her to have special attention from a parent.
- Let the siblings know that you realize how difficult it must be to feel that there are different rules within the family.
- Acknowledge the siblings’ achievements. Don’t only pay attention when things go wrong.
- Ask your NT child to write an essay using his non-dominant hand (left if he’s a righty and right if he’s a lefty). Let him know that he will be graded for content and neatness. This might help him empathize with his sibling with LD.
There are a lot of rewards that come along with twice-exceptionalism. It just takes a long time and a lot of hard work to finally see them come to fruition. But, with a proper diagnosis and intervention, who’s to say Baruch won’t be the next Einstein?
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