Social-Emotional Needs and Support

Self-Awareness & 2e

Understanding Their Giftedness

All gifted children need to understand their giftedness to understand themselves.  For 2e students, however, much of school (and sometimes daily life) shapes them to be acutely aware only of their weaknesses and struggles.  They are in urgent need of understanding their giftedness.  A gifted education specialist is best positioned to help them understand what giftedness is and what it is not, but you can facilitate this connection and get the conversation started.  You can discuss intellectual and personality characteristics as well as above average abilities in their different areas with them.  One of the most important steps you can take is to affirm that giftedness doesn't mean you don't struggle, and it is about being different--not better or worse than others.

This article, "Talking With Your Child About Giftedness" by NAGC will help you frame the conversation and learn how to listen.   It is written for parents and caregivers, yet any adult in a gifted child's life can help them develop much needed self-awareness.  Take a few moments to look it over and perhaps bookmark it.   

For some student-friendly books and other resources to help them understand their disability see this shared document in our Google folder (optional).

Sometimes it can be a life-altering experience for students to speak with older people who are twice exceptional to find out how they navigated their school, home, and social worlds.  Many successful 2e adults enjoy sharing their experiences -- the pain they felt, how they overcame hurdles, how they set goals, who helped their progress, and how knowledge and perseverance paid off.

Once students begin their journey in understanding themselves, their anxiety tends to lessen.  To help them organize the information they gather,  You can have the students create two binders, one to keep at school and one for home.  In them are sections for information from these categories:

• Self-Advocacy

• Strengths/Interests

• Current Data (learning style, report cards, test results, etc.)

• IEP or 504 Plan

• Strategies

• Middle School, High School, College Preparation

• Resources/Articles

Organizing information about themselves helps keep students on track for learning additional strategies.  It’s also a way to continue gathering more data as they learn to become independent learners and to deal with their emotional issues.

The Result?

Helping twice-exceptional students to discover that they are complex individuals with unique needs will be empowering for most students.  They are, as one 8-year old girl said, “kaleidoscopic!”  Self-identification is a powerful way to begin the therapeutic process in counseling or to start providing services in a school setting.  Focusing initially on developing a student’s abilities, strengths, and interests lays the groundwork for building a trusting relationship, essential to introducing compensatory strategies, accommodations, and/or modifications.  Doing something different may evoke intense feelings.  Students will, however, be more receptive to taking risks and learning helping strategies once they recognize, understand, and accept their intellectual and emotional exceptionalities.

It is our responsibility to help twice-exceptional children discover their strengths and limitations and to reframe the gifted/other exceptionality experience.  By doing so, they will learn that their differences are assets to be acknowledged, accepted, and perhaps even celebrated.

Some Other Self-Awareness Practices

1. Reflective journaling

2. Mindfulness activities

3. Strengthen emotional vocabulary - incorporate a feelings poster into the classroom with examples of many types of emotions.

Credit: Patricia A. Schuler.  Some of the information here first appeared in the January, 2007, issue of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter [2eNews] and was reprinted, with permission, in the Spring, 2007 issue of Gems of AGATE, the newsletter of the New York Association for Gifted and Talented Education.  MCGT published the article in its January/March, 2008, issue of Outlook.

Self-Advocacy

Not only do our students need adults to advocate for them, they also need to learn the skills to advocate for themselves--this is not a skill that just comes naturally.  They need to become experts about themselves so they can share with others what helps them to be successful.  Explaining how the educational system works by using a flow chart also helps students see that advocacy for appropriate and sufficient services can begin with them and their parents.   A whole issue of the 2e Twice-Exceptional Newsletter is devoted to this topic which includes a vast amount of resources for parents, students, and educators (optional). Once again, this website will prove to be an excellent resource for you.

Optional:

• Reprint from the 2e Newsletter by Mark Bade:  Advocating for Twice Exceptional Children

• From the University of Oklahoma's College of Education: ME! Lessons for Teaching Self-Awareness & Self-Advocacy

• From Understood.org: 6 Tips for Helping Your High-Schooler Learn to Self-Advocate

• From the Center for Parent Information and Resources:  Best Practices in Self-Advocacy Skill Building 

• From SMART Kids With LD: Self-Advocacy: Strategies for All Ages