Measuring What Matters: Rethinking Success for Twice-exceptional Learners

Whose Version of Success?

Your fifth grader still can't read a chapter book, and every report card says so. But last week she read a street sign out loud from the back seat, and this morning she read your text before you did. She's also the kid who builds whole worlds out of LEGO and asks questions that stop you in your tracks. So is she behind, or is she succeeding?

For a twice-exceptional learner, the honest answer is often both. They are gifted and challenged in the same breath, soaring in one place and struggling in another, sometimes in the same afternoon. That's what makes it so hard to know whether they're actually succeeding.

It works the other way, too. Some twice-exceptional kids bring home straight A’s and are struggling all the same. Their hardest challenges don't show up as grades. They surface in the short worksheet that somehow takes four hours and a couple of meltdowns to complete, or in a weakness that's easy for a busy teacher to miss in a room full of 30 kids. A child can hold it together all day and fall apart by dinner, and the report card won't say a word about what those straight A’s cost the learner and their family.

I work with twice-exceptional learners from first grade through college, and I'm raising my own. Over the years, I've had to rethink what success looks like more than once. Seeing kids at so many different ages, I've noticed that the ones who feel successful, who are happy and confident in who they are, often have parents who've been willing to adjust what success looks like for that particular child.

It's easy to fixate on the multiplication tables a child hasn't memorized instead of what they can do with a calculator, to compare one sibling's straight As with another's very hard-earned Bs, or to be disappointed that the college that fits your child isn't the one you once pictured.

The families who navigate this best aren't ignoring the hard things. Their kids still get reading intervention, still work on math facts, executive functioning, social skills, or whatever else needs support. Those just aren't the only measures of progress.

Success Can Be Hard to See

Maybe the meltdowns that used to happen every afternoon are down to once a week, and a year later you realize you can't remember the last really big one. Maybe siblings who couldn't be in the same room without fighting can now make it through a board game together. Maybe the child who has eaten the same five foods for years tries something new, even if they decide they hate it.

Sometimes success is academic, just not the kind a benchmark captures. A menu, a text, a street sign, something that signals a little more independence in the real world, can matter more than getting through the assigned chapter book on schedule.

Success can also mean embracing accommodations. It might mean allowing a learner to dictate instead of laboring to handwrite, accessing novels worthy of their intellect through audiobooks, or letting a calculator handle the long division so their thinking is free for the actual problem to be solved.

It also means making room for strengths and interests. I've watched a 2e middle schooler, convinced he was stupid and lazy, destroy all the paper, pens, and craft supplies within reach. As reading and spelling began to click with intervention, the kid who used to wreck art supplies started reaching for them on purpose and eventually called himself an artist. The reading and the spelling mattered, but the bigger change was that he'd stopped seeing himself as the problem.

Sometimes the signs run the other way: the meltdowns are climbing, the world is shrinking, a child who used to have one good friend now has none. That's not necessarily a reason to panic, but it is a reason to pay attention. What changed? Does the setting still fit? Is it time to bring in another perspective, whether that's a teacher, a therapist, or a fresh evaluation?

Maybe the fairest comparison isn't the child sitting next to them. It's the child they were a year ago.

Adjusting the Fit

When a bright, struggling child can't quite meet the room they're in, our instinct is often to keep working on the child. Skills and intervention matter, but many times we need to adjust the fit from the other direction. That might mean changing the environment or the way something is taught, reaching for tools and accommodations, and even changing our own expectations and definition of success.

Think about a child who starts at a new school nervous and wary, eats alone by choice, prefers independent work, and has a tough time with flexibility in the school day. A few months in a setting that actually fits, and that same child plays games and eats with everyone at recess and complains about weekends because there's no school. They are ahead in some subjects and behind in others, but they're clearly moving in the right direction. 

Practicing for Later

As our kids get older, the yardsticks change. Reading levels and developmental milestones become GPAs, AP classes, college acceptances, majors, internships, and jobs. 

But I think the question stays pretty much the same: Are they happy and directionally correct?

Hopefully, by the time high school hits, your family has been practicing this kind of decision-making already. Then when/if it comes time for college, they already know that success isn't measured by the most selective school that says yes. It’s finding a place where their strengths have room to grow, their challenges are supported, and the environment fits their goals.

We feed their strengths, adjust the environment when we can, and pay attention to confidence, connection, independence, and the parts of life that never show up on a report card. Every time we choose the classroom where our child feels safe enough to learn, reach for the audiobook, let them skip the team sport they hate, or accept that progress doesn't have to look like everyone else's, we're helping them figure out what works for them. Eventually, the goal is for our children to know themselves well enough to self-advocate and decide what success looks like for themselves. 

Asking More of the Systems

Families shouldn't have to do all of this alone, but too often the systems meant to support our kids are still built around narrow definitions of progress and success. If we know that a report card, reading level, GPA, or standardized score only captures part of a learner, we shouldn't treat it as the whole story. We should be advocating for schools to look more closely at growth, strengths, independence, creativity, problem-solving, and the support a student needs to show what they know.

Twice-exceptional kids make the limitations of our usual measures particularly easy to see, but they're hardly the only ones who don't fit neatly into the boxes we've created. Instead of trying to help kids squeeze themselves into those boxes, our goal should be to help schools and systems get better at seeing the whole learner.

So go ahead and notice the wins no report card has a column for. Celebrate the meltdown that didn't happen, the new food that got tried, the B that took twice as much work as someone else's A. Change the room when the room is the problem. Let go of the timeline you expected when it no longer fits the learner in front of you. And find your people, whether they’re the practitioners who already know twice-exceptional kids, the schools that look past a transcript, or the families who aren't keeping score by status and milestones.

The fifth grader who still can't read the chapter book but suddenly reads the street sign from the back seat may still have a long way to go. But she's headed in the right direction.

—--

About the Author

Emily Lowe is the founder of Big Brain Coaching, LLC where she helps students and families navigate learning differences, high school planning, and the transition to college. She also serves as Associate Director at Touchstone Learning, a transitional school for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. With more than 20 years of experience in education, Emily specializes in supporting twice-exceptional learners and believes every student's path should be built around their individual strengths, challenges, and goals, not someone else's timeline. She is also the parent of twice-exceptional children, giving her both professional and personal insight into the joys and complexities of raising neurodivergent learners.