Video: Ad Astra: Parenting Your Neurodiverse Child

Do you have a neurodivergent student or child who is underperforming in school? Let’s help them get their light back! A happy and engaged student is one who will take on challenges. In this positivity-focused workshop, REEL Partner and Bridges Graduate School doctoral student Abby Kirigin emphasized the many reasons neurodiverse students have to celebrate their unique brain wiring. She identified strategies for building confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy by providing opportunities for individuals to show and grow their strengths, learning ways to tease apart the conceptual content goals from the challenges in expression, and integrating strength-based strategies into everyday life.

Abby Kirigin is a mom to three gifted, creative, and neurodiverse children. She is currently a Doctoral student of Cognitive Diversity in Education at the Bridges Graduate School, as well as the Administrative and Advancement Director for Touchstone Learning, an elementary school in the Bay Area for dyslexic and 2E students, and a partner at REEL Palo Alto, a Bay Area teacher and parent advocacy group for twice exceptionality. Additionally, Abby serves on the Board of Trustees at Woodland School, a Pre-K through 8th grade private school. She holds a Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon and an undergraduate degree from NYU in Computer Science & Philosophy. Abby previously co-founded a venture backed startup, and has worked as an Interaction Designer for startups, large companies, and the US government.

See the transcript here:

Callie Turk:

Welcome to our REEL event tonight on parenting your neurodiverse child: strength-based strategies at home and in the classroom.

Before I formally introduce our presenter, Abby Kerrigan, I'm going to just give you a little bit of background information on REEL for those of you who might be new to our organization. Welcome, thank you for coming. We really appreciate you taking the time out to be here tonight. Abby's going to click for me, and maybe there we go

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So just in case you're not familiar with REEL, uh, we're a non-profit organization that is working to help twice-exceptional students thrive in school. We do that by raising parent and educator awareness around the twice-exceptional and what their needs are, and we do that through providing resources and tools and events. So that's—this is one of those—wait a second, I—yeah.

So if you go to our website, you will be able to access a lot of the tools that we have. We have a fact sheet that makes it easy to explain what twice-exceptionality is to other people in your life. We have a checklist of things you might look for to see if you think your child might be twice-exceptional. We also have blog posts—for instance, Yael wrote a really great one about how to use rating skills with your child to troubleshoot things that are going on at school.

You can access all of our past events and recordings on our website. So we have things like a TUI self-advocacy panel that we ran last year, a session with a neuropsych around anxiety strategies for the TUI child, and then we hosted Dr. Susan Baum of Bridges Academy to talk about how you can ignite the struggling writer.

You can also access all of our videos in one place if you want—if it's easier—at our new YouTube channel. Um, so if you just want to use tinyurl.com/realyoutube, that is an easy way to find all of our videos. And I—please just ask—if you guys don't mind, check your that you're muted um for the moment just so that we don't get too much background noise.

All right, we have lots of things coming up. In fact, at the beginning of this uh before the session started, we were talking about the email we're going to send out tomorrow with this recording. We have so many events listed, but three main ones that you might want to keep in mind.

Um, on March 29th, we will have uh an advocate and a PA doctoral student who just completed her dissertation on uh twice-exceptional parents, and they're going to be talking about when, how, and why to tap into public schools for assessment and support. Because this is a big issue, a lot of TUI families do not really understand how they can use the system to their advantage.

Then we will host on April 7th our quarterly parent support group with Parents Helping Parents. This is a pretty open-ended conversation. We have this feature called "Ask a Question, Get an Answer" that everyone really loves, where we just brainstorm together, you know, around challenges people are facing.

And then in May, on May 4th, we're going to be doing—I think what's going to be a very special session—with Marcy Dan, who is an educational therapist and also the social-emotional go-to person at Bridges Academy in LA, around slow processing speed and the two-week child. Because this is something that comes up a lot.

We have a lot of other events that are going to be coming up. We have a whole series of events with Parents Place that that we'll have more details on in the coming days. Um, and you can RSVP for everything at www.reel2e.org.

And then this is a little action item for everyone: if you're interested, we are supporting uh Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which is coming up in March. This is an effort that was started by Siena Castellon, who is a neurodivergent young lady who is really doing a lot of heavy lifting to get the word out about what it is like to be neurodivergent and how we can not just accept but also celebrate people for their strengths.

And we have quite a few things—we're having the works for this—that we'll be talking about in the coming days. But um, one of the things that you can do is tell your school leaders about this event. The event is primarily aimed at getting schools involved, so if you go to the link that I have on this page—which I think Yael is also going to put into the chat—and let your school leaders know that this is something the school can participate in to really spread awareness of neurodiversity.

And we are actually going to be partnering with local bookstores and libraries to help get the word out. And just stay tuned, and hopefully, you can be part of that celebration.

So here are all the ways you can stay up to date with us: we have a Google Group—this is a private group where people can post questions and get answers from each other. Things like, "Who are you using for your neuropsych?" to "What summer camps are you thinking about?" It's a very nice, robust but private way to get information from other 2e parents.

I've mentioned our website a few times. We are on Facebook and Twitter, and we do have our YouTube account. So now you know who REEL is. Thank you for coming; we really appreciate it. Um, and I just want to take a moment to introduce Abby before I hand it over to her.

So I first met Abby myself through a fellow REEL parent that we knew about two years ago. And since that time, we actually joined each other in the same cohort at the Bridges Graduate School for Cognitive Development and Education and have worked together on so many different projects and supported each other in that program.

And I'm so honored that we convinced her to come and work with us at real. You know, throughout the journey that we've been on, I'm just so impressed with her devotion and commitment to two e-learners and really tapping into their strengths and interests—always coming back to their strengths and interests.

And I first saw this presentation last summer when she presented it for our graduate school cohort, and I knew I really wanted to bring it to our REEL community because I think we can all benefit from this very strength-based lens. So much of our time and energy as two e-parents of two e-children really goes towards the things that are not working. That's what everyone wants to draw us back to, and that's what weighs on our hearts heavily a lot of the times.

Um, so you know, I like to think of this presentation as like—just like we fan the embers of, you know, those embers to create a new fire. I think about what is it that we're giving air to in our children's lives. What embers are we fanning? And I think this will show you that if we can give a little more air and oxygen to our children's strengths and interests and passions, it's it's really a worthwhile thing. So I hope you'll enjoy the presentation and leave with a greater sense of wonder at what all of our uniquely wired children can do. Abby, take it away.

Abby Kirigin:

All right, thank you, Callie. Thank you uh to both of you and Kellyanne for having me this evening.

So we're all here today because we care about supporting twice-exceptional children in our lives, and I'm going to tell you a bit about my own experience on this journey and what I've learned about strengths-based strategies.

Um, I am—somebody asked in the chat, so I will add here—um, I do use the phrase "twice-exceptional" many times, and for those of you who aren't familiar, um, typically what we're referring to is when your child has both—is both gifted or has other high potential or high ability—but then also has something like um a learning difference or another difference such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, anxiety, um, etc.

And so often those things come together in one single individual in a very unique way. They don't express themselves separately, but together they sort of manifest in a whole unique profile. And so I'll be talking about all of those different differences as well as giftedness, but I may also say "twice-exceptional" as well. All of this kind of falls under the header of neurodiversity.

And before I move on, this uh photo here is a photo of my twice-exceptional son taken a few years ago on early morning Halloween, fully costumed up and carrying with him some weaponry that he created out of some old vacuums and some other things in our garage that he found and created.

So let me begin with a little bit about me. Um, at my core, I'm a designer. I love color and pattern, light, darkness, space, and form, and I absolutely love to organize things. Um, and so before I moved into education, I spent many years in the product and interaction design world in the technology sector and in startups.

And I'm a proud independent thinker, and I have several personal experiences and connections to the twice-exceptional community. My younger sister has Williams syndrome. Um, my brother and I spent years in and out of gifted programs throughout our lives. Other family members have ADHD and several other diagnoses, so quite an eclectic bunch.

And now I have three children of my own—three wonderful, very colorful, creative children—all of whom are gifted, two of whom are also dyslexic, and one who is dyslexic and also has ADHD.

And professionally, I do quite a number of things. As Kelly mentioned, I'm a doctoral student at Bridges Graduate School. I'm also a partner with her and Yael at real, and I also work part-time as an administrator at Touchstone Learning, which is a dyslexic school—elementary school for kids here in the Bay Area—and it's where both of my two dyslexic children attended elementary.

And I'm also a trustee at a local private school, Woodland School. So as a result of all of these experiences that I've had, I often have parents that come to me when they first learn that their child has a learning difference. Maybe they're dyslexic, or perhaps they have ADHD, or they've learned that their child is 2e—twice-exceptional. And so this talk has really grown out of all of my experiences of talking with those parents, working through those moments, and the research that I've done and the experiences that I've had with my own family.

So before we go further, I'll give you a little overview of what we're going to cover tonight. First, we're going to talk a little bit about understanding and appreciating where you are now. And then I like to talk about three separate strands that you need to keep in mind while you're on this twice-exceptional journey with your child.

Then we'll pause and do a brief activity. Then we'll talk about finding your child's strengths, three strength-based strategies for success, and then end with some parting thoughts and further reading and resources.

So everyone in this room has a child or knows a child with a diagnosis, and maybe you've been there for a while, or maybe it's something new. But either way, you're often feeling like you're scrambling to fix something. You're trying to figure out what to do next, how you're going to solve all of these problems.

But really, I am here to tell you: take a deep breath. It's great news, really. And I believe this for three—three reasons. The first is this—and I think that Jonathan Mooney said it best here in his book Normal Sucks—um, "People who are different are awesome."

And um, really, what Jonathan Mooney is saying in this book—which I highly recommend—what he's saying in this book is that there really is no such thing as normal, that we all need to come to understand that we're all different and unique, and "normal" is only a construct.

But also, I think it's important to realize—and especially if you're new to the diagnosis your child may have received—there are awesome traits associated with all of these things. Um, so I really encourage you to, after this talk, go online and do some research about this.

But just to give you a taste: dyslexics often have enhanced visual-spatial reasoning. So I have this great story of a woman who is a very successful radiologist who's dyslexic, and she actually credits her dyslexia for being able to identify things on images that other people hadn't been able to pick up on. So it's not in spite of her dyslexia but in fact because of her dyslexia that enabled her to be as successful as she was.

Uh, Dr. Ned Hallowell, who's a well-known expert on ADHD, calls the ADHD brain a "Ferrari brain." And I think both dyslexics and ADHD individuals are often extremely creative, very charismatic leaders. They often can make very fabulous, successful entrepreneurs.

People on the autism spectrum are honest, they're logical thinkers whose passionate interests can really—and their attention to detail—um, can be incredible assets to everything that they—every way that they approach their lives.

So a lot of this has to do with the unique brain wiring that we all have—that each of these individuals have. But I also think the reason this is so wonderful—diagnosis can be so wonderful—is attributable to the second and third reasons here.

So now that you've got that diagnosis, you are empowered, and the past is illuminated. So if all of you think for a moment about your own life—where you are now, professionally, personally—and think about how you got there. Um, and then: how many of you—were you—do you feel that it was just a straight-line, simple path from your childhood to where you are now? And how many of you feel that it looked more like that image there on the right—lots of twists and turns, unexpected challenges, uh, and changes that really made you who you are today?

For most of us, it looks like the line on the right. Because I think here's the thing: for anybody who thinks that success looks like this—oh, let me go back—they're really only down there. They're only really at the beginning of their journey. So now that you know that that's what your path may look like—that there's a path out there for you, and this may be what it is—you're ready to embark on that meaningful and directed partnership with your child and your school and your community.

Which really brings me to my third reason: imagine that you'd like to train for a marathon, and you've got two choices of terrain that you want to train on. On the one hand, you can just run up and down the block outside of your house—back and forth, back and forth on the page, straight sidewalk.

Or you could choose option B, where you've got a giant terrain full of twists and turns, giant hills and valleys, different rocks, and other uh, muddy areas. You know, which of those would be a better place for you to train for that marathon?

It's clearly the terrain on the right, because training there is going to be awesome. I mean, you're going to have tons of road to travel. You're going to have a lot of time to get fit. You're going to get so much exercise. You're going to get so much more training on than if you just had to run up and down your block.

Now, of course, it's going to be hard. Training there is going to require grit, determination, perseverance, resilience. But these are the traits that we want for our children and that we recognize will make them into successful adults.

So it's really great to have as wiggly a line as possible, because it really means you're going to have a ton of opportunities to flex those muscles of grit and determination and resilience and perseverance.

So I believe in this quite strongly. Um, how strongly, you might ask? Well, uh, my license plate is "Ad Astra Aspera," which means—uh, which is Latin and means "to the stars through difficulties." And that phrase is also tattooed on my feet.

So I remember quite clearly, um, back in sixth grade when I first—when I first heard that term, "Ad Astra Aspera." I was in the back of the class in our Latin class discussing different common phrases in the Roman times. And um, by sixth grade, I already really felt that this just absolutely resonated with me.

I felt that I didn't really belong with anyone, and I was really okay with that. And a lot of that stemmed from many experiences that I had up until then. As I mentioned, um, my younger sister has Williams syndrome, and for those of you who are not familiar with Williams syndrome, um, it was actually—it's often misdiagnosed as an autism spectrum disorder.

And what's unique about it is that, uh, the individual—my sister—is very loving. She she's very effusive. She loves—she's very friendly. She hugs people. She's very happy to see people. But what she lacks is the ability to, um, interpret and understand people's reactions to that positivity.

And so she can't tell when somebody is being a true friend or perhaps, um, mocking her in some way. And so that led to several experiences—again, by sixth grade—that had already made me realize that perhaps I didn't want to be like all of the other kids.

Like the time I met—I came upon some girls trying to feed her broken glass because they told her that's what friends do. Um, or my own personal—or the times that we would ride the bus together, and I would sit and listen while the kids teased her, and she had no idea that that was going on.

And then my own personal experiences: in fourth and fifth grade, I was moved from my public school to a different public school in the district that had a gifted program. And while the academics were incredible, and the camaraderie within the classroom and with the teachers was really wonderful and enriching experience, because of that experience, I really lost all the friends that I had at my previous school.

And at the school that we were all moved into, um, you know, we endured a lot of teasing and ridicule. So by sixth grade, I really knew that I didn't want to fit in with everybody else, and I was really okay with that. And I knew that, um, that this—to me—was a motto for my own life: that I would achieve and move towards those stars through whatever challenges that I might encounter.

So in 2017, I did have that tattooed on my feet so that I can remind myself all the time: one foot in front of the other, "Ad Astra Aspera." And so let's be honest: you're going to need that grit, because for our twice-exceptional children, the path probably won't just look something like this, but probably something more like these. And these are actually, um, I found these on the internet. They are from a doctoral thesis on four-dimensional knots in math, so I think that's very apropos for our 2e children.

All right, so now I'd like to talk a little bit about what I consider the three strands—and the three things that you want to be keeping in mind as you move forward in your twice-exceptional journey with your child.

So the first is what I call "interventions." So intervention is the services that can help your child. So I want to be really clear: we're not trying to cure anyone of anything, but um, there are situations where things like dyslexia tutoring or occupational therapy or perhaps ADHD medication or another medication—these are services and things that can be provided to your child. It can be very beneficial.

This talk is really not about interventions, but I do just want to mention that whenever you're considering an intervention, you need to really be mindful of both that the person providing the services is someone that your child connects to really well and feels really comfortable with, enjoys working with, and then be very mindful about when you provide those services—you know, how they're integrated in the day.

Um, just a quick story: when my son was first diagnosed with dyslexia, he was staying after school every day to get extra support from his teacher. And his teacher was very sweet, but he really hated those lessons. He wasn't making any progress. He was exhausted at the end of the day. Uh, he didn't like that he was the only child that had to be held back to do extra work. And so he would hide in the closet on the mornings he had to do that.

So those were—that's an example of an unsuccessful intervention. Uh, once we were able to switch schools and went to a dyslexic school where everyone around him was in the same situation, and people were being pulled out during the day for one-on-one tutoring—not after school—it was really integrated into the full program, and he found a teacher that was really helping him make progress. It became a really successful situation.

Um, so those are some things to think about with intervention.

The next strand that I think is important to consider is your accommodation. So these are ways you're going to modify the environment around your child to help your child be more successful. So these might be things like audiobooks or dictation tools if your child's dyslexic, or fidgets or extended time. Perhaps it's lighting, sound, seating, heat, temperature—any of those kind of environmental considerations.

Now, a note about accommodations that I think is important to mention is that it's all of our ultimate goal to have our—our children self-advocate for these things. And so that's where we want to get to. What we start out with is, as parents, we need to be those advocates for them on their behalf for these things.

And we work with our teachers and um, other adults in their lives to understand what it is they need, what environmental changes are necessary for them. And we involve them in that process so that as our child grows, there's some scaffolding, and they begin to understand how to take ownership of those things. And then they ultimately are independent self-advocates for themselves.

And then the third strand—the third strand, which is absolutely and equally, if not more important than the other two—is to talk and think about strengths. Now, strengths are where your child finds their light and gets their motivation and their passion and their confidence and their happiness. And these are all critical, critical elements, um, that we're going to spend the rest of the talk really focusing on from here on.

All right, so right now, we're going to pause for a moment though. We're going to do a quick little activity. So if everyone could grab two pieces of paper and a pencil or pen.

And this activity is actually modeled after an exercise in Dr. Susan Baum's book. Kelly mentioned Dr. Baum—she's a leading researcher and expert on twice-exceptional children. She's written several books on the topic, and this exercise is kind of modeled after a more uh, intensive one that she does with teachers.

All right, so if everyone's got that pencil and paper, I'm going to walk us through a quick activity. All right, so for this exercise, I'm going to ask you—ask you all to pick one of these three descriptions that you feel most affinity towards—something that you feel describes you the most. Now, of course, there are many more ways of learning and being, but for this exercise, we're gonna keep it to three.

Um, so the first is: do you feel that you're most at your core mostly a creative artist? Do you love art, music, acting, visual thinking, movement, performance—that sort of thing?

Or do you consider yourself more of a bookworm—someone who loves reading, writing, journaling, note-taking—those sort of things?

Okay. Or do you consider yourself mostly an analyst—someone who loves to look at data and analyze statistics and charts and look at numbers and do analyses?

Okay, so just think for a moment of those three—which one you feel you're most like.

All right, now I want you to just close your eyes for a moment and imagine your perfect day. You know, what if you could have the most perfect day—uh, what would it be? What would you do? Where would you be? Etc. Okay, don't write anything down yet—just think about that.

All right, now if you said you were a creative artist, I'd like you to take your first piece of paper, and you need to use numbers and data to explain your day. So charts and numbers and data only.

If you're a bookworm, you need to do—um, make me a song or be ready to perform a song. Perhaps get a little skit going to perform—do an artwork or some other piece like that.

And if you're an analyst, I'd like you to write a short essay. Okay, I'm going to give everyone one minute. And—begin.

Okay, all right—pencils down. Okay. All right, now set that one aside. Get your next piece of paper ready. And now I'd like you—if you're a creative artist, I'd like you to do an artwork—a drawing. Uh, think about some lyrics to a song or be ready to do a little skit to explain that perfect day.

If you're a bookworm, please—please write a short essay explaining your perfect day.

And if you're an analyst, use numbers, data, and charts to explain your day. And I'm going to give you all another minute. Begin.

All right, time's up. All right, now you can place your two creations side by side. All right, now I want you to look at the two of them and think about the quality. Compare the quality of your two pieces. You know, which one did you have more detail? Did you, um, you know, feel—do you feel more proud of? Which one do you feel has better quality? And feel free to add anything—you know, observations that you're making comparing the two—uh, in the chat. You know, there we go.

And then the next thing I want you to compare—of the two—is look at the quantity. How much work did you produce when you worked in your area of strength versus working in your area of weakness? Um, you know, was one much shorter and quicker? And did you feel like that minute—boy, that took that was a lot of time, and I had no nothing to do during that whole time? Whereas the one when you were working in your strength—did it just feel like it flew by? You had so much more to add?

And finally, I think—think about how those two different minutes—how did you feel during those minutes? A lot of times, people will tell me, um, during the minute when they were asked to work in their area of weakness, that's when they needed to get up and go to the bathroom. That's when they went and got their glass of water. Um, you know, or they suddenly had a stomachache or the chills, or they just—you know, they that's when they didn't weren't feeling good—actually physically feeling different—being asked to work in something that you feel really uncomfortable doing versus that other minute when you know they were asked to be doing something they love and how good they might feel and how they felt like they were in flow and they don't even notice that mint—that minute go by.

Um, yeah, that's great—like to say that, you know, when you're in your area of strength, it's a joyful response, and it comes easily. Um, and—and yes, exactly, Erica—like doing in the first way, the way you feel uncomfortable, you just feel completely unmotivated. It's all—yeah, it's a real visceral feeling.

And I think, um, unfortunately, for many of our two-week children, um, they are being asked all day to work in that area of weakness. They're focusing over and over and over in those—living in that minute of uh, the frustration and the uncomfortableness of having to do something that they don't feel good about, that doesn't come easily to them.

And so this is really why we need to focus on strengths. And so for the rest of the talk, that's where we're gonna—where we're gonna live. And I think, again, just because of those three strands—interventions, accommodations, and strengths—this is one which is so frequently ignored or kind of seen as sort of like the least important of the three.

And I really think it's the reverse. I think that strengths are the most important element that you need to be thinking about, um, when you're thinking about how to support your child.

So I've got three strategies I'd like to discuss with you today. The first is to always provide opportunities for your child—and for children—to know, show, and grow their strengths. So you want to really see the child for who they are, um, and—and so you really want to make it a priority to understand what makes them light up, you know, and really support it, encourage it, and nurture it.

So we always think right away—I think often—about what are the after-school activities, right? So what classes can they be taking? What enrichment? And those are all great options. And I think, um, if those work for your children, that's absolutely a wonderful way to give them those strengths and, you know, nurture their interests and keep them feeling good about themselves and enjoying themselves.

But there are many other ways to do this. You could think about entrepreneurship activities, which really might be independent ideas that the child has—like maybe they want to start a dog-walking business or a lemonade stand. Or my son used to bag up little baggies full of an assortment of Legos and take them to the park and try to get parents to buy them for their children.

So they're all different ways you can support things like entrepreneurship interests. Or maybe it's creative expression options. And again, there are many classes like art classes or drama or other classes, um, but I've also seen examples where children just on their own have decided to come up with a skit or a play, and they work with the other—the parent might work with other parents at the school or in the community to get kids to take the roles.

And this is an entirely independently motivated, uh, project—again, kind of supported by the parents who are helping behind the scenes to get these things organized.

Uh, it might also be a deep dive into a science topic or a history topic. Again, you could help your child form this as sort of an independent study with them. So if there's something that they're interested in, encourage them, set time aside for them to work independently on it—either at the library or online or something like that.

But it could also be a sport. Um, you know, a physical activity is also a wonderful, uh, you know, way that our children can show their strengths.

I also want to mention a note about gaming. A lot of people talk about video gaming, and I think that within reason, even video gaming has its strengths. And I think one thing you can do with your child is talk to them about why they love the gaming, um, and what is interesting that in them about that.

So you might find out that they've got an interest in programming and computer graphics, and you can help nurture that. Or you might find that what they love is the story—the storytelling elements—and you might be able to go deeper into that.

Um, for instance, my son is very interested in the storytelling aspects of video games, and from there got very interested in Dungeons & Dragons. He's now doing a lot of LARPing—live-action role-playing. Uh, he's very interested in board game design, social design.

So you know, there are lots of ways you can build upon their natural interest—even if it's in video games—to find things that they, um, want to go deeper and want to learn more about. And I feel really, uh, strongly that, you know, there needs to be time in their day every day to do something that they love. And I think that we all deserve this. And I think too often we forget it: all of us deserve to do something that we love and that brings us joy every day. And so we deserve this as adults, and our children deserve this as well.

So how do we go about finding these things? Well, my first recommendation is to observe. And and you can actually do this—you can really be kind of a scientist at home. You can have a notebook and keep it around easily accessible, and watch what your children are gravitating to at home and in their free time and take notes.

So one of the things you can do is provide a variety of materials. And in some circles, I've heard this called the "strewing strategy," and I think that's kind of an interesting way to put it. But the way it manifests in our house is we'll have an area with some clay and some art supplies out. I'll have another area that's got some cardboard and tape and some other tools in the garage for them—they could go by and get.

And I leave different books on different topics out. So we've got, um, an area where there's an atlas and some maps. I've got some Usborne books out. Um, at some point, I had some logic puzzle games stacked up. We've got some anime math comic books out—and to kind of rotate them and leave them around the house and sort of just watch where your children are going, what's holding their interest, and what are they doing during their free time.

And at school, um, you can ask your teacher to do the same kind of observation as well. So ask your teacher to observe: on the playground, what games are they playing? What are they gravitating towards? Uh, and in the classroom, if there are different interest centers, where are the things that they're—you know, what topics are they spending the most time on?

And what are they choosing to do for their work? If there are choices in how they're showing their knowledge—like an art project or a skit or a play or an essay or poetry—you know, what excites your child the most? And um, what do they seem to really get excited and passionate about? What are they doing during those free moments at school?

And the second is really to talk. So you know, of course, talk to your teachers, but you can also talk to counselors, talk to any support specialist working with your children, talk to their siblings and their friends. Try to get an idea of, you know, what they see as things that interest your child or excite your child.

Um, and the other thing I want to mention that's critically important is to talk to your child. And um, I think you can do that in a—right, I mean, you can do that in a very, uh, open way. You can talk to them about what you've observed, what you've written down and seen, and seen what they think about the notes you're taking and the impressions you're gathering.

Um, one of the things I did with my son—who again didn't really love after-school activities that that had like a teacher in a class kind of very formal setting—um, I still talked with him, setting some expectations that he should be spending some amount of time every week doing some sort of enrichment, whether it was with the class or on his own.

Um, and once we set that expectation, I asked him to make a list of the different things that he's curious about—just anything that interests him or he's curious about that he's doing at school or that he just thought of off the top of his head. And his list came in all over the place. I mean, he said he was interested in clay, and he's interested in science and math, and he's also interested in why time travel isn't possible and can we make a teleporter.

So you know, we made a full list, and then, um, I took that list, I did a little bit of research on my own, and I came up with some options for after-school classes he could possibly enroll in, some online groups that he could maybe just be become a part of, some online classes as well as a few ideas for some independent research that he could do on his own. And then I took that back to him and asked him to look through that and choose one thing that he could commit to for one month to try. And so that's how we've been able to find different things that excite and interest him. Um, and it's always all over the board, and they always change. So it's a great way to communicate and work and give your child buy-in to this process.

Another question that I love to recommend to parents to ask their children—I'm sorry—to ask their teachers and to ask at school are: "What are the best three things about my child?" And um, you know, I come from a product design background, and in product design, we are often taking our products out to users and asking them to evaluate them and look at them and help us find how we can make them better.

And what's so funny is in those situations, what we're taught is that we must ask, "What are the worst three things?" Because when we give our product to somebody to look at—and the product isn't human, it has no feelings, it has no complex emotions, no need for self-confidence or efficacy—um, these people feel that they want to make us feel good, so they only give you the platitudes about what's great about the product.

But that actually gives you no real information about how to make this thing better. So uh, you need to draw out of them what are the worst three things. And yet in education, where we're dealing with real human beings who do have self-confidence, who have all these wonderful things about them, um, and yet those are the situations where we have to draw out what are the best three things—that people are so quick to focus on all of the problems that they forget about all of the wonderful things. And that's what we need to be reinforcing and talking about in our communities with our teachers and parents and our children.

The last—the the third thing I'd like to talk about—there it is—is the um, that there are many tools available to help you to help kind of uh, scaffold this process of observation and talking with your children.

There are some tools like the suite of tools at Bridges that we use that you need to work with a professional. So the professional gets trained in how to use the tool, and then a family can come and get an assessment with them. But there are also several available online—free or for a nominal fee. Um, Dr. Joe Renzulli, who's a well-known uh, gifted researcher at the University of Connecticut, has something called the "Interest-A-Lyzer," which I believe you can get free online. And Rio has actually put together this excellent strength-based assessment tool list.

Um, you know, and so you can go and you can Google a lot of these and find them available for free or, um, again, others you can find out where you can work with a professional. So there are lots of ways to help us out, you know, what it is that your child is interested in and curious about and excited about and what they feel good about and what they feel really confident in—what areas of strengths that they have.

My next strategy is to remember to not gate the strength. So what do I mean by this? I think that once you've figured out what your child really enjoys doing, there's a strong temptation to want to use it kind of as a carrot or a stick, right? So a bit as a motivator—like, "Oh, if they have bad behavior, then they can't do this thing they love," or, "They, you know, didn't get their work done, so they can't do that enjoy a thing that brings them in great enjoyment."

But I think that we need to change how we think about this. We we need to think about that time where your child uh, is doing that thing that they love—that brings them that joy—as a sacred time in their day that they deserve to have simply because they are an individual who deserves to have things they love to do every day, regardless of how much homework they completed, how much other, you know, how they behaved, etc.

This is a sacred time that should not be, um, that they should not feel that's that's could possibly be taken away from them.

Um, and on a similar note, we want to really be conscious at school and after school when we're fitting in those important interventions. We need to be very mindful about when we fit them in, because you know, all too often, a kid is asked to come be pulled out of something that they actually really love—that they were looking forward to—as that's their time when they need to complete their extra homework or get their tutoring or other sessions.

So you know, all too often, they have to skip recess—even though recess is the time that they are able to, you know, get out all their excitement and emotions and help self-regulate. Those are the times they're being asked to complete homework that they've been finished the night before. Or they're being pulled out of their elective time when they were looking forward to doing their drama class or their engineering session, and that's when they're being asked to complete dyslexia tutoring.

So you know, that is only going to serve to make them resentful of the interventions we're trying to provide and and again take away the opportunities that they have to fill their buckets—to really get all the self-confidence, um, and and happiness that they can get from doing the things that they love.

Um, and those are so critical. Um, you know, a happy and engaged student is really one who's going to take on challenge. They're going to be able to take on things that they are weaker at—that are their challenges—if they know that they're good at something and they feel confident about their own abilities and their areas of strength.

Another thing I just think is worth mentioning here is similarly in a classroom, uh, we'll often have a child—we find their strength as an academic strength. So perhaps they're really excellent at math, um, and yet they're in a classroom where they're not being challenged by the math, and they're just sitting there bored.

And you can—I think you can appreciate how frustrating it is when they're finally in a subject in an area that they love and they're really good at, and they're not even really able to do anything with it, but instead are sitting there, um, you know, experiencing things they've already learned and understand—and how frustrating that can be.

And those are when the worst behaviors come out because of those frustrations. So you know, I think if those academic strengths are what your child is showing, you need to make sure and advocate for acceleration, proper challenges, compacting out of sessions that aren't appropriate for them, uh, and making sure there's enrichment so that they can really thrive again and shine in those areas of strength.

The third strategy is to be always mindful of the separation between content and medium. So when you ask an author what their job is, they'll tell you it's to craft great stories. So it's not to write a series of words onto a big stack of paper. The reason that an author writes is to convey a story through words, and words can be consumed in a variety of ways.

So in addition to books, words can be consumed with your ears, and they can be read through audiobooks. And I think that another great example of this in a classroom—I'll give you the example of let's say a teacher is, um, wants to teach a Civil War unit. So the the content—the content of that unit—is the Civil War, right?

So there are a variety of ways that they can convey that information about the Civil War to their students. The students can read textbooks. They can look at primary sources. But they can also listen to audiobooks of those things. They can watch documentaries. They can look at art from the time or art reflecting on the time. There are many different ways that they can get that information.

Similarly, when it comes time to assess students on whether they've learned about the Civil War, there are a variety of ways that a child can show what they know about that topic. So they can choose to write an essay, but they could also choose to do a dramatic, you know, play that acts out a scene from the war. Or perhaps, uh, they make a 3D reconstruction or a model of a particularly critical battle at the time. Or they do an art piece, or they write poetry, or they make a song about what a soldier might be feeling in a moment.

Um, and I want to be clear that I'm not saying that your child never needs to work in their area of weakness—they never need to write an essay if they don't like to write an essay. No, that's not what I'm saying. Uh, there are times when the content of the lesson is essay writing, or perhaps it's reading comprehension, and in those units—in that content—that is what is being taught, and those are what your child will need to work on.

It's more that you need to be—and the teacher and you need to be—very mindful of the separation of the two. They are not always one and the same.

So this is my son after four years of intense dyslexia tutoring at, uh, dyslexia school. You know, his reading went in first grade from non-existent whatsoever to coming out in fifth grade reading at grade level. Uh, his speed is still below grade level, um, but he's made significant improvements. You'll see his writing sample up there—that's actually from fifth grade. So you'll see he still struggles with dysgraphia and spelling. But after all of this intense intervention work for his elementary life, we're now moving on to a new phase is we're really looking more at accommodations.

Um, we do continue to work on his fluency—which is reading speed—and he does read actual books, and that's how we increase his fluency. So he just read Ender's Game, and he'll be reading the Divergent series now. So we are still doing interventions in terms of working on these things, but that's not as much of the focus. Um, we're really looking more now at advocacy and self-advocacy for him. So uh, understanding when he needs to ask for audiobooks, when he needs to use dictation tools, when he should type rather than write, etc.

And what's amazing about my son here is that throughout all of these struggles with dyslexia, he has a verbal comprehension IQ score of 146. And his comprehension has always been extremely high, and in fact, it tests now off the charts of basically adult comprehension levels, um, for books and reading. And you can see on the screen there—his audiobook collection. So um, in first grade, when he started that tutoring, we also gave him a phone and headphones and said, "Listen to anything—any audiobook that interests you on any topic or any story."

And so these were actually taken a little over a year ago. He had 375 books in his collection. He has over 450 books now. He listens at 3x speed. Um, the screenshot there is from August of 2020, where he had listened to 365 hours at 3x speed in a single month.

So this is a child who consumes an enormous amount of literature and reading, um, and while still being severely dyslexic and dysgraphic. Now, and thanks to all of those experiences, he's got an incredible vocabulary.

Uh, when he was seven, he—I was walking through the living room wiggling his tooth, saying, "Mom, I'm having trouble getting purchase on this loose tooth." And this is a poem that he wrote. And she sprayed—he loves wordplay and puns. And I think poetry—again, maybe unexpectedly for dyslexics—um, but it's actually quite common that poetry is one of his favorite units in school—in the wordplay and thinking about, um, unexpected—unexpected uses of words.

Um, and in first grade, he actually did win a county-wide poetry contest for the poem:

Never eat a pineapple,For if you do,Your lungs will explode,And they will never reform.

So—and I really believe strongly that if we hadn't given him those headphones back in first grade, he would have really missed out on all of this richness that he had in his life. And he would have continued to hate books as much as he did back then.

So please, find and support your child's strengths. And remember to always separate the content from the medium and don't gate their strength.

So this past summer, as Callie and I—uh, Kelly mentioned earlier—she and I completed training for doing suite of tools assessments on on students, which is our strength-based assessment tool at Bridges Graduate School. So I used my son as my case study.

And as part of the process, you all sit in a collaborative meeting, and you discuss all of their strengths and interests, and you brainstorm, you know, what are some ideas of things that they might like to do? What are some great activities they could do? Or what are some things they could look at online?

Um, and one of the uh, professors in the room came up with this brilliant idea. So you know, my son has a big imagination. He is very interested in entrepreneurship and making his own money. He's got an intense passion for dogs and animals in general. And at the time, he's very interested in cooking—very interest—excited about cooking.

So what if, you know, he combined all of those and started a dog treat business? So I thought that was very cool, but I was a little hesitant to bring it up to him because I thought, "He just hates all things I suggest." You know, he doesn't like to do a lot of activities.

Um, so I kind of apprehensively brought it up to him, and to my surprise, he absolutely loved it. He ran with it. He went online. He found two different recipes. He combined them into his own unique recipe. He wrote down all of the quantities and the fractions.

He looked at prices for all of the different ingredients and made a budget. I took him to Target. We went and purchased all the materials. He made some samples. He tried them out with our dog and had me take photos. And he typed up this recipe packaging and talked about pricing based on his costs.

And then we sent this out to a bunch of our friends and family—the "Dogenuts," as he called them. And um, you know, the the order started rolling in. So he would get text messages on his phone when he had an order.

And so for several weeks in the summer, he was baking and cooking and packaging and delivering uh, these dog treats to people. And so after a few weeks of it, he he didn't want to do it anymore. He shut down the company. He's like, "Mom, that was a lot of work."

And so uh, you know, I was telling my professor, Dr. Baum, about this uh, later on, and she said, "Well, you know, he learned a great lesson. He learned how hard it is to start your own business and how you need to be successful so you can hire people to do all the hard work."

And I think this is a great lesson. I think uh, just in general, that you know, our children will have lots of varied interests, and they may not stick with one thing consistently for a long time, um, but there's always something to learn and to get out of what they experience.

And and so this was a wonderful experience, even if it didn't turn into a long-term successful business. He learned so many, many things. Um, you know, as your child perhaps gets towards high school, you might want to see them having a consistent interest or strength that they can persist with for a year or two perhaps before moving on. But but even then, I think it's just really important to think about, you know, what is bringing them joy? What is interesting them? And how can you help fulfill that with them in their lives?

So now we sort of move on to some other interests to see what else he might want to do—what excites him. And I like to again think about it like a marathon. And together, we can really reach the stars. So I'm really excited to announce that we are going to be doing an all-day strengths-based workshop. There we're going to have four participants who will each have a chance to really dive deep into strengths and interests of their child.

And we'll as a group kind of discuss each child and look at all of these things and come up together with some ideas and strategies and next steps for them in their areas of strength and interest.

So we're going to have applications for this program. This is the first time we're doing it. We'll have four slots available. The applications are at the URL and will be open until February 19th. So I'm excited to hopefully see some of you there. And hopefully, we'll be doing more of these uh, as we as we move along.

So I want to leave you with some further reading and research. We've got—I've got a bunch of really great books here. Uh, these are all books I think that helped me learn more about how to support my child, um, and all the different kinds of differences there are out there. So these are some great resources.

There's also some great websites on a variety of topics and support groups. So obviously, REEL—we've got a wonderful local Palo Alto Bay Area support group. There are also, you know, national and international support groups for twice-exceptionality. There's Bright & Quirky. There are several different Facebook groups—I put some here that that I'm a part of that I found really helpful.

So a bunch of things that you can go now and take this to the next level on your own.

So I just wanted to leave this image here with you. This is by Dr. Shader—her idea that I think is so core to what we're discussing here—that we want to have a partnership, an equal partnership, between the parents, the teachers, and the students—all working together, not at odds, and all looking up towards that same star.

It's that same possibility. So just remember: to the stars through difficulties.

Thank you.

Callie Turk:

Thank you so much, Abby.

And I just want to open it up to anyone who's here—if you have a question, you can put it in the chat, or if you want, you can—we can actually take the the slides down for a minute, and if you want to unmute and ask your question, you can raise your hand, and we can call on you.

Um, we'd love to open it up for any questions. We do have some questions that came in ahead of time that we can we can draw on to get us started. And I thought one of the ones that was interesting—and you kind of touched on—was about high school students and like, how do you get teens to explore things like when they just don't want to cooperate?

Um, and I was listening as you were talking and talking about how you went through everything with Finn, and something that came to mind for me was like, you know, putting more of it in their hands. You know, like saying, "Maybe put together a proposal, and I'd be happy to fund you for a hundred dollars," let's say—whatever it is for you. I I don't know what that was.

Something I think—like ways that you can put it more in your teens' hands and know that you support them. I thought the "strewing" idea would work really well with teens because they don't want you to hand them something and like say, "Check this out," but if you put just stuff around the house, you know, they might pick things up.

So I was kind of thinking about that question about teens as you were talking. I don't know, Abby, if you would would add anything.

Abby Kirigin:

That's a hard one.

Um, I do think I've overall found that my kids appreciate more explanation than I ever think is necessary. So I think—and it probably only increases as they get older, right?—so explaining why you're asking them to do these things. You know, why do you want them to take on some extra interest or explore these things outside of what's strictly required? Um, you know, why do you think this will help them in their lives or as they move forward? Or why is it important to do something that you love every day?

And I think that often, I found that, you know, I give them maybe even more information than I might think that is necessary, but they seem to really appreciate that. I think it's similar to the buy-in—saying, you know, you come up with some choices, and then I'll maybe, you know, do a little work on my own, and then we'll come to something together. But really respecting their uh, autonomy and their interests and trying to build that into what you're doing is helpful.

Callie Turk:

And then across the board, I think this kind of came up from a few questions, but I think it's also something that that we we've heard about in our coursework. And I'm not remembering the answer, so I'm hoping you do—which is really about like, you can go too far in trying to leverage a kid's interests.

And sometimes, like, these kids are really bright—like, they can sniff out if you are trying to use one of their interests for something you want them to do. You know, like, I remember hearing a story about a kid who people knew he liked photography, so they were like, "Why don't you just do a photography project instead of the essay?" And then he didn't want to do the photography anymore.

And I'm I'm curious, how do you kind of ride that—ride that line? Like, really honoring their interests and strengths and passions but making it clear you're not like manipulating the situation?

Abby Kirigin:

I guess I think, you know, I think it comes back to that same thing of being very clear what you're trying to do. Saying, you know, "These are the reason I'm asking you to do it this way is because this seems to be something that would interest you," or if that doesn't—why or why not?

And I think in that specific example with the child who uh, actually—you know, they call it "weaponizing the gift," right? Where they're, you know, everything—they mentioned once they like photography, and now every single assignment they have to do photography for it. Um, and what I think ended up happening though with that student was they found what they felt was a very meaningful project that they wanted to work on that did involve photography. And then they really did get back into it and produced this wonderful uh, work.

I think it was documenting something in their city—you know, something going on the city. And again, I think what possibly clicked for that student—no pun intended—was that the student, um, you know, saw saw an authentic use of their photography interest—that it wasn't being just applied willy-nilly to like everything uh, which felt kind of false to them, but felt like, "Oh, this is something that actually would benefit from a photographic perspective," and so that was something they were willing to do.

Yael Valek:

I was going to say that resonates with me because we have passion projects at our school, and it seems to take something that the child loves and then they're forced to do it for school, and then they don't love it anymore.

Callie Turk:

So yeah, our experience with that was like, you get to choose your passion project, but not really, because maybe the teacher is going to try to shape the idea to fit a goal around like learning how to do research and how to interview people. And then all of a sudden, it's not really a passion project anymore—it's really an exercising and learning how to do a research project, which is not like an unuseful thing to do, but it's not a passion project. Um, it's not like that "genius hour" where you really can just explore and and do what you want. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Abby Kirigin:

And I did see—I don't remember exactly the question—I saw in some of the pre-questions, but it was along the lines of, you know, what if there's nothing your child looks forward to during school? And you know, that that's very sad situation, and I hope that you're able to work on trying to find something at the school, but that also can be provided outside the school as well. I mean, there are the times that you can do both—structured activities after school, but also like we've discussed, just come up with those open-ended activities that your child may want to work on. And so maybe what they look forward to is unfortunately not during the school day but is something that they're going to do after school.

Callie Turk:

Yeah, I mean, we'd love to get schools to a place where it can it can have something a child can look forward to every day—at least a little bit of time. But um, but while we're in the process of advocating for system-wide change, we have to do some of these workarounds.

And I think, you know, another thing I know that y'all you've really touched on a lot is—come to a Montessori school. Yes! Good public schools to do Montessori school.

Um, is not taking away the thing they might really like about school to work on one of those interventions. You know, that's that's such a trap that schools will fall into because, "Oh, the kids already mastered that," or "That's just optional," or that, you know—but it may be the thing that keeps the kid coming to school.

And so what they can't see is if they're doing that a lot—you know, let's say with a middle schooler—by the time that kid gets to high school, they may not—they may just really start to tune out. Maybe they start wanting to go to school altogether. And um, yeah, it has long-term consequences.

Yael Valek:

Um, my um, eight-year-old—we haven't figured out all of his things yet, so I definitely want to try some of these tools. But he's so resistant to trying new things. Have you found—have you had resistance from your kids? And I guess I can talk to him more about why I want him to try new things.

Abby Kirigin:

Um, yeah, I think that works, but I also—we try to commit for a like a very finite—like, whatever the minimum I have to sign up for if it's a thing to sign up for, right? We'll just try the minimum. Um, or even say, like, "Just go one time and see if you're gonna like this or not," you know. Um, so I think that going slowly, um, or then we'll often talk because we'll say, "Well, remember last time you felt like you didn't want to do this, then you did it, and you actually really enjoyed it." So you know, remembering those past times where you had a positive experience even after reluctance—and again, you know, trying to help your child remember those times—is helpful.

Callie Turk:

I'm gonna go look at some of the other questions, but I'm curious—anyone who's here who doesn't have their camera on now—we all know how teachers feel: no cameras on, can't see you.

Um, I mean, if anything struck you—maybe you don't have a question so much as something just struck you from something you think you might like to try or what success you've had with your child or something—bring their strengths.

Yael Valek:

And the other funny thing that you're reminding me of too is, um, I think it was Steven Spielberg that when he was a child, he would spend hours writing names of aliens in a notebook. And everybody was like, "What? Why are you doing this?" And so just how you don't know where these passions that they have today will take them in the future.

I see someone unmuted—yay! Hi.

Question:

Um, I have a question um, and is more high-level because um, I think I do get how strength-based strategy is definitely the way to go. Um, in general, I think a struggle I often have is how do you balance that there are a lot of weaknesses that we also try to help them to at least get to not even average but like survivable stage?

Um, so the balance of time being spent on um, supporting the strength and keep developing there, whereas there might be some very real weaknesses that would pull someone back, right? Like if there's no patience, if there's no perseverance to do certain things, then you know, um, even though you might be really passionate about it, it could still be trouble down the road.

Abby Kirigin:

Yeah, you definitely need to, you know, be be doing both. And you know, it's a juggling struggling thing. But I think some of the things I found are again, you know, you want as Callie reiterated—you want to make sure that they're not conflicting with one another.

So that there may be some time in the day to do those extra services—like the tutoring or helping with executive functioning, like having an executive functioning coach—but to not have that come at the sacrifice of the sacred strength time, I'll call it.

And um, you know, additionally, again, you you're in school—you don't want to have it that your child never has to do, you know, if they don't like writing essays, that they never have to write essays. Of course, they still need to learn the process of writing essays. But they need to be given some opportunities to not write essays and to do other things.

So you know, again, depending on what the content and the purpose of the lesson is. And so I think it's just about balance. And of course, you know, this balance is not easy in any any—we're talking about it—but that's the kind of tightrope we have to walk. I think we we really have to make time for both—for really all three elements.

Thank you.

Callie Turk:

Yeah, Iman was saying, you know, um, she's had the mistake of using carrot and stick regarding the strength. We've all been there.

Uh, you know, and working on—she's working on switching, but the fear jumps in as a parent when it comes to lack of motivation.

For sure, for sure. Um, you know, and I think that's one of those things that we all can relate to is when we're parenting from a place of fear and and not always from that other—that other place, because that's a natural natural parenting reaction.

Yael Valek:

Um, and of course, right when you get the diagnosis, you jump into as many supports—right, interventions—as possible. And for at least for a while for us, we completely forgot about strengths, which wore, you know, where's the kid out?

Callie Turk:

So and I think—I think and maybe Abby you'll you'll know more about this me or you'll maybe maybe your brain will be working better than mine on this one—but when I think about what we learned from Dr. Baum too about kind of different ways to like engage with kids' different strengths—like there are different they're like different approaches you can take and different purposes.

So there could just be like times where you're just doing exploration—like, and you're like, "I have no other goal. I'm just gonna like expose my kids to things and see what they like."

And then there are times when you might say, "I want the child to be able to master this content, and I don't want their weakness to get in the way, so I'm going to find a way to like really bring their strengths in." So and and really be thinking about, you know, how I can manage and get the accommodations right so that the child can really focus on the strength.

And then there are times when you're actually trying to bridge—when you're trying to really think about the child's weak areas and their strengths and how you're going to use the strengths to actually address a weakness.

And it strikes me that one of the things that, you know, we learned about that is really many gifted kids—I'm not going to say all; there's no one-size-fits-all—many gifted kids really like real-world projects. And so that's a really good bridge to bring in working on some of the weaker areas—if they're especially if they're like executive function-related.

Um, you know, or focus-related—because if you really bring something in that's real-world, and they're having to do something like actually solve a problem, create a proposal, do a presentation, you know, advocate for something—that really gives them a chance to really practice a lot of—they might even have to work in a group, which can involve some of the social skills. There's just—there's all that kind of um, aspect too. Is that is that sort of how you remember?

Abby Kirigin:

I think that's all accurate. I I um, I didn't focus too much on how you use the strength to address the weakness because I i do get worried that it's that's a little bit advanced in the sense that it is it is concerning. I don't want to see people using it like like we've discussed—kind of like to weaponize it—like, you have to you're kind of manipulating the strength in order to secretly sneak in the weaknesses.

Um, and so I i try not to to combine the two. But I i think, you know, one of the examples that i kind of glossed over that i think is this beautiful example at my child's school—one of the other girls. So it's a dyslexic uh, youngster, and she absolutely hates writing and really doesn't like school very much at all, but she loves acting.

And so she did have this idea that she wanted to put on a play. So just all on her own, um, she's this girl who never wrote anything—like, stayed up all night writing a script. Um, and she was she's and there was like photos that her mom took of her serendipitously like on her computer, typing, typing, typing—wrote this huge script.

And then she enlisted all the younger kids in the elementary school to take parts. She gave them all roles, and you know, had them practice their script. And then she invited them over on the weekend, and she had spray-painted her front grass—you know, the blocking, you know, layouts—and had all the kids acting this out, and everyone had a script. She was working through the whole thing.

So it was it was an incredible example of that where, you know, she's very passionate about acting and performing, and she was able to produce this thick script that she wrote—this child who never writes anything—um, because this was something that she really was excited about.

Um, and so yeah, I think there are times when, you know, and again, executive function—you know, she organized the kids, she had them come over, she kept everyone on task even though this was just a play date for a bunch of six-year-olds, but she really kept them focused on this acting role.

So you know, again, I think that you you can—ways you can authentically incorporate some of the things they may struggle with by, you know, using their their interests and what is exciting them to, you know, finding authentic ways to incorporate them.

But again, I think the authenticity is key so that, like you said, they're wise when you're just trying to sneak it in, and I don't think that works.

Jessica:

Abby, I'd love to add a little bit from a Montessori perspective. This has been incredible and makes me feel so validated in my work with children.

Um, but I wanted to share how critical observation is in Montessori and how much I advocate for parents to observe, observe, observe their children all the time. And you know, just taking it all in and not just being reactive, but just taking time to notice.

And so that's something that I'm doing in the classroom all the time is observing, um, the children and what they're drawn to and what ways is it best to approach a child for a lesson.

And I would say that there are many children who do best when—especially in elementary in general, no matter where they are—um, they do better when they don't feel like you're out to say, "Oh, you need to practice math," and that's not even if they love math.

I've had a child say to me, "I don't—I don't love math anymore," and but you know, or, "I've already had that math lesson." They love that too. And so I need to say, "Oh, this is some—this is something different. This is actually really cool." And it has to authentically be cool, though. It can't turn out to not be cool, or they've not engaged, they've not learned anything.

And another way that, you know, for children who really resist, you know, the adult sort of like in invitation to growth, um, sometimes it's best to, um, in the adolescent world of Montessori, there's parallel learning, and there's a lot of the adult working alongside the child.

That's something that I've been pulling into my elementary work where I might say, "You know what? I have this lesson I really want to give, but I don't remember exactly how to do it, so I'm going to get my album out and look through my materials. Can you help me just like sort this out?"

And then they pull in because they're like, "Oh, I need to help you with this." And so these are ways that I feel like, you know, in my home too, that sometimes, you know, the purposeful work is so key with the elementary-age child in particular that, um, that will keep them engaged if they, you know—I was sort of unschooling during the period of doing online learning—my own class with my children—and you know, I laugh about it because they did most of their work on their own. And there was—there would be times that, you know, we would come up with some reason why we needed to figure out some sort of math idea, and then at the end, I'd like to use my daughter and say, "Look, we just did math today, so check it off the list," you know.And I think that after the fact, we can laugh about it and acknowledge that that was actually really useful. Um, anyway, I don't want to go on to—

Abby Kirigin:

No, that's great. I love all those all those stories. That's really wonderful.

And I was smiling because I was thinking also about, um, my kids. One of my daughters kind of struggles with anxiety, and so especially test-taking. And the way the teacher presents the test now is to say, "I just want to understand if I did a good job teaching. You know, I really want to evaluate my teaching, so I'm going to give you this thing so that you can tell me how how poorly or how well I explain the material," right?

So it's still a test, but it really flips her um, mental model about like what she's doing right now—she's helping the teacher see, you know, how well she taught the lesson. So anyway, those are great excellent examples. Thank you, Jessica. And I do love Montessori. My oldest son did Montessori preschool, and I—yeah, just it's a wonderful, wonderful model.

Callie Turk:

Abby, I just put in the chat someone who had asked ahead of time about schools that are most supportive of these things, so I put the the list that we've been keeping at REEL in the chat in case that's helpful for for anyone. But I think we know some of these other models of education can work really well for for two-week kids.

Abby Kirigin:

I think that, you know, and I think this—I saw this this question as well a lot, um, which is why I included that the pyramid in the last slide there—I think that if a teacher can understand and appreciate where the parent—where the parents coming from, but ultimately where the child is coming from—so they can understand TUI, what it means, why a child might be having a certain behavior—you know, really trying to take the time to get to the bottom of these things and work as a team—any model can work if you've got three people and a group of people who are all working together towards that common goal.

Callie Turk:

And I think that's the key part of that visual too is that it's not the triangle—it's not a flat, static shape. It's the goal. It's the understanding what you're aiming for. It's the having a shared vision for not not, "Are they mastering this certain standard?" or "Did they write a two-page essay?" but like, who who is this person? What are we aiming for for this person? How can they live a full, fulfilling, meaningful, productive life? Like, and and getting, you know, some kind of common vision around the child as a complete person—not little standards, not they, you know, looked someone in the eye three times today—they, you know, or whatever. Other comments or questions or just stories you want to share? I think we've covered a lot of the questions that were submitted. We might not have addressed them, you know, directly, but the themes that are there.

Yeah, you can share the recording with anyone.

Question:

Yeah, yeah. I have a question—um, you know, perfectionism seems to be an issue with a lot of our kids, and can you speak about it, especially in the area of a strength? Because if there was anything that even challenged it, it becomes this fall apart so quickly. And I was wondering, can you talk about that a little bit?

Abby Kirigin:

Yes, I'm looking here because I'm looking at my notes because I think I remember that question, and I was—oh, okay. The little note that I wrote there.

I mean, I do think, you know, perfectionism—when it becomes negative—can can be a very, you know, damaging thing. So you know, I don't want to sound trite here, but what I want to say is that it's important to help your child appreciate why hard things are actually valuable.

So even, you know, why um, choosing to do something that they may not do perfectly is actually more valuable than them sticking with something that they know that they can complete perfectly.

So um, again, um, to bring it back to some of the first things that we were discussing in this Q&A section—that to explain to your child while it's why the value of failure, the value of mistakes, and all of the wonderful things that you get from experiencing those challenges and the difficulties, um, and why that's actually much preferable to everything being easy and perfect.

You know, that you know, and again, I don't want to um, minimize the challenges of perfectionism and when it becomes negative that way, but those are some of the things that I would try to do with my children where they feel really adverse to those kind of mistakes that they might see.

Yael Valek:

I did tell you—reminding me—my child, you know, would you like to go back to kindergarten math? He's in seventh grade—said, "You'll never make a mistake. You'll get everything right." And he said, "No, that would be boring," right? And so just learning that mistakes are part of learning and stretching your brain—it did help him.

But I will say, some schools do a better structure of assessments—like you were saying—to make kids feel less nervous about them—that you know, you can retake it, you can fix your mistakes, um, the teacher can help you during it. So we've had some success with that as well.

Abby Kirigin:

My high schooler goes to a school where they don't use grades, and um, he was talking to a friend of his who's at a different school where they do use grades, and he was saying that they were just talking about how, you know, at the school that uses grades, they're all kind of incentivized to take the easy math because they need to get A's—they want to have high GPAs and all this. And my son was kind of like, "Why would you take that easy math? That's so boring." And I was like, "See, this is why it's so wonderful you don't have grades—because you take whatever classes you want that excite interest you and don't be afraid, you know, that you might not come out with a perfect score. That's really not the purpose of high school at all." But you know, so many kids missed the point of that. It was so—it was really neat to have the two of them were having that discussion authentically on their own.

Heather:

One thing that I have a client that I love because they have a son that really gets caught up in this perfectionist cycle, and they have the "mess-up wall," and they like as a family put everything that like just went horribly awry up on the wall. And they they celebrate it, and they talk about what they learn from it, and they've just made a culture of like, "We celebrate our mistakes in the family."

And they have definitely noticed that perfectionism slowly starting to ease off for him a little bit. And I thought that was sort of like a wonderful idea. I definitely used it with my own children just because we, I think in this area, we're really about like, "Hit the standard, hit the standard, hit the standard," um, whereas it just gives a little bit more room for like, "The stakes are awesome. That's how we learn."

And they just have this whole wall—like, one of their sons came home and like, "I totally failed this math test, and this is what I learned," and they just—they take the time to celebrate those mistakes. So I thought that was a pretty awesome way to sort of deal with that as a family.

Abby Kirigin:

That is really cool. And that reminds me—um, we often do family goals in the summer, but but what's important—and I think it's similar to this—is that we all have them. So you know, adults as well. So it's like, you know, what does my son—you know, he's going to try to read this many books or or do this independent thing—he's you know, learning about—but I also have a goal. So like last summer was to to, you know, start writing a book. And my husband had his own goals. And so we're all keeping track—we all had a sheet up on the kitchen wall where all of us had our goals, and all of us were completing them.

And I think it's like you're saying—you model what you want your children to to do and become, and you show them that you're always um, I think I was just saying that we, you know, we're always as adults modeling what we want to see in our children. So we're showing how we're always learning and always growing and always have our own goals and interests that we're working towards.

Um, and you know, it's not just for them—it's for us as well. We make mistakes, we learn things, you know, just like Heather said. It's a great way to show that your children really that these things are true because you're modeling them for them as well.

Callie Turk:

Well, and I think—I think to like even without having a wall—like even just being able to talk like at dinner or in the car about your day and what went well and what didn't well and maybe where you goofed and made a mistake and how you're planning to do it differently the next time—I think that's super super valuable also to show your kids that you're human and you have bumps and you you you keep going.

But I do think there's a lot of different—there's a lot of different angles on perfectionism, and I'm I'm sort of struck just by this conversation and how many times it came up in the questions that in our Google group might be worth—we could find a few resources out there from some experts on perfectionism.

Because there are different—there is perfection—people have perfectionism for different reasons. Some perfectionism can be a little healthy; toxic perfectionism is not. Um, there's there's definitely different points of view on it, and I think I'd like to be more educated on that.

And um, so maybe we can look for some some good videos and resources out there. I think Matt Zakresky does a presentation on perfectionism, and he might be doing it at the William & Mary 2e conference on the 25th and 26th of February.

So well, we're almost to the end. Any any last-minute comments or questions before we wrap it up? I just really want to thank Abby for taking the time to share this and giving us this platform. I know that for talking about strengths, I know I'm walking away just reminding myself that I need to learn as much about my kids as I can. I need to connect with them and let them help kind of lead on some of these strength-based areas and what they want to pursue.

Um, I was reminded that strengths can sometimes be about the process and not just the topic—like, so often I think I get caught up in like, "Oh, she likes computer science—let's, you know—" but sometimes it's their process that actually is really interesting.

So I definitely took quite a few things away from from tonight, and I hope everybody else did too. Thank you so much, Abby.

Thank you. Thank you, guys, all for coming. Inspiring. Wonderful.

Thank you.