Family vacations are often filled with excitement, anticipation, and the hope of creating lasting memories together. At the same time, travel can place significant demands on a child's nervous system, especially for neurodivergent and twice-exceptional (2e) children. New environments, unfamiliar foods, changes in routines, sensory input, crowds, disrupted sleep schedules, and uncertainty can quickly overwhelm a child's nervous system. For many 2e children, travel may also bring heightened anxiety, intense questioning, difficulty with uncertainty, and strong emotional reactions when things do not go as expected. As parents, it can be easy to focus on the places we want to see and the activities we hope to experience. But when traveling with neurodivergent and 2e children, it can be helpful to start with a different question: What do we want our child to remember about this trip? At the end of a family vacation, most children will not remember every attraction, museum, or landmark they visited. What they are more likely to remember is how they felt. Did they feel safe? Did they feel heard? Did they feel supported when things felt hard? Did they have opportunities to rest and regroup when they needed them? Did they feel connected to the people they love? When we approach travel through this lens, the goal shifts from completing an itinerary to creating experiences that allow everyone to participate, connect, and enjoy being together. Travel naturally comes with uncertainty. Flights get delayed. Restaurants are crowded. Weather changes. Plans shift. Activities do not always go as expected. While we cannot eliminate these unexpected moments, we can help our children build the skills and confidence to navigate them. One of the most important ways we do this is by supporting their nervous systems. Supporting regulation is not lowering expectations. It is recognizing that a regulated nervous system is the foundation for flexibility, learning, enjoyment, and connection. When children feel emotionally safe, physically regulated, and genuinely heard, they are better able to adapt to new experiences and unexpected challenges. The goal is not a perfect vacation. The goal is to create the emotional, mental, and physiological space that allows children to discover they can handle new experiences, recover from difficult moments, navigate the unexpected, and maybe even have fun doing it. Three Ways to Create the Emotional, Mental, and Physiological Space Children Need to Thrive While Traveling 1. Protect Time for Regulation One of the most common mistakes families make when traveling is trying to fit too much into each day. When you have invested time and money into a vacation, it is tempting to maximize every moment. However, many neurodivergent and 2e children need downtime built into the schedule to process, regulate, and recover from the demands of travel. Even enjoyable activities require energy and can place significant demands on a child's nervous system. Consider intentionally scheduling breaks throughout the day. For one child, this might mean spending an hour reading quietly in the hotel room after lunch. For another, regulation may come through movement and activity, such as swimming in the hotel pool, taking a walk, or spending time at a playground between sightseeing adventures. These breaks are not "wasted vacation time." They are often what makes the rest of the vacation possible. Building regulation time into the day can reduce evening meltdowns, improve flexibility, and help children participate more successfully in the activities that matter most. Sometimes doing less allows your family to experience more. 2. Reduce Uncertainty Through Previewing and Planning Many neurodivergent and 2e children feel more comfortable when they know what is coming next. Before your trip, share photos of where you will be staying, watch videos of attractions, discuss transportation plans, and talk through what a typical day might look like. During the trip, review plans together and provide reminders about what is happening next. Involve your child in planning when possible. Let them help choose activities, research destinations, or discuss meal options. When children have a voice in the process, travel often feels more predictable and manageable. As children become more familiar with the plans, you can gradually help them answer their own questions. "Yup, we talked about what we're doing after lunch. Do you remember?" "First we're walking to the aquarium. Then what did we talk about doing after that?" This helps children build confidence in their own ability to remember, anticipate, and manage uncertainty rather than relying entirely on adults for reassurance. At the same time, normalize that travel can bring anxiety. Many children worry about sleeping in a new place, eating unfamiliar foods, navigating airports, getting lost, missing home, or simply not knowing exactly what will happen next. Rather than dismissing those concerns, acknowledge them. "It makes sense that you're feeling nervous. Traveling can be exciting and a little scary at the same time." When anxiety is treated as normal rather than something to avoid, children often feel less alone in their experience. 3. Listen for Concerns and Make Space for Them Many anxious children ask the same questions repeatedly. Sometimes they are looking for information. Often, they are communicating a concern that has not yet been fully addressed, or they don’t have the words yet to communicate how they are feeling. One of the most powerful things we can do is let our children know that their concerns are welcome. You may not be able to change the vacation plans. However, understanding what is worrying your child may help you make small adjustments that significantly improve their experience. Perhaps they need a break before a crowded activity, recovery time afterward, headphones, a comfort item, or simply the reassurance that someone understands why a particular part of the day feels difficult. When children feel heard, they learn something important. Difficult feelings do not have to be ignored or pushed through. They can be acknowledged, supported, and worked through together. Being heard and supported brings out the best version of a child. Travel will always include the unexpected. But when we build in opportunities for regulation, communication, and connection, we create the space children need to grow. They learn that they can adapt, recover from difficult moments, and navigate new experiences successfully. The most successful family vacation is not necessarily the one where you see the most attractions or check every item off the itinerary. It is the one where your child comes home knowing: "New things can be hard, but I can do hard things. My family understands me. I can ask for help when I need it. And I can enjoy the adventure, too." About This Article This article was adapted from Tips for School Trips: How to Make Trips Accessible to Neurodivergent Students, where REEL educators, families, and community members shared their experiences and ideas for helping 2e and neurodivergent children successfully navigate school trips and new experiences. The insights in this article come directly from parents and educators who have walked this path and discovered practical ways to support children's emotional, mental, and physiological needs while traveling. At REEL, we believe that one of the most powerful resources for families is connection with others who truly understand the journey. Join our REEL community for more ideas, resources, and support from parents and professionals who "get it." You are not alone.

When parents hear the term executive functioning, they often think about homework, missing assignments, forgotten backpacks, or struggles getting out the door in the morning. While school is certainly one place where executive functioning skills are needed, it is not always the best place to learn them. For many neurodivergent and twice-exceptional (2e) children, school carries high stakes. Mistakes can affect grades, parent and teacher relationships, and self-confidence. When children are already feeling stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed, it can be difficult for them to practice new skills. One of the best places to build executive functioning skills is often outside of school, during low-stakes activities children actually care about. Family day trips create natural opportunities to practice planning, organization, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and problem-solving in ways that feel meaningful and enjoyable. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to help children experience success, make mistakes, adjust, and discover that they are capable of figuring things out. Elementary School: Let Them Help Plan Young children love feeling important and involved. Before a trip to the zoo, beach, museum, or local festival, invite your child to help with simple planning tasks: What should we pack? What do we need to bring if it rains? What snacks should we take? What are the three things you most want to see? These activities build early planning, organization, and working memory skills. The key is to keep the experience collaborative rather than testing them. If they forget sunscreen or water, that becomes an opportunity to problem-solve together rather than a lesson in failure. "Hmm, we forgot water. What could we do now?" Real-life problem-solving is often more powerful than any worksheet. Middle School: Put Them in Charge of a Piece of the Adventure Middle schoolers are often ready for a little more responsibility. Instead of planning the entire day, give them ownership over one part of it. They might: Research lunch options Navigate part of the route Compare ticket prices Create a packing checklist Plan the schedule for the afternoon This is a wonderful opportunity to strengthen task initiation, planning, prioritization, and flexible thinking. Middle schoolers also begin to encounter one of the most important executive functioning lessons: Plans change. The restaurant may be closed. The weather may shift. Traffic may delay arrival. These moments become opportunities to practice cognitive flexibility in a supportive environment. Rather than solving every problem for them, invite them into the process: "That was our original plan. What do you think our options are now?" High School: Practice Life Skills Before They Matter As teenagers move toward adulthood, day trips can become practice runs for the executive functioning demands they will eventually face independently. Consider gradually increasing responsibility by asking your teen to: Plan the itinerary Create a budget Estimate travel times Make reservations Pack for themselves Manage a timeline for the day Many teens enjoy the challenge when the activity aligns with their interests. A trip to a sporting event, concert, favorite city, hiking destination, or specialty store can provide meaningful motivation to engage in planning and organization. The goal is not to create perfect planners. The goal is to create opportunities for teens to experience the connection between preparation, flexibility, and success. Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome In our Executive Function Facilitated Small Group Discussions, we often talk about how executive functioning challenges are not a matter of intelligence or motivation. Task initiation struggles can look like avoidance. Working memory struggles can look like "not listening." Cognitive flexibility struggles can look like rigidity. When we understand the skill underneath the behavior, we can focus on building the skill rather than correcting the behavior. Day trips provide countless opportunities to do exactly that. When a child forgets something, gets stuck, becomes overwhelmed by a change in plans, or struggles to get started, we can view the moment as practice rather than failure. These are the experiences that help children develop confidence in their ability to navigate challenges. Build Confidence Through Success The beauty of day trips is that they are low stakes. If something goes wrong, no one has “failed”. Hopefully, if there are challenges, they are the type we learn from and can laugh about down the road. That safety creates space for children to take risks, try new strategies, and build executive functioning skills without the pressure that often accompanies schoolwork. Over time, children begin to internalize an important message: "I can make a plan." "I can solve problems." "I can adapt when things change." "I can figure things out." And those may be some of the most important executive functioning skills of all.

One Sunday afternoon when my daughter was in elementary school, she was invited over to the house of a middle school student. This older classmate, Sarah, had written a play and had cast several children of various ages in the roles. Everyone was excited. When I came to pick my daughter up, Sarah was filming the play in her front yard. You could see spray paint on the grass which were Sarah’s blocking marks, indicating where each actor should stand. She kept yelling ‘cut’ and directing the children on how to stand, how to deliver their lines, how to have stage presence. You could tell that Sarah was serious about getting this production performed. No one was eager to leave, so I went over and talked to Cindy, Sarah’s mother for a bit. Cindy told me that she was floored that this was her daughter. Sarah hated school, and consistently resisted writing. She did the least amount that was ever required on any assignment. Teachers were frustrated and exasperated; school had not been going well for Sarah. Cindy struggled to reconcile the story of her daughter as a student in school with this one, this version of her daughter who had stayed up all night writing this multi-page script, who had organized various children in different grades, and brought them together on a weekend to put on this play. Sarah was able to write and produce work when reframed in an area of interest. Sarah came alive when writing for the stage, imagining how the actors would move, and visualizing the play. Her motivation soared, her strengths could shine, and her engagement and enthusiasm completely changed. We need more success stories like Sarah’s. How do we get there? In order to successfully identify a child’s strengths and interests, start by opening your mind to the possibilities. As Dr. Susan Baum says, “Magic happens at the intersection of strengths and interests.” Once you understand what makes a child light up, you’ll be able to support, encourage, and nurture it. Summer is a great time for our children to explore and grow in ways that there often just isn’t time or energy for during the school year. In this article, I walk through three ways to help your child identify and nurture their strengths this summer: 1: Observe Intentionally & Be Inquisitive Observe your child as they play this summer. Provide a variety of materials to experiment with and activities to try, and see what they gravitate towards. In some circles this is called the “strewing strategy.” For example, place a book on butterflies in the living room, leave some paint and clay out in the playroom, and set aside some space in the garage for some building materials. Every so often, switch out what’s available. Now sit back and observe what your child gravitates to on their own. What materials do they experiment with? What books catch their interest? What other interests do these materials and choices spark for them? What are they curious about? Your child likely has a support network of other people, all of whom are a great resource to learn more about your child. Or maybe they’re close with a grandparent, aunt, or other family member. Their siblings may have some interesting insights. Camp counselors, extra curricular coaches, and parents of your child’s friends are all other great potential sources of new information. Questions to ask yourself and others: What gets my child excited? What subjects/things seem to come naturally to my child? What does my child seem most interested in? What does my child choose to do during free time? What types of projects/assignments does my child gravitate towards? What are the best three things about my child? Often the best information can be found by directly speaking to the source. Sit down with your child and conduct an interview. Ask them about their interests. Ask them what they feel they are good at. Discuss with them what you are observing, and what they’ve observed about themself. Together you can generate ideas, and come to agreement on areas of strength and current interests. Questions to ask your child: What are some things you are curious about right now? Are there any activities you’ve heard of that you’d like to try out? Are there any activities you’re currently doing at home or in school which you’d like to do more of? What do you like to do when you have free time? If your child is struggling with articulating their preferences and interests, you can use a variety of tools online to help scaffold the process. Some are available for free on the internet, and others are administered by trained professionals. Get started by checking out REEL’s Strength-Based Assessment Tools list in our Resources section. 2: Create Opportunities Now that you have some ideas about what your child might be interested in and where their strengths lie, you can begin to nurture those sparks. Depending on your own availability and your child’s age and independence level, you can find ways to do this either through outside camps, clubs, classes, mentors, and activities, or by working with your child on your own. It is best to be clear what the expectation of commitment is for your child, and when the decision points will be where they can decide if they want to continue or pivot to something else. Before the summer project or class begins, make sure you’ve established: How many classes will they be signing up for? When will you check-in and evaluate how things are going? During that check-in, reflect on what they learned: What did they like about an activity? What would they have preferred to have done differently? This can help you as you look for the next interest to pursue. Eventually you and your child will get better at identifying promising ‘leads’ and should begin to settle in on some areas on which to focus. Here are just a few ideas to get you started: Entrepreneurship activities: help your child identify a simple business idea (Lemonade stand on the corner? Craft stand at a local park?), write up a budget, and try their hand at selling something on their own. There are also classes for kids who are interested in entrepreneurship, including several online options. Creative expression options: enroll your child in an art class, a local theater production, a sculpting studio class, etc. There are nearly endless options! Alternatively, your child may enjoy watching learn-to-draw videos on YouTube or other online, independent tutorials. Deep dive into a topic of interest: if your child is interested in a particular topic, such as outer space, you can support this interest in a variety of ways. Take them to the local library and help them find age-appropriate books. Help them do research on the internet. Look for local classes or enthusiast meetups on the topic. Opportunities to teach or work with a mentor: Look for a mentor who could meet with your child to support their interest. In addition, explore ways your child can become a mentor to younger students, including teaching a class or running a summer camp. Sports: encourage your child to join a sports team or class. Gaming (card games, board games, social games, etc): don’t be afraid of gaming! Within reason, even video game playing can provide lots of interesting fodder for thinking about storytelling, plot, cooperation, and many other skills. Beyond the world of video games, there are lots of other interesting games out there, including meetups for Magic the Gathering and Pokemon, board game parties, Dungeons & Dragons classes (online as well as in person), live action role playing (LARP) clubs, and more. There are plenty of online classes and tutorials available on how to design and develop engaging games. Don’t worry too much if your young child tries something out and decides they don’t like it. While it is true that as they grow older, they will benefit from sticking with activities for a longer time, when they are just starting out it is primarily important to teach your child to not be afraid to try new things. It is part of normal development to change one’s mind, and there’s always something to be learned along the way. REEL has collected a great list of ND and 2e friendly summer camps for children: ND Friendly Summer Day Camps ND Friendly Summer Sleep Away Camps 2e Specific Summer Programs Things to try: Create a family summer goal chart Everyone is a lifelong learner! Model your own learning and growth with a summer chart. At the start of summer, everyone in our family - parents included - identifies at least one goal that they have for the summer. For example, a few years ago our family summer chart looked like this: my goals were to write daily and read more non-fiction, my daughter chose to learn to ride a bike and swim at least once a week, and my older son had a goal of teaching himself calculus. Create a daily tracker on a poster board (one box for each day, for the full 10 or so weeks of summer) and hang it somewhere everyone in your house sees it regularly, like the kitchen. As the summer progresses, mark daily when each person has made progress towards their goal, gather and check in on progress periodically, and celebrate milestones as you all learn to learn together. Remember, experiences should be joyous. Let your child, especially at the novice level, take the lead on finding and growing their curiosities and interests. And model lifelong learning! Above all - make sure there is time every day for your child to do something that they love. 3: Foster Self-Esteem Fostering self-esteem is a year-round project. Summer is a great time to engage deeply with your child, helping them to better understand themselves and their gifts. Make sure your child knows, and believe it in your bones: people who are different are AWESOME. Neurodivergent individuals have incredible gifts, thanks to their unique brain wiring. For instance, many dyslexics credit their dyslexia for their enhanced visual-spatial abilities, including Dr. Beryl Benacerraf, who attributes her success as a radiologist to her dyslexia, writing, “I live in a world of patterns and images and I see things that no one else sees.” Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes, writes that “some autistic people can detect patterns that others miss.” Dr. Ned Hallowell, an expert on ADHD, describes ADHD individuals as having “ferrari brains.” Neurodivergent individuals are very often extremely creative and charismatic leaders and as such make fabulous and successful entrepreneurs. Things to try: Watch movies and read books with neurodivergent characters One great way to share this with your child over the summer is to read books or watch TV shows which feature neurodivergent characters in a positive light. Discuss the stories with your child. What makes these individuals unique? What makes them great? In what ways do they struggle, and how did they deal with these challenges? For example: A few summers ago my daughter and I watched Geek Girl together. After every episode we would discuss the main character’s friendships and relationships. This helped her as she was navigating the social complexities of early middle school. For another great example, click here. REEL maintains a great list of books with ND characters here. Some Parting Thoughts As you try all of these things out for yourself, you’ll inevitably have questions. Something won’t go quite as planned and you’ll want nuanced ideas or resources, or just some reassurance that you’re on the right path. Having a group you can turn to in those moments can make all the difference. If you’re not already part of REEL’s online parent support community, I encourage you to join. It’s a great way to ask questions, get support, and be among others on similar paths as your own. Lastly - this summer, remember to take time for yourself and do something that brings YOU joy every day. All of us deserve the wonderful feeling of being able to spend time doing something we love, accomplishing something we’re good at, each and every day.

A letter to the parent I used to be, and to every parent who is wondering right now. Dear younger me, I know you're tired. You've been to the parent-teacher conferences where they tell you your child is "on level." You've smiled and nodded while a quiet voice inside you whispered, but something isn't right. You've Googled things at midnight and then closed the tab, half-convinced you were overreacting. You weren't. It would take until high school for someone to finally put a name to what you had been watching for years. By then, you would have spent more than a decade watching a child who seemed to carry a quiet weight: low self-esteem that didn't match what you knew about him, a need for support that you could feel but couldn't quite name. He needed to be seen. And you would spend years not fully understanding what was keeping that from happening. I want to tell you what I know now. I Didn't Know What I Didn't Know There's something I haven't told you yet, something that took me a long time to understand about why I missed so much for so long. My brain works differently too. I didn't have a name for it when my son was young. I just knew that certain things came easily to me and other things were quietly, persistently hard. The way I moved through the world felt normal to me, because it was the only way I had ever known. And so when I watched my son move through the world in a similar way, it didn't register as a signal. It registered as familiar. That's something I've since learned isn't uncommon: unidentified neurodivergent parents are statistically quite common, and when your own brain has spent decades normalizing certain traits, those same traits can feel unremarkable in your child.² I didn't ask for help because I had never learned to ask for help. I didn't flag the struggles because I had quietly learned to manage my own, and I assumed he would too. I wasn't failing to see him. I was seeing him through the only lens I had. Understanding this doesn't erase the years of wondering. But it does replace some of the guilt with compassion, for him and for myself. If you recognize something of yourself in your child's story, that recognition matters. It's not a reason to look away. It's the most important reason to look closer. The Signals That Didn't Register In kindergarten, my son was referred for gifted testing. He wasn't accepted. I shrugged it off. I'd had a similar experience as a child myself, and it just felt like part of the process. I knew he was smart. I knew he was kind. I knew he was a great reader and strong in math. His school didn't use grades; the only feedback was whether a student was "on level" or not, and he was always on level. There was nothing flashing red. And that's exactly the problem. He wasn't reading at two or three. There was no single dramatic sign of profound giftedness. But he was consistently one of the top readers in the words-per-minute assessments. He was in advanced math. He was capable, quietly and solidly capable, and that capability became the very thing that made everyone stop looking. When a child is performing, the system stops asking questions. The Smartness Was Real, and So Were the Struggles Here's the thing nobody tells you about twice-exceptional kids: their gifts don't cancel out their challenges. They mask them. As the Child Mind Institute describes it, gifted kids can use their strengths to compensate for their specific needs and in the process mask their learning problems, and in some cases neither the disability nor the giftedness is recognized.³ I didn't see significant anxiety at the time. But looking back now, with everything I've learned since, I can see it in the details I explained away. The hives. The breathing trouble during and after basketball that I assumed was exercise-induced asthma. The time I took him to a naturopathic doctor and discovered he had a candida overgrowth, so we went gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free for three months, and it helped. I thought we'd solved a gut health problem. I've since learned that candida overgrowth appears more frequently in neurodivergent individuals, and I now wonder if some of what I attributed to physical symptoms was his body carrying stress he couldn't name or describe. (Research published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine found that Candida overgrowth in the gut may influence immune function and behavior in children with neurodevelopmental conditions, and a 2018 study found anti-Candida antibodies in 36.5% of children with ASD compared to just 14.3% of neurotypical children.¹) Those breathing episodes? Looking back, they may have been panic attacks. He was a child who couldn't tell me what was wrong, possibly because he didn't know. Possibly because his brain was working hard to hold everything together on the outside. The Friends That Stopped Coming Between third and fourth grade, we moved. And from that point on, something quietly shifted. The friendships thinned. Friends stopped inviting him over. The easy social connections of early childhood didn't follow him to the new town. We moved again, and it started a little better, and then dropped off again. Each time, I hoped it was the transition. Each time, I told myself he'd find his people. What I didn't understand then is that social navigation is one of the places where twice-exceptional kids often struggle most invisibly. Research on 2e students describes a paradox: the coexistence of giftedness and challenge can make it hard to fit in with gifted peers and equally hard to connect with those who experience difficulties, leaving some 2e kids without a clear social home.⁴ They may be articulate and perceptive with adults and completely at sea with peers. The gap between their intellectual world and their social-emotional experience can be wide and confusing, for them and for everyone watching. And here is the part I only understand in hindsight: he found a way to manage it. Every break at school, he played wall ball. Not casually — he became the school wall ball champion. He mastered every sport he took on. I thought it was passion and competitive drive, and maybe it was, partly. But I now see that sport gave him something just as important: a structured reason to be occupied. When you are on the court, focused and moving, you don't have to make conversation. You don't have to navigate the awkward rhythms of small talk or figure out where you fit in a group. You have a role. He was so motivated to stay in the game that he often became the leader, the one organizing the play, directing others. What looked like confidence and natural ability was also, I think, a very clever way of staying safe. I wish someone had told me that the drifting friendships weren't just a phase. They were a signal. And that the things he was good at might be worth looking at twice. When It Finally Broke Through There is something else about 2e students that I have come to understand, and it is a bit of a paradox: many of them are extraordinarily self-aware. They often know something is different about the way they experience the world. They can sense the gap between what they feel capable of and what they are actually producing. The Colorado Department of Education notes that many 2e learners are acutely aware of their challenges, which can lead to self-frustration, insecurity, and a lack of motivation, and that without help understanding why they struggle, some develop coping behaviors like perfectionism, avoidance, or apathy just to get through the day.⁵ That self-awareness, as remarkable as it is, can also become its own obstacle. A child who is bright enough to see their own struggles is also often proud enough to hide them. Accepting help can feel like admitting defeat. Asking for an accommodation can feel like confirming the very thing they have been working so hard to conceal. So they don't ask. And the people around them, seeing a capable child who is managing, don't push. And the gap between what the child needs and what the child receives quietly grows. By fifteen, my son was crashing. Depression settled in. Anxiety, the kind that had been building for years beneath the surface, came fully into the open. School, which he had always managed to get through, became something he could barely complete. That was when we finally got answers. He was diagnosed with ADHD and Anxiety. Testing also revealed a Superior IQ, the same intelligence that had carried him through years of looking "fine" on the outside, finally recognized alongside the challenges that had been quietly exhausting him all along. The diagnosis didn't change who he was. But it changed what was possible. Where We Are Now He isn't "better" in the tidy way we sometimes hope for. But he is getting better, slowly and genuinely, in the ways that matter. He is learning to advocate for himself. He takes care of himself. He is building the self-knowledge that so many of us don't find until much later in life. We are patient. We understand that his future is full of promise, even when the path there doesn't look the way we imagined. We hold onto that. To the Parent Reading This Right Now If any of this sounds familiar, I want you to hear this directly: You are not alone. The gap between "something seems off" and "we finally have answers" can stretch across years, a decade even. That is not your failure. It is a failure of a system that was not built to see kids like yours. A system that looks at "on level" and stops asking questions. A system that sees a strong reader and a kid who's managing, and calls that enough. Give yourself grace for what you didn't know. Parenting requires us to pay attention to so many dimensions of a child at once, their health, their learning, their emotions, their friendships, and none of us comes to it with a complete map. Not knowing isn't negligence. It's human. Especially when the child in front of you has spent years becoming very good at looking fine. But here is the other side of that grace: when something does surface, when your child finally tells you they're struggling, or a teacher raises a concern, or the mask slips and you see what's underneath, take it seriously. Take it very seriously. Because by the time a struggle becomes visible, it has almost always been there for a long time. What you are seeing is not the beginning. It is the moment they could no longer hide it alone. Your instincts are data. The report card that says everything is fine, and the child who struggles to make friends, who gets hives, who comes home exhausted in ways you can't explain, both of those are real. You are allowed to hold both truths at once and keep asking questions. Keep asking. And trust your gut. You have been watching your child longer and more carefully than anyone else. What you notice matters. With love and hard-won hindsight, A 2e Mom Sources: ¹ Herman, A., & Herman, A.P. (2022). Could Candida Overgrowth Be Involved in the Pathophysiology of Autism? Journal of Clinical Medicine, 11(2), 442. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11020442; Yeast Overgrowth in Autism. The Autism Community in Action (TACA). https://tacanow.org/family-resources/what-is-yeast-overgrowth/ ² Hamstead, B. (2025). It Runs in the Family: Intergenerational Neurodivergence and What We Owe Each Other Across Generations. https://bridgettehamstead.substack.com/p/it-runs-in-the-family-intergenerational ³ Twice-Exceptional Kids: Both Gifted and Challenged. Child Mind Institute. https://childmind.org/article/twice-exceptional-kids-both-gifted-and-challenged/ ⁴ Łukasiewicz-Wieleba, J., Reis, S. M., & Gierczyk, M. (2025). Social Difficulties Experienced in the Peer Relationships of Twice-Exceptional Female Students: An Examination of Three Cases. International Journal of Pedagogy, Innovation and New Technologies, 12(2), 2–15. https://doi.org/10.71358/ijpint.2541 ⁵ Twice-Exceptional (2e). Colorado Department of Education. https://ed.cde.state.co.us/gt/twice-exceptional

What you'll learn in this video: How college admissions has shifted to view neurodivergent students in a more positive light How to tell your student's unique academic story in college applications The importance of building skills early — from executive functioning to active reading strategies What a gap year really means for 2E students and how to use it effectively How colleges implement accommodations and why retention makes them motivated to help What documentation colleges require (psychoeducational reports, IEPs, 504 plans) Notable colleges that support 2E students, including Landmark College, UC Santa Cruz, Colby, and the University of Iowa's Belin-Blank Center Results: Students placed at UC schools, elite liberal arts colleges (Colby), and prestigious UK universities including St. Andrews, University of Edinburgh, and University of York. 🤝 This talk was made possible by REEL — a community dedicated to supporting twice-exceptional learners. 👉 Learn more and get involved at www.reel2e.org 📩 Questions for Rosa? Reach out at eaforped.com or rosa@sped.com Read the transcript here Here is the transcript broken into 4-5 sentence sections with no words changed: Hi, my name is Rosa Varela and I am an education advocate with Educator Advocate for Special Education. We focus on 2E and 3E students. I was a teacher for 25 years. Today we're going to be talking about the academic path for 2E students and we're going to be focusing on planning for college. So when I was a student at UCLA, I worked in programs that focused on admissions, on transition and on retention. And I had friends who also worked alongside me and they some of them stayed on at the university, some of them are still there. So we know very well about having contacts at the colleges and of building on those relationships. And that's what we do. We reach out to the colleges, we make contact and we build relationships. Now what we have found is that over the past couple of years the way that neurodeiverse students are viewed in terms of admissions has shifted and that's good news for us because now they are viewed in a very positive light. What we do is we highlight our students high potential, their creativity, their empathy, their determination. And these are all qualities that the colleges want on their campuses. And so when we do the application, we focus on those things. We tell the story of our our students academic journey because some of our students, you know, they do have that perfect 4.0, but honestly, most of our TUI kids do not. And their ch their journey their academic journey has been one of challenges of adversity but also of successes and of life lessons and those are the points that we want to highlight. We want to tell the colleges this is a kid who is going to be persistent is going to be successful and that is what the colleges want on their campuses. So everything we do is focused around the idea of working to help the student achieve their highest potential. And that is something that we do from the very beginning. From the time we begin working with the family and with the student, we help to develop their skills so that they succeed in college. Whatever that means, whether it's skills in terms of academic skills, in terms of reading or in terms of possibly um executive functioning, whatever it is, we make sure that we help so that the student is going to succeed in college. And so one question that we got was about the gap year. And the way we think of it is that we begin working on that gap year as soon as we begin working with the student because what is a gap year? A gap year is time for the asynchronous development of twoe students to catch up. And so our students catch up during that that time. They learn the skills that they don't have, whether they're academic, whether they're executive functioning, whether they're social, whatever it is, we try to provide that as soon as we begin working with the students. So that by the time that they get ready to go to college, they have that. Um, and we do this through advocacy. We do advocate uh do advocacy for K12 uh with the IEP process. We also deep dive and research uh academic effects on um learning and we do tutoring for our students. Um now during the tutoring what we do isn't just tutoring. We do observations of the students so that we have two minds working together. We we think we discuss how um the the AC accommodations are working, whether they're working and what are better ways to uh to work with the student so that once we know what works with that student, we can communicate that to the schools, to the teachers, and we can work together with the districts to for really for the betterment of the students education. Um, we also research and look at AT and other accommodations. We will do the the research on AT and what once they are ready to go to college, we work with the accessibility office. We call the accessibility office. We talk to them about what the student needs and make sure that they are on board with those accommodations. Now, um, when we did this presentation a couple days ago, we had a question about whether colleges actually implement accommodations. The answer is yes, absolutely they do. The reason for this is that once a student is admitted to college, the colleges very desperately want to retain those students. Retention is a becomes a big issue. So colleges want that to retain the student and they're going to work hard to give the student the accommodations they need so that they can retain the student. So what what do we actually do? What is the plan? Well, we deep dive into the students exceptionalities and those except exceptionalities effects including high potential challenges and multilingualism on their education. Um so for example uh CAPD we know that CAPD is central auditory processing disorder but what does that really mean? We do the research and we go deeper. We look at you know the effects on the brain etc. We know that CAPD often has an effect on a students ability to to learn FMIC awareness and learn phonics. But what about okay after they've learned it? So once they they've learned phonics does that mean that their CAPD is resolved? Hopefully but not necessarily. That student may later have issues with note takingaking. And so we know these things, we research these things and we figure out how can we help these students? How can we get accommodations that will allow the students to succeed? So what we are looking for is the roadblocks that the student is facing and how to overcome them. Um, one very very important key thing is that we need to ensure that our students do not lose their love of learning or if they sadly have lost it that we allow them to rediscover that love of learning because our kids are so bright and they have so much to offer that we need to make sure that they are still demonstrating all all of that, their knowledge, their ability and that they are loving the learning that they are doing. So in order to do that, we focus on strengths and what we do is we encourage their passion project. That's what I like to call it. Um and we always encourage that passion project because that's what's going to bring out all of those great feelings, all of the all of the great um thinking, curiosity, all of that um in our students. And then what we do is we use those passion projects and we center our college application around it. Um we also advocate for appropriate rigorous curriculum and accommodations. For example, we have a third grade student who's working at a fifth grade level. Yes, they absolutely need that rigorous curriculum. They need to be allowed to move forward and work at a at a level on the uh material that is appropriate for them and they also need the appropriate accommodations. Now time is precious for our two kids and so what we do is we help them capture that time by ensuring they are learning to the best of their ability in the way that they learn best and by with the the rigorous curriculum as well. Now, what what results have we gotten? Well, our results have been pretty exceptional. We have gotten kids into the UC schools and we are fortunate here in California that we have a wonderful higher education uh setup where, you know, our kids can go to community college, they can go to Cal States, they can go to UC's. And these UC schools are really wonderful places that some of our kids uh are going to do very well at. We have a student who um is going to UCSC Santa Cruz and we've spoken with their accessibility office. It's a great place and the school also overall has a smaller field than a lot of the other UC's which is also important for some of our students um because some of them are looking for that smaller field. So, we've had uh acceptances at some really elite small liberal arts colleges such as Colby. And Colby is one of what is known as the Little Ivy's because it is in the same cohort as some of the Ivy schools um with the um the the students that are applying to the Ivy's are also applying to the Little Ivy's and they have an acceptance rate of about 6 to 7%. Um what was really neat was that the student who was accepted at Colby, he received a written note from the one of the admissions officers just uh telling him how much he enjoyed his application and how much he was looking forward to having him on campus. So that was awesome. Uh we've also had acceptances to some competitive technical colleges to some Russell Group universities such as the University of York, the University of Edinburgh and um one of the ancient universities um St. Andrews is one of the ancient universities along with Oxford and Cambridge. So to wrap it all up, so in summary, um what we're looking at here is the holistic college admissions benefit our neurodeiverse students. They benefit our 2e students and we focus on strengths and we tell the students unique educational journey. We advocate for appropriate curriculum and accommodations. We have students begin to practice and develop their skills now. So, for example, um some of our students might have an AT accommodation such as text to speech. Well, the school might tell them, "Oh, here's a program you're going to use. You you click here. You use this button here and right here it plays it and that's it." Well, some of our students might need more than that. They need to understand that it's not just about pressing play and listening and zoning out. No, that's not what text to speech is. With text to speech, we need to also focus on active reading even if we're just listening. So um we need to consider the students needs and what will be the best fit for them. Um, so some of the questions we got uh during our presentation were about documentation and what documents need to be sub submitted. What we have been told is that they need an educational a psychoeducational report from the last 2 to 3 years. That's what they're looking for. Uh an assessment that has been done by a professional and the report needs to include the accommodations and also the rationale for the accommodations so that the college knows what to apply and why they are applying it, what they're looking for. Um, I was asked about whether an ISP uh from a private school or an IP or a 504 would be sufficient. Uh, yes, the the colleges will accept that, but what they're really looking for are those um assessments, those psychoeducational assessments. Uh so some other colleges uh that I would like to briefly mention and to kind of keep in mind are Landmark which is a college on the east coast that focuses on students with disabilities with um academic disabilities. Santa Clara is a wonderful small liberal arts college here in California. Wheaten, a great li uh small liberal arts college on the east coast and uh the University of Iowa, the Bell & Blank uh center which focuses on two students and also that uh center has a year-long bridge program. Um so a question we got was about uh taking a gap year or using a bridge program. Absolutely. Um I feel that that is very necessary because what we want to do is we want to make sure that when the student does go to college that they are ready and prepared for it. So um using that gap year for a year-long bridge program such as that or having them take classes online or uh somehow elevate their skills. Absolutely very positive. Um, so that is my presentation and if you have any comments, any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. My website is eaforped.com or you can email me at rosa4sped.com. Thank you so much. AI Summary Educator Advocate for Special Education – College Planning for 2E Students Rosa Varela, an education advocate and former 25-year teacher, presents on planning the college path for twice-exceptional (2E) and three-times-exceptional (3E) students. Admissions Approach Rosa's organization focuses on highlighting the strengths of neurodiverse students — their creativity, empathy, determination, and high potential. Rather than hiding academic challenges, they tell the student's full story, framing their journey of adversity and resilience as an asset that colleges value. How They Support Students They work with students from the very beginning, building academic, executive functioning, and social skills early so students are college-ready. This includes K-12 IEP advocacy, tutoring with observation-based feedback, researching assistive technology (AT), and communicating directly with college accessibility offices to ensure accommodations are in place before students arrive. The Gap Year Philosophy They view the gap year not as a setback but as valuable time for a 2E student's asynchronous development to catch up. Bridge programs, online classes, and skill-building during this time are strongly encouraged. Results Students have been accepted to UC schools, elite small liberal arts colleges like Colby, Russell Group universities including Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and competitive technical colleges. Key Takeaways Holistic admissions processes benefit neurodiverse students Passion projects are central to strong college applications Colleges do implement accommodations because student retention matters to them Required documentation typically includes a psychoeducational assessment from the last 2-3 years Notable college resources for 2E students include Landmark College, University of Iowa's Bell & Blank Center, Santa Clara University, and Wheaton College

It's that time of year and there are a hundred things to do. But I'd like to ask you to put this one near the top of your list: take a moment to check in with your child and their teachers. Over the past year, you've all learned a lot about what works. Now is the perfect time to capture that knowledge before summer slips by, so you can carry it into the new school year. Where Do We Begin? Let's start by talking about what helped your child in the classroom this year. Wouldn't it be wonderful to begin next fall already knowing which accommodations made a real difference, and to have your child feeling confident and prepared to share that with a new teacher? The goal right now is simply to gather data. Data that will be valuable later. The first thing I'd recommend is locating the list of accommodations that were requested for your child's classroom this year, or a copy of their IEP. This list will serve as your jumping-off point for conversations with both your child and their teachers. If you don't have that list handy, you may need to search back through emails from teachers. One habit I've found helpful is creating a dedicated folder in my email labeled "Classroom Accommodations.", any time accommodations are discussed, that communication goes straight into that folder. It's useful not only for this end-of-year exercise, but throughout the school year as well. Whenever you can record it, do. Once you have the list, copy and paste it into a document and you're ready to begin. Talking with Your Child I recommend keeping this conversation low-stakes, maybe over dinner or while helping with homework one evening after school. Here's how I typically approach it: "It's the end of the school year, and I want to gather some information about what worked for you, as far as your accommodations go. At the beginning of the year, we asked for [A, B, C], and then remember in the middle of the year we thought [X] might help too. Did you find any of these helpful?" Then listen. This is truly an information-gathering exercise, not a moment for judgment. The end of the year is stressful for everyone, and the goal here is clarity, not pressure. You might want to go through the list one by one. For example: "At the beginning of the year, we requested extra time on tasks. Did your teachers use that this year? Which classes? Which teachers? Did you find it helpful?" You may get some interesting data. For instance, your child might share that they really needed and used extra time on English exams, but felt completely fine without it in math. You don't have to do anything with that information right now. Just take notes as you chat. Here are a few more guiding questions to help your child reflect on their accommodations from this past year: Which accommodations did you actually use, and which ones didn't come up? Were there any times you needed support but didn't have it? Was there anything a teacher did that really helped, even if it wasn't officially on the list? Reaching Out to Teachers Now let's do something similar with teachers. Email is probably your best option, since it's nearly impossible to catch a teacher one-on-one during these busy final weeks. The approach is the same: share the list of accommodations that were requested this year and ask the teacher which ones they felt were helpful for your child's success. Also ask if there's anything not on the list that they feel made a positive difference. I'll share a personal example: one year when I asked a teacher this question, she mentioned that she and my high schooler had set up a weekly check-in during a shared open period. It started as a way to catch missing assignments or flag anything my child needed help with, but what struck me was how much more comfortable and confident my child seemed in that subject by the end of the year. That check-in wasn't on any formal accommodation list, but it was gold. It was an absolutely helpful idea worth carrying forward as a possibility to use for more challenging upcoming classes. Email Template Here's a starting point you can adapt for each teacher: Dear Mr./Ms. [Teacher's Name], I hope you're doing well as the school year wraps up. I want to sincerely thank you for your time and dedication this year. [Child's Name] was in your [Class Name], and we truly appreciate everything you put into teaching and supporting your students. As we head into summer, I'd love to take a few minutes to gather some feedback that will help us prepare for next year. At the start of this school year, we had a list of accommodations in place to help [Child's Name] be successful in your class. Would you be willing to take a quick look at the list below and share whether you felt each accommodation was helpful, and whether [Child's Name] used it or not? All of this is valuable information, and there are no wrong answers. (Examples) Accommodations used this year: Whenever possible, all written content, reading assignments, etc. provided as a digital copy; when a digital copy was unavailable, the student can use an alternative (such as using their digital reading pen) Extra time, or time outside of class, to read non-digital content Permission to use headphones during work time to listen to digital text or content being covered in class Is there anything else you can think of, any strategies or adjustments you made, that you felt helped [Child's Name] thrive? I would truly appreciate your thoughts, and I hope you have a wonderful summer break. Warm regards, [Your Name] Feel free to tailor each email to the specific teacher and subject, or copy and paste the template and simply ask the teacher to comment on the accommodations that applied to their class. What to Do with All of This All of this information, including your notes from the conversation with your child and the responses from teachers, will be incredibly useful when you sit down before the new school year to think about what your child needs to thrive. Save everything in one folder and go enjoy your summer. Because next fall, you'll be able to walk into that first conversation with a new teacher and say: "My child found A, B, and C to be really helpful accommodations, and they do well when they're able to do X, Y, and Z." Or better yet, your child will have the data they need to self-advocate. Imagine them sending an email at the start of the school year that says: "Hi [Teacher], I'm looking forward to your class. I wanted to introduce myself and share a couple of accommodations that have made a real difference in my learning. In past classes, I've found it really helpful when I'm able to [X and Y], and I do my best work when [Z]." But that's a conversation for another day. For now, drop everything in a folder, take a breath, and feel good knowing you're just a little more prepared for next year. Enjoy your summer, you've earned it.

If Stanford educational psychologist Sam Wineburg is right that historical thinking is a “unnatural act”—a set of cognitive moves that seemingly run against the grain of how human minds actually work—then modern schooling might deserve the same description (1). We tend to imagine that school, like breathing, is just something humans do. But the institution we send our kids to every morning is a surprisingly recent invention, built for a very specific kind of learner. The School That History Built Mass public schooling in the United States took its modern shape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reformers imported the age-graded classroom from Prussia—students sorted by birth year, moving in lockstep through a standardized sequence—as a practical solution to a new challenge: how to educate large numbers of children across a growing nation. Stanford historians of education David Tyack and Larry Cuban called the durable structures that emerged the “grammar of schooling.” This organizational logic has persisted across more than a century of reform. Bell schedules, graded cohorts, classroom layouts and expectations became so familiar they stopped looking like design choices. They became simply how we imagined what school meant (2). That grammar works reasonably well for many students. For 2e learners, the fit is often harder. Understanding why can change everything about how parents approach the situation. My Own 2e Journey I'm a historian, academic coach, and former high school teacher who works with 2e students. I'm also, I eventually learned, a 2e person myself. I attended a gifted elementary program and made it through college largely on the strength of what I could do on tests. But daily work was a different story. Homework felt detached from purpose. Preparing in advance felt nearly impossible. My report cards used the same language over and over: “talkative,” “disruptive,” “needs to apply himself.” What they were describing, without the language to say so, was a kid whose curiosity and resistance to what felt like arbitrary demands looked, from the institution’s vantage point, like defiance. The same qualities that would eventually lead me to become a historian and an academic and executive functioning coach were the ones school kept trying to correct. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 22, headed to graduate school. By then I had built my own systems without knowing that’s what I was doing. What I hadn’t yet found was a way to reflect on what I actually needed and why, and to understand my own relationship to the demands school kept making without explanation. What changed things was a college professor who took an interest in me. Not in my affect in the classroom, but in me. She asked questions instead of issuing corrections. She created space for the kind of reflection that turns confusion into comprehension. That experience is what eventually drew me to teaching and later coaching. What the Mismatch Actually Looks Like The 2e students I work with are not struggling with something natural. They are navigating something specific, constructed, and historically contingent. Schools were not only designed around a specific learner profile that many of them don’t match, they’ve often attempted to sort students based on preconceived ideas about their future potential. The child who is reading three grade levels ahead and has difficulty juggling multiple different assignment formats or submission expectations is experiencing a structural problem, not a personal one. The report card that says she needs to “apply herself” is the grammar of schooling describing a mismatch as a deficit. But what school tends to read as disengagement or noncompliance is often something closer to intellectual integrity, a need for meaning that the everyday grammar of schooling often can’t answer. The strength I recognize most in my students is also the one that schools have a tendency to misread. Tests have legible stakes, a clear reason to prepare, a visible finish line, a consequence that makes sense. Students can still struggle under those favorable circumstances. Homework, preparation, the slow accumulation of daily work require internalizing an institutional logic that school assumes students will absorb naturally. Many do. 2e learners often don’t, not because they lack ability or motivation, but because the connection between effort and meaning hasn’t been made visible to them. That isn’t a character flaw. To me, it’s a demand for something better, and it’s exactly what good support systems can recognize and help provide for them. The Takeaway Your 2e child’s demand for meaning, for purpose, and for understanding why are exactly the questions good teaching has always tried to answer. Schools today have more tools than ever for meeting the needs of students like yours, and teachers and administrators who understand 2e learners often find that designing for them makes learning better for everyone. The more parents understand what strengths their child actually brings, and how to interpret the grammar of schooling, the better equipped they are to participate in these conversations as partners rather than petitioners. 1 Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002). 2 Tyack and Cuban developed the concept of the “grammar of schooling” in Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). Cuban built on that idea in The Enduring Classroom: Teaching Then and Now (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2023). About the Author Maxwell J. Greenberg is a historian of American education and an academic and executive functioning coach specializing in twice-exceptional learners. For more on his coaching, visit www.maxwelljgreenberg.com or reach out directly at maxwelljgreenberg@gmail.com or at 415-340-2284.

One of the top concerns from our REEL community is how to support anxiety in 2e (twice-exceptional) learners, with 65% of survey respondents sharing that their child struggles with anxiety. With so many treatment options available, how can parents decide which path to take? Join our expert panel of psychologists and therapists to explore several effective approaches. Dr. Kari Berquist will discuss the SPACE program, Dr. Bradley Siu will introduce DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), and Toni Ratzburg, LMFT, will share insights on integrative perspective therapy, , where therapists interweave different approaches based on the specific needs and personalities of the client. This approach is focused on the relationship, collaboration, and the strengths of the client and clinician. The panel will also cover when to seek professional therapy versus techniques that can be implemented at home. We'll leave ample time for your questions to help you feel confident in choosing the best support for your child. Read the transcript here Welcome everyone to the final real Speaker series. Event of 2024 navigating anxiety into e-learners, therapy options and home strategies. We're so excited to have our guests here and to have you here just in case you're not familiar with real. We are a local nonprofit that strives to ensure Silicon Valley. Twice exceptional students thrive in school, and we host events such as this for parents. And we also do professional development for educators. So if you're here. You're probably familiar with twice exceptionality. But just in case we'll talk about the definition we like to use that comes from bridges. We think of 2 e. As learners who have both distinguishing strengths, high abilities or potential in one or more areas and complex challenges, such as dyslexia, adhd autism, and anxiety among others, and these combine with what we like to call to make a green learner. So they are exhibiting the strengths and the challenges at the same time, and you can't teach to one or the other. You have to meet the learners at both ends of their of the spectrum, and so it makes them quite a complex learning profile which can cause anxiety. And so we'll be talking more about that tonight. If you visit our website at real 2 e.org. We have recordings of all our previous events. We have a lot of articles that were written by various experts. We have downloadable guides and many things all organized by topic for you, so that you can learn more about whatever interests you about twice exceptionality. and just to let you know about some of our upcoming events. We have a bi-monthly parent support group that the dates here are the next ones that we will be meeting in. We are going to have a panel of writing experts talking about writing solutions for 2 E-learners in January we will celebrate neurodiversity celebration week with an amazing student panel. and we are also going to have someone speaking about executive functioning at home and in school. About specifically for twice exceptional learners. You can Rsvp for all these events at real 2 e.org. We are also part of a group of organizations that is hosting the Neurodiversity Speaker Series, who is going to host an event about thinking differently, about social uses of media for neurodivergent youth. You can attend this talk and see all the recordings of the previous talks that have been hosted. There's some really amazing speakers on there at neurodiversityspeakerseries.org. In addition, real hosts, a Google group that now has 800 parents in it who ask and answer questions for each other, suggest resources, and vent and commiserate together, so you can feel free to join our group. I think Kelly will put the link in the chat for you. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and all of our previous recordings are on our Youtube Channel real in partnership with our educational advisors. Created a model that talks about how these 4 petals can help your 2 e-lear learn at school and thrive, and we bring this workshop to school. So if you'd like us to present at your school about this, or learning different simulations, or many other topics related to 2 E learners. Please let us know. We also wanted to let you know that we have a free 46 page guide to Iep specifically for twice exceptional students. It is for the California Bay area, although most of it is applicable anywhere, and it has a lot of great resources to overcome the challenges in getting ieps for twice exceptional learners. And we are very lucky tonight to have 3 amazing speakers. And so I would like to just give you a brief bio of each one, and then we'll get started. So Dr. Carrie Berquist has worked with neurodivergent children and their families for over 20 years. She is a pediatric, developmental behavioral psychologist with training from Uc. San Diego, Claremont, Graduate University and Stanford School of Medicine. She is a licensed psychologist in the State of California and a Board certified Behavioral Analyst. She's a private practice in Menlo Park, and is an adjunct clinical assistant professor at Stanford University School of medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She's also a former consultant and advisor to technology based companies in the area and on the editorial board for the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities. Her clinical work focuses on teaching parents of autistic children and those with neuro differences of all varying lived experiences how to facilitate meaningful change in the home, at school and community settings across the lifespan. Her approach to therapy is an individualized, strength-based approach that combines developmental theory and naturalistic teaching strategies based on the principles of behavioral science. Dr. Berquist believes in collaboration with children and parents to develop meaningful goals from a neurodiversity, affirming lens whenever possible. Dr. Berquist uses children's passions and interests to learn and grow. Dr. Bradley, Su. Is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of gifted support services in San Mateo. He brings the compassionate and healing approach to his work with individuals, couples, and families of all ages, with his wide range of experience and inviting style. Dr. Su. Creates connections that resonate with clients from children to seniors. He has a deep understanding of the complexities that individuals face, particularly those related to neurodiversity, minorities and trauma. Dr. Sue's training in neuro and biofeedback nutrition, coaching and cultures emdr. He strongly understands the dynamic interplay between biology and experience which he incorporates into his therapy practice. This knowledge is a crucial aspect of his work, helping him to understand how our biology and our experiences influence our development. and Toni Ratzberg is a marriage and family therapist who focuses on supporting gifted and twice exceptional individuals. She is the founder of beacon wellness team, a consulting group based out of San Jose and Redwood City, that brings like-minded mental health professionals together in order to empower children, teens, and parents and families through tailored, affirming, inclusive and creative therapy beacon wellness team also focuses on providing a healthy and supportive environment where clinicians can learn, grow and heal, so they can live an authentic and fulfilling life and be better able to support their clients. Tony has helped create therapist training programs, school-based therapeutic programs and is passionate about advocating for the use of sensory-based interventions within therapy. In addition, she is one of 4 gifted siblings, and the proud mom of 2 Tui children, ages 12 and 9 years old. So thank you all so much for joining us tonight. and I believe that Dr. Brad is going to kick us off. So we. Awesome. PIN, spotlight, you. Oh, okay, I get this. Okay. Well, thank you all. Thank you for the introduction. I really appreciate being here. Okay. And as we jump in. We're talking about anxiety. There's so much to cover, and I just want to take a moment for everyone here who is just taking the time to spend with us, to learn, just to take a deep breath. to become a part of the moment. And this breath is also for me, too, as I'm about to jump in. And as we talk about taking a deep breath, I just want to highlight. One thing is that oftentimes, when we say, take a deep breath. Our breath in is only as good as our exhale. So I like to help people understand that exhaling is actually more important than the inhale. So take a deep exhale and a big inhale. Okay, so I'm excited to launch into this. And as I talk about anxiety with 2 EI want to bring together 2 critical areas of focus that can help us understand the landscape of anxiety in twice exceptional children and teens or twice exceptional individuals of all ages. These are young people who not only have exceptional cognitive abilities, but also face unique neurodevelopmental challenges, and this creates a distinct profile that makes them more vulnerable to heightened anxiety. Okay, so the 2 perspectives that I'm going to be jumping into is, first, st the underlying physiological mechanisms that shape their nervous system and the neurological responses. And then, on the other end, the broader social, cultural, and existential factors that contribute to their anxiety. So hopefully, this offers a holistic understanding of why this population might be struggling with how struggling with anxiety, and and maybe some avenues, and how we can support them, or at least just understand them better. So when we think about anxiety and twice exceptional kids, it's easy to focus on their cognitive strengths and challenges. But to truly grasp what's happening. We need to dig deeper into their physiological and neurological aspects. So the 1st thing I want to talk about in terms of their physiology and neurology that's wired differently is that they respond more intensely to stress and stimuli. So, for example, we know that we so 1st thing I want to leverage is Dr. Dabrowski's work on over excitabilities. So in many 2 E. Individuals that exhibit this over excitability, there's a heightened response across various domains, such as intellectual, emotional, and sensory overexcitabilities. So these heightened sensibilities, sensitivities can be a source of strength. but they can make them also really susceptible to anxiety, so intellectual sensitivity. So they have a relentless drive for knowledge, constantly thinking through complex problems, anticipating potential issues. But the flip side is that with this ability to think quickly and think deeply. It leads them into a cycle of rumination because their minds work. So spark so quickly. Okay, then emotional sensitivity. So they might be more emotionally reactive. And this is just all wired within. You know their nervous system. So with this over, maybe over expressiveness of emotionality, without the emotional self management skills that you know, really, executive functions are required to execute on a self management skills. Then what happens is that they become overwhelmed easily. So this intense feelings start to escalate into anxiety. and then sensory sensitivities or sensory overexcitabilities, being hyper, aware of all their sensory stimuli from what they hear what they feel. What they, what what's touching their skin can lead to, you know, quickly to overload, or their nervous system. So there's a couple of other things that are important to think about in terms of what's unique about this population when it comes to anxiety, is that there's a negativity bias. Now, we all know that that the brain naturally skews towards noticing potential dangers. This is the. This is more prominent in twice exceptional kids as they're amplified that this is amplified because of their ability to recognize patterns, their ability to have internal algorithms that memorize anxiety, notice the patterns and conditions that that created this unwanted event. And then, when that when when they put those things together, they're quickly able to recognize. Oh. you know, 3 years ago this was something that led me into an unwanted situation, or I was embarrassed, or I felt bad, and I, recognizing this pattern again. So, in order for me to prepare. you know. For this danger. my nervous system is going to start to react. And also with the analytical mind, it unfortunately also means that they're analyzing themselves, and analyzing usually means self judgment, self criticism, self evaluation, that oftentimes just continues to go and go. And again, it requires executive functioning to put the brakes on this type of analytical self, evaluative cycle. I am. Let's see, one of the other things that that's important to talk about is the vagal nerve and vagal nerve tone. So for many twice exceptional kids, they have lower vagal nerve tone. So that's the 10th cranial nerve that is responsible for relaxing and calming the body. Okay, so it makes it harder for their bodies to get out of fight or flight, and it leaves them stuck in this state of anxiety. The other thing about the vagal nerve tone is this gut brain connection is the information from the gut. So what's happening in the abdomen? The tension, the discomfort. It sends the messages up to the brain. Okay? And then telling them that they're in an uncomfortable situation. Further triggering anxiety. And the way the vagus nerve is is that the vagus nerve communicates in both directions. So it's 1 of the few nerves that actually goes up and down where there's there's a lot of like sensory information where it'll send information up this way from my body to my brain. So the vagus nerve is also responsible for sending information from my brain to my body. And that's basically in the form of it's okay for me to relax. It's okay to calm down right now. Okay, so if that's a little bit underactive or less developed. Okay, then it's harder to to, you know, to get those messages down to the body. Okay. The other area that I want to talk about that is particularly important when it comes to gifted twice exceptional individuals is that they have a heightened sensitivity and awareness. Okay, around the social, cultural, global influences, political influences, political happenings all around, you know, not only in America, but all around the world. So they understand that this world is is really. you know, well connected. They have information from, you know, all across the planet right now. So, with easy access to real time information. Today's twice exceptional kids are constantly exposed to global news that includes climate change, political situations that I mentioned, or systemic and social injustice. And as they're absorbing all this information and also internalizing it, and it's hard for them to process or to make sense or to make meaning out of this. So this awareness, so the gifted ability to understand complex ideas leads them to feel really helpless. And of course that turns into anxieties that I understand all these things that's happening. I'm absorbing all this information. Maybe at a rate that's, you know, vastly accept accelerated compared to their their peers. So therefore they're they're experiencing and just much greater amount. The other thing is twice exceptional. Individuals have this ability to contemplate. Okay, and that's to think. to think deeply and with contemplation comes also questioning. So they find it difficult to make meaning out of their lives. So they're searching for meaning. But of course, with all the stuff that's happening globally. So how do I make sense of this? And their minds for seeking information and seeking resolution, continues this pattern of of I want to continue to think about it. All right. So as we bring all these pieces together, okay. we have these physiological mechanisms that are inherent in the twice exceptional individual. We also have this intersection now of their ability to think deeply, and to contemplate, to absorb information, and to receive information all around the world that makes them really powerless and helpless. And it really pulls from meanings like, what what's going to be left of this planet? and these are deep things that they spend a lot of time thinking about. So with all those things. Their susceptibility to anxiety is just. You know, that much higher I am. So that's those are my thoughts on why, twice exceptional individuals, you know, you know, fall into this anxiety category much more readily. Alright. So I want to hand it back to you guys. Thank you so much. I all of the things you said really resonated with me and my own children. So thank you. And then next up we have. We are already starting to get some interesting questions in the chat, and next up is Tony talking about when to look what to look for in a therapist when you might need a therapist, so I will let Tony take it away. And, Tony, you are still muted. Just so, you know. There we go. Forgot to click that button is everything sharing. Okay, can you guys see it? Okay, great. I just 1st want to thank everyone for being here tonight. Real for inviting me and it's an honor to get to be part of this tonight. My goal tonight is to share a few different ideas that can really help on that journey. When you're trying to figure out what to do to help support your child and what to do in the moment when they're feeling anxious. So I'm going to 1st look at a little bit of what can you do for anxiety at home. And then what do you start looking for in a therapist things that might be more successful than others, and then share a little bit about the perspective that I take in my practice, which is what I call integrative therapy and kind of like Dr. Brad. I thought I could use a little bit of calming myself a little grounding. So I thought we would start with an activity. This one is a very classic grounding activity that we do a lot with clients and a lot of times it's called 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 but what you do right now is just kind of look around. Notice 5 things that you can see in your space that really you weren't paying attention to before we started talking. And before I brought this up. you know. Following same kind of idea is 4 things that you can feel or you can touch. and 3 things that you can hear. This one might be tricky, depending on where? Where you're doing the meeting. But 2 things you can smell and then finish up with one thing you can taste, and you don't have a taste in your mouth. You can always take a sip of water, and just kind of notice what that feels like as you swallow it. So Hi. go ahead and see. There we go. Okay, I thought we should start with just things to do at home. I will tell you. My slides have a lot of text in them, because I just couldn't figure out what to take out. But they're they're definitely very wordy. So I can share. So people can look at it later. It's I don't want to talk all the talking points, but I'd love for you guys to be able to to look at it more closely in the future. So one of the things I really think is important to hit on 1st is you've got to take care of yourself. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of your child, and yes, you can, soldier on for a long time, but you're also not modeling healthy management and self-care. So if you take care of yourself, you're better able to take care of them. and you can also use yourself as a tool to let your children overhear you working through your emotions or your challenges, that lets them start to play with ideas, internalize it, just start to think about it, and they learn from what you're doing. They also realize that, hey? Some of these emotions I'm experiencing actually pretty normal. They're not so scary. So that's kind of you. You start, you start with it, you take care of you, and then you can start thinking about what can we do to help with their anxiety, and an easy thing you can do is take one of their interests and try to connect it to it. My favorite example of this is, if they love Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione are fantastic anxiety characters, and there's seen in the movie scenes in the books, and a lot of times. They'll talk about it if they like the characters. You can also relate a lot of the pokemon pokemon to different anxiety and feelings as well. So something I want to share, which actually, I think I did share in a previous talk we did with real. But it's something I love to do to help kids and teens practice in social anxiety, coping and learn advocacy skills. And it's taking them out to hot cocoa. And so you start where they go in and you model how to place an order. They get this fun delicious time in connection with you. And then they start to learn. Okay, what do I do? How do I? You know, how do I do that? They start to practice it. You have them start to order it, interact with the Baristas, you know. Say hello to people, and then get them to where they can make their own order and build on it where they actually you know, make purposeful mistakes, or they can make changes while they're ordering it. Just, you know things where they have to go. Okay, it's not always exactly the same way, but I can handle it a lot of times. You can get their buy in for something like that, because it's fun. They're going out, and they're doing something with you. The other thing I like to stress is to use play and humor when you can. You can help them make it fun to, you know, or more fun to confront emotions or to talk about them. But you have to be really careful. You don't want it to fall into the part where they feel like you're teasing them. But a lot of kids really respond to, you know something lighter and like, you know oh, here, you know, here's anxiety again. Decided to show up today. so keeping it light helps. See? I'm trying. I don't want to spend too long, because I know we have a lot of great stuff, but when you're supporting your 2 E. Child with anxiety, focus on their strengths first, st and then that helps them feel safer to take risks and to practice things, but it also honors who they are. And you can kind of take any information you find out there from these kind of presentations or from books and say, You know, what is it that my child needs? Okay? And I just want to take a moment to focus a little bit on. 2 things, I think, are very important for our children, and that's connection and co-regulation with connection. It's something they all want. They all want to have a connection with their parents, and that might look different sometimes it might be a 2 second Hello, and other times. It's like a couple hours of here we are. We're playing together, and we're doing activities. If you help with connection, they're going to feel safer. They're going to feel like they belong. They're going to learn a lot more, and they're going to learn to adapt to things. If they have that secure attachment with you. It's easier to get them to try uncomfortable things with you. And also, when things are really hard and you don't know what to do. Go back to connection. Say, what can I do there? And that can help your child? Co-regulation is also an incredible tool that parents have. But it's a really hard tool, because it's often at the end of the night when we're stressed and we're tired that our children need us to be the most regulated to help them. But if we do our own work we take care of ourselves. it can be fantastic. Co-regulation is really letting them borrow your regulated feelings so that they can learn to cope and manage with their emotions. I've got a QR. Code here in the slide, but I also think I sent a link over. I think you can get that into the chat. It's just a short article that I created with Gina Garcia, another marriage and family therapist, and it's more details of how can you do co-regulation? Okay, now, I'm going to jump into therapy, and I think it's important to acknowledge that everybody here is probably at a different space. You know, if you're a parent, you are might be in a season of parenting where you're like, okay, noticing this is happening. Thinking about it. I think it's hard for my kid. I want to think you know, what can I do? And then others might be on this other side where they're going. I just did an assessment, and I have a million recommendations that I have to sift through, and I just don't know where to start which one to prioritize. And there's probably a few people, too, who are kind of like, Hey, been through all this stuff, and I'm just sure not what else. You know. What else do we do? How else can I help my child? Because it still still needs some adjustment? So when you're starting to think about what to do. And you're considering therapy. You want to consider a few different things, how they're experiencing anxiety. What is that physical experience of it? Has it changed? Is it impacting their quality of life, keeping them from being able to do things they like? It's easy for us as adults to guess what they might be feeling. But we want to engage and really ask them how they're feeling with it. And I think I put it there first.st Yeah is, if they ask you for therapy, please please follow up with that. A child doesn't ask for therapy unless they think that it could help them, and on the other side of it. If you say my child would benefit from someone other than me a safe place, a person that they can talk to. That's another good reason to move towards finding a therapist. And the most important thing, if you're ever concerned about your child's safety. So whether it's self harm, suicidal thoughts. Anything like that. You've got that. That's a big indicator that's a huge green light to say, go talk to someone, try to get some more support around them. You think I'm gonna there we go. I just want to touch on the fact that there's a lot of different approaches to therapy. And everyone. even within, like, maybe the same approach puts their own spin on it because we're all unique individuals. And it's also important to remember that not everyone has training or experience, with twice exceptionality or neurodiversity, and they might look at things in a very different way. So when you get recommendations or you're looking, what should I do for anxiety? How to help my child? Something I know, I hear in my practice a lot is that the 1st thing parents find is. Cbt, that's what everyone tells them. Go, do. Cbt, go do. Cbt, and what I actually find with Cbt is, it can be great for some people, but it's not always the best approach for someone who is neurodiverse, and that's because it might encourage them to mask. It might bring up a huge, strong resistance from them, so they either want to write off therapy. They don't want to talk about it, or they're just kind of like. No, don't go there, and I don't want to spend my time trying to get someone to want to do the method. I want them to do the work that they want to do. So be careful when you're going with things you want to think about, who's making recommendations, research things research. If you if you find an approach, and you know, throw it into Google and say, how does this work with someone who is twice exceptional or ask another professional? And they can tell you like what they have seen, what they've noticed and what they think about it. There's no simple answer for what the best treatment approach is. But I think neurodiversity, affirming care is essential. If you have a twice exceptional child, this is what you need to be looking for, because it really looks to empower your child. Let them know their strengths, and then that can help them navigate their challenges and affirming care really looks as neurodivergent. It's like a natural variation of our human brains. It's not a disorder, it's not a deficiency. And you're going to see interventions that will emphasize acceptance, strength, compassion, and support, because that's the root of what this is. It's tailored to their needs. It's tailored to who they are, and it considers how they access information and how they experience their world. So if you're looking for care, also try to consider finding what neurodivergent voices recommend and what they've thought. So this might be your child if they've had some experiences, or you can find great articles and blog posts and conversations from neurodiverse people who say, Hey, when I was a child, this is what I went through, and this is what it felt for me. And so just, you know, slow the process down when you're trying to figure it out and take a little bit of time to research it and think about who your child is and what they would feel best with. Okay, I need to take a breath. I'm sorry, you guys, I'm talking fast. So when we're trying to find a therapist, it can be really hard and really frustrating, especially right now. There is a mental health crisis. We don't have a lot of availability of professionals. And I keep hearing from people that they don't even get phone calls back sometimes when they're trying to find someone and just ask to say, like, Do you have availability? So it's hard. And then that might make you want to just jump and say, Okay, the 1st person who does have space. Let's get my kid in there. Let's just get it going. Let's make progress with it, but I think it's really important to find the right fit for your child. If it's the wrong fit, it can have heavy consequences. And you know that might be that they won't go back to therapy, or they won't engage with it. So trying to find the right one is so important, and they best way you can do that is, you ask yourself and your child if you can feel connected, this person, and you can trust them. If the answer is, no, they're not the right person for you. And that's okay. There's a lot of people in this world, and there's a lot of therapists in this world, and so finding someone who does connect and that you can trust is very important. It's also important that if you don't trust the therapist, but you feel like your child does or might work. You've got to really stay mindful of that, because you don't want your child to pick it up from you, and then start to question therapy or question their trust of the therapist is incogruent. If you can be with your child the better. It is the other thing you want to think about is a therapist who will listen and collaborate with you, not someone who's going to tell you everything that you should do so when they're listening and they're responding. You also want to make sure they're communicating in a way that works for you and for your child. It's really important as parents that we have access to the therapist. Even if we're we're not in the room every time that they're together, we need to know that we can pick up that phone. We can send an email. We can call them. And you know, there's a long list here of other things, too. But I do want to mention that if you get through all of this you find a therapist and say, Okay, I think this checks the boxes. They're affirming they're listening. They seem to get this. This feels really good. Then I would honestly start to consider, okay, what are their experiences and what are their accomplishments. I wouldn't even go there until you check off the other things, because I think that is so important to find someone that you can trust and can build that relationship. The other thing to think about when you're finding a therapist is you want your child to be able to go in and not be masked. and yes, there's times they might protect themselves. They may not be fully open. That might be a session that might be a season, but if they want out of therapy. They're going to figure out how to do it, and if they can figure out what the therapist wants to hear, they can make that happen. The therapist is going to say, Oh, all is great. You don't need to be here. And then your child actually probably in a worse space. Because now they're like, Okay, well, I went to this professional. They didn't get it. Now who can help me? What do I do? So that's another reason, looking at someone who you can connect with you can trust, and that gets it. A few red flags to work to look at. I'm kind of laughing, because there's a lot of these on here that I took off. But there's so many things to to think about. But one of the big things is, if someone dismisses your child's experience or your experience. The classic example would be like, all children are gifted. So I don't take into account giftedness or you know I don't deal with this. I don't think about this. You just want to make sure that you agree with what they're saying. You also want to check yourself. It says someone who says, I've seen it all. I know how to do it, or they're really rigid in their approach. They may not provide the flexibility that your 2 child needs to be successful in therapy. You, if they're not willing to get, take feedback, or they start to get defensive. If you ask questions, or you kind of push back share some ideas. That's another red flag to say, Okay, this might not be the right person for me. Once you've found a therapist, then you've got a couple of steps that you do, and this will be, you know, unique to your situation, but also the professional that you're talking with. We all have our own process, but in general it's going to start with an intake or a consultation conversation. You're going to share some information. There might be some assessments and questionnaires. the professional gathers information and you share information and you ask information about them. You go. This feel, does this feel right? Is this aligning correctly? And if it is, and you say, Okay, this is a good fit. Let's go forward. Then you're actually gonna also start to do more paperwork and get to do a little bit more historical because a lot of times we like to know a little bit, but we like to get to know the child for who they are and what they bring into the room. We don't want the entire download history of who they are the 1st time we meet them. so you also need to take some time to decide. What is this going to look like? Is it going to be individual therapy which would be a therapist? And your child is family therapy as a group of peers. And then what's the frequency look like? Is it once a week, once a month, or do they actually need a higher level of care of that? And the therapist should guide you through this process. They should give you a recommendation. They should talk about it, and ideally you do what's in the best interest. Sometimes scheduling is an issue trying to make everything work. And so you have to get around it. But if you feel like this person is hearing the need, and being present with you, they'll let you know if they need to adjust anything with their frequency. See if there's anything else I wanted to share with this part that's pretty good. Oh, I did want to mention with parents involved in therapy. It's really up to you. You can talk about it. Some therapists will naturally include you. Bring you in, for some check-ins have regular parent meetings, others won't, and others will kind of let let it roll out and play out, depending on what's going on and what your child likes. So if you have a preference, if you say I really want to be involved. Talk with the therapist before you start, define what that is, or if at some point you have like kind of a question like, Hey, I want to change this up. That's okay to ask, too. Sometimes we just don't know if therapy is working. And as a parent we go. Is this the right approach. What are we doing? You know? And we feel like, Okay, well, we've invested a lot. We want to stay the course. But is that the right thing to do. So when you start to feel like that, I always recommend talk to your child. See how they're feeling about it. If they're feeling similarly, or if they're completely different, that's going to inform what you do. It's also a great time to have a meeting with the therapist, and just say, What do you think? Here's what I'm hearing? Here's what I'm seeing, and if you've chosen that right therapist, they're going to be open to having that conversation with you. They're going to want that conversation because we don't want to waste your children's time. We want them to get the skills that they need, and to feel confident and be able to go out and do their life. Something to please keep in mind is that with twice exceptional individuals, therapy can sometimes look different. The pacing might be different. It might be slower. There might be some times where things are going, really, really, intensely. And then they pull back. And that. That's okay. That's a normal part of the process. But if you do start to feel like you need to make a change. And you've gone through things. You talk to everybody. That's okay, start looking for a therapist or start exploring it. And also consider, is there something you could do? Could your own therapy. Help your child. If if you were to engage in that. then just a few more thoughts to share with you guys is integrative therapy. So this is an approach that I use in my practice. And really what it does is, it interweaves different elements of therapeutic approaches, so that I can create a tailored experience for my client. So it's not just, hey, what are their interests? But it's what makes sense to them. What do they relate to? What do they like. It's very strength based. It's client-centered. And so there's a strong emphasis on the therapeutic relationship. And the connection, I see it very aligned with neuroaffirming practices because it's really honoring who the person is. It's leaning into that instead of the mode of operation. We, when we're working like this, we're going to observe what are their reactions. We're going to kind of test things out, or we're going to present them with ideas. And we're going to ask them what they need, what they like, so that they get the most time or the best use out of their time with us. Oh. okay. And let's see, so integrative therapy. It's affirming it's inclusive. It's culturally sensitive. but it also really leaves room for both the client and the clinician. And often parents that you know, just acknowledges we're all learning, and we're all growing. And it requires some vulnerability and everyone to be able to do that because you have connection and trust things happen, and sometimes we have to talk through that. And it's a great, it's a wonderful learning experience for everyone, but especially the child. That's part of it, because it's part of being human is to normalize our strengths and our challenges. So one of the reasons I think this approach works really well with twice exceptional people is because it really helps reduce their masking in the sessions. It lets them be them. It lets them have some control, or some say they're guiding it. They're co creating what their treatment looks like with us, and we're providing information for them. It also honors who they are. A few ways I've used this approach would be use like a walk and talk where I've got them outside of the office. And we're able to not only process or talk about skills. But we're out in the community. And so there's a lot of different elements that are going on. And so we can use mindfulness to help them increase their self awareness. We can help them do some self soothing or grounding when they're in a public setting, and we're doing it in the moment while it's happening. it can also sometimes look like a client is getting their own coping skill development happening by looking at their motivation and their values. So then we can bring in some sensory based activities that help them self soothe. They start creating some habits around that. And then, as therapy continues, we give unconditional positive regards that they feel really safe to be encouraged to explore anxiety. And so we're pulling all these pieces in different ways. And we're pacing along with where they are. One fun way I've combined this is with a very active people who come into my office. I will have them take like a ball that can stick to the wall. I don't even know what you would call that, but they would throw it, and it will stick to the wall and they love it. It's fun. And so there's this play element. But then I'll combine like, Okay, I want you to think about something. And so we'll think about an emotion, or we'll think about an experience that maybe they haven't been able to or haven't wanted to process with words yet. So say, okay, think about what happened at school last week, what your mom was talking about. Now I want you to throw the ball as if your emotions were coming out of that. And so now they're using it. So it really can pull in the play therapy as well for children. Okay. that's all I've got for you guys here. But I know you got Dr. Brad and Dr. B. Who are going to follow up some amazing approaches that also work great for twice exceptional people, and I just thank you for taking the time to be here and look forward to hearing the rest of the afternoon. Thank you so much, Tony. That was amazing. very helpful. Lots of questions come up in the chat. and Dr. Brad is back up next, and then Dr. Berquist. Okay. so I'm going to talk about Dbt, and that's dialectical behavioral therapy. And Dbt is so big. And there's just so much into it. I just couldn't possibly cover everything it is. So I'm just gonna go over some highlights and and hopefully land on some takeaways for you guys. 1st of all to introduce Dbt, it stands for dialectical behavioral therapy. It's a type of cognitive behavioral therapy, and it's originally designed to help individuals who were experiencing intense emotions that were difficult to manage. And it's particularly helpful for those who are 2 E, it's a structured approach with a lot of skills and tools. It's actually a skills based approach. And it's almost to a fault where, if it's a pure Dbt it, the therapy is really talking about only about skills and how skills should have been implemented? Or how can we expertly implement a skill in a given situation or future situations or past situations? Okay, but let's jump back in to to Dbt. So, as I mentioned, Dbt comes out of Cbt, that's cognitive behavioral therapy. and one of the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy is that cognitions and behavior. So that would be challenging the way we think with cognitive distortions or thought distortions. So that's Cbt dbt. focuses and integrates dialectical thinking that is balancing the opposite. So dialectics are opposites and the big opposite for Dbt is balancing acceptance and change. So, holding 2 truths. Any 2 truths simultaneously opposed to seeing one thing as as interfering with the other thing, just simply understanding that both things are are true. Okay, so as I mentioned, is balancing acceptance and change, which I'll I'll I'll talk a little bit about that. But let's talk a little bit about some. you know, dialectics that we hold just in everyday life, and the dialectic might be so say I've eaten dinner of. I've had a number of slices of pizza the pizza tastes great. I want. I'm really full. And I want another slice of pizza. Okay, those 2 truths. Okay. in a more in a more therapeutic context. That might mean the dialectic might mean that I am really wanting to succeed. But I'm really and I'm really. you know, paralyzed by fear. So I said. But but with Dbt we replace the but with, and because we're holding both, not seeing both as opposites, so we can understand that there's for many of us, you know, in in our lives. We really want to do well. But there's so many things that are getting in the way that we're things that we're afraid of, things that we think might be you know, in opposition to wanting to do well in traditional therapy. We would think that. Well, if you are afraid of doing well, we really need to spend a lot of time just working through the fear, and once we work through the fear, the pathway would just all of a sudden appear. And that's not true. Right? With dialectical behavioral therapy, it's like you want to do. Well, we can talk about that. And you're really afraid about it. We can talk about that because those things are you know can exist perfectly together. And that's how actually, reality is. So let's talk about some so that's dialectics. Okay? So as I mentioned, Dbt is about skills and the core skills are mindfulness. Okay? So that's awareness becoming more aware. And another way of of talking about mindfulness and awareness is just noticing. Okay, it's just increasing our ability to notice things distress, tolerance. And that's a real big one. It's big in Dbt and and why it's so helpful now is because in the current in the current you know, the current thoughts is that we've become as parents. We've become really concerned that distress equals trauma. So if I have a lot, if my allow my child to experience distress, I might be allowing them to be traumatized. So then we have a multiple generations of parents saying, Well, maybe I should really just remove distress. So at least I can solve for potential of trauma. So so we have. You know. you know so many children and teenagers now. kind of not really experiencing as much as much everyday distress or or age appropriate or developmentally appropriate distress. And when I talk about distress in this way, I really do also mean Hermetic Stressors right? And Hermesis. The idea that this stress stressor or strain is actually going to make me stronger. So distress tolerance is really appropriate for this population. And emotional regulation is another big core area is what skills can we use to emotional, emotionally self-manage. And I replaced the word regulation with self-manage, because self-management is really our management of emotions is such a more active approach than regulation. Like we, we regulate like we create rules. That's where we have regulations around the the city, county and state and the country. We create regulations. We don't create regulations with ourselves, we create management. The only thing we can do with emotions is manage our emotions. Regulations like really sounds so constricting. And then it leads into all these other things around the you know, around the the misuse of the word regulation. But a big core principle is emotional self-management, and the other core principle is is interpersonal effectiveness. Okay, so I'm going to jump in a little bit into Let's see, I just want to talk about 2 things. because I want to make sure we save time for all the other speakers and the and the questions and the 2 things I want to talk about. That might be great takeaways that come out of Dbt is is the the skill called riding the wave and riding the wave is where, just just as it sounds when you're in the ocean. Okay, maybe on a on a boat, and the wave goes up or on a surfboard, and the wave goes up. and then what happens is, the wave goes up as the wave passes. Then you just go back down. Okay. So riding, the wave is about allowing emotions to come through. Okay, observing these emotions and then allowing it to pass. So 1 1 key principle that I teach. you know I teach regularly. That's related to this, for parents is is simply, as as parents are. you know, practicing distress, tolerance, practicing, riding the wave. One thing that we want to do is to allow time for the wave to come up and the wave go down is just one simple concept, and that is under react. Okay. What? What happens often is that when it comes to. you know, parents and parenting, you know. Of of course, our children are under a lot of distress. They might be struggling. We, we think they're dysregulated. But in reality, what's happening internally is they're seeking regulation. So what we want to do is under react so that they could get to regulation themselves. Okay. As parents, we only think we only see the dysregulation. But we're missing. That piece is that the dysregulation is and attempt at getting to regulation. So if we jump in so quickly to support or to maybe even empathize, then we're gonna throw off that you know that that ability to learn self management. Okay, so riding the wave. okay. underreacting is important. and those things both fall into the category of increasing distress. Tolerance. Alright. Okay. let's see. Okay, was there another one? Let's see. Okay. okay, all right. I think I'm gonna hand it over to Carrie. Oh, wait. I'm going to talk about. Oh, medications real quick. Right? Okay. So I just want to acknowledge I was just going to be a brief portion about medications. You know it's understandable that so many of us have questions about medications and and medications really pose this hope right? This hope that that we think that we're gonna be able to just reduce the, you know. You know. Just reduce the symptoms, create a better lifestyle. So it's natural, for you know, almost everyone to consider the possibility. Okay. But but, as was mentioned in the very beginning, just to clarify our roles as therapists, we don't prescribe or manage medication. So it's really outside of our scope to talk very specifically about medications. But you know I can talk a little bit about you know when to seek medications. And it really is when when we think about, you know, as a holistic and integrative provider, we think about, you know, medic. Considering medications. If all the foundational strategies don't seem to be really producing, you know the results along the journey. Okay? And and that means optimizing for sleep, optimizing nutrition, optimizing therapy. And if it doesn't reduce the severity of symptoms now, when we're talking about severity of symptoms, we're not just saying, oh, that we hope that my child's going to feel better. Maybe we hope that my child's just going to be happier. We're really looking at this this one piece is that are the symptoms getting in the way so much that it's causing an impact to everyday functioning? Is it getting in the way so that a child's not able to do what they what they are capable of doing for for their age. So if it's going to school that the symptoms are getting in the way of of going to schools, the symptoms getting in the way of of interacting with with friends and family. Now this is very. This is a little bit different from my kids able to do all these things. They're just not enjoying it, and that that because they're not enjoying it, I'm really nervous or concerned, that it's going to turn into this, this and that other thing. So therefore, we're thinking about medication. It's really, if it's getting in the way to the degree that it's impairing those things, not just comparing the enjoyment. Okay. of course, there's so many things to to consider, and I don't want to just take that my statement there, and saying, That's you know, the bar which we should we should have. It's really also to do with the length of time. Now, if someone is, you know, having those symptoms that I'm describing, but it's over many years. Then I wouldn't just say, Oh, well, you know, Dr. Brad said. There, it's fine that they don't enjoy it. We we really want to think about a big picture here, too, and a long term trajectory. The other thing that I just want to validate in your consideration is that everyone has personal beliefs about medications. Everyone has personal fears about medications. You could have religious or cultural values or belief. You should work with a psychiatrist or a pediatrician that's going to honor all those things. One of the things that. you know that's disappointing to see is that is that where where families get arm twisted, say, well, you know, depression's like a broken leg, and you have to kind of believe that that, you know. I don't think that arm twisty thing is kind of really a good way to kind of join around the the possibility that medication is going to be really helpful. But but really a person that's going to be able to honor. Say, I get it. I understand you should be concern. You should be hesitant any you know any in a, you know, empathic or validating psychiatrist to be. I understand, too, I would be in that same place, and all the questions and concerns that you have, you know, are valid. So it's a lot to navigate. Those are just some of the thoughts of you know of, what I have and how I've you know, helped families kind of navigate through the decision making process about. When is it time to to add this to? You know the the you know the toolkit? Alright. So let me. Thank you so much, Doctor. Welcome! Was super helpful. And next up we have. Dr. Burke was speaking about space, and there's been a lot of questions in the real group about space recently. So it's starting to get more popular. Thank you. Let me just figure out how to alright my gosh, my desk! Oh, I don't want that. Bye! Bye! Alright, I'm gonna talk about space. I'm really excited to talk about space because it is a new treatment that I've been doing over the last 2 years. And I really, I'm a parent trainer, parent, educator by trade, and this, I think, is, you know, especially going after and we talk about surfing the urge and riding the wave. You know, that is basically what space is. Is helping parents learn how to ride the wave and help their child learn how to regulate themselves. and I think it's been really helpful for kids who have definitely not responded to more of the like Dvt or Cbt. Or some of these more traditional like individual therapies. no, of course, it's not gonna wanna work. Okay, there we go. All right. So what is space treatment? So space stands for supportive parenting, for anxious childhood emotions. And it's an evidence-based treatment developed by Dr. Ellie Leibowitz of the Yale Child Study Center. It's as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy or Cbt, which, as you've been hearing tonight, it's actually one of the gold standards for child anxiety treatment. I would say, Dbt, and acceptance and commitment therapy are also very much in play, and those are the more individual based therapies. But this is different because it's a parent-based therapy. So, and space has been shown to be effective. For anxiety. Ocd arfid restrictive. That's the restrictive eating and failure to launch. And parents are the ones that actually go to the session. So chat children do not participate. and it focuses on actually changing the way parents respond to their child's anxiety. So the child does not have to be a willing participant, and I know this is a big issue. That and I think I saw this in the chat is, you know, and I think tony spoke to this as well is that you know, if the child is not willing to participate in therapy like therapy probably won't be very effective because they're not bought in and they might not want to. Maybe they they don't think there's anything wrong, or maybe they are fine with just how things are. And so when you're not a willing participant, those individual therapies are not really going to work. Very okay, so willingness is the key to change. But this therapy, you know, the child does not have to be willing participant. Just the parent has to be willing to participate. And there are no demands actually placed on the child to do something except with failure to launch. That's the one exception. All right? So what's the theory behind space? So space is based on the theory that child anxiety is actually an interpersonal event between the child and the parent. So humans are mammals right, and mammals are hardwired to protect their young and children are hardwired to signal to the caregiver to their parents that they need help right, and that the parents need to step in when they're distressed. particularly when the child is a baby or an infant, or a young child who can't really take care of themselves. Right? Something bad's happening. Baby's gonna be crying like, Help me help me right? And just similarly, parents are hardwired to respond to detect fear and distress cues in their children. And they also provide this regulation and soothing, which is what we were just talking about. Kind of this cool regulation helping the child manage their anxiety. So there are 2 main ways that kids cope with uncomfortable emotions. I actually like Dr. Brad's self-management because I do self-management. I believe in self-management, but all the literature is self-regulation and emotion regulation. So like, I am right behind you about like being on the charge of probably changing that but self regulation requires that willingness that I was just talking about, and if your child is not willing to take the deep breath and to like, do the things that they need to do or find something that helps them manage those really tricky, intense emotions, especially the 2 kids have. Remember, they tend to feel their emotions bigger than other people because they're more sensitive. It requires practice. They have to practice these skills, and they have to practice them when they're not dysregulated, because if they don't practice them when they're not dysregulated, they definitely can't use them when they're dysregulated right, and it requires a child to actually learn a new skill. And again, if you don't have willingness. not certain that self regulation is going to be developed. So what other systems do they have co-regulation parents helping them regulate their emotions or the environment? And, as I just said, it is absolutely essential. In the early years, when children are very young for their parents to help co-regulate them. However. if the child becomes over reliant. just like Dr. Brad said, it prevents the child from learning self-regulation. If they can't feel that distress and then figure out, what should I do? They're never going to learn how to self regulate. It absolutely helps in the short term child gets on the bus. I saw that comment, too. The child gets on the bus. The child goes right. But it the cycle actually continues. and it doesn't help in the long term. So what is the relationship between anxiety and self regulation? So just like Dr. Brad said, at the beginning of this whole talk is that we tend to see anxiety is higher in this neurodivergent population. Okay? So in the general pediatric population, we see 5 to 10% have an anxiety disorder in the neurodivergent community. We have autism, Adhd learning disabilities. We see it's much much higher right autism population. It's 40%. Adhd, it's 25 to 50 and learning disability. It's 29 ish. right? So we definitely see this higher level anxiety. And what we also know about anxiety is that when you have high anxiety and pediatric anxiety disorders, you have low self regulation. Dr. Leibowitz actually wrote this amazing chapter on this. And it's not in his newest book, but it's in this other book, and it is amazing. It's like you. Could. You could substitute it, for you know, inflexibility you could. You could substitute for anything but this understanding of how anxiety impacts one's self-regulation. And we see it in these 2 E children and neurodivergent children, we see high anxiety. And we see low self regulation, right? Because we need those executive functioning skills. Okay, so here comes the accommodation, family accommodation. So family accommodation. You're going to think about it as kind of co-regulation now, in the early years, as I said, it's very appropriate. You know, an accommodation could be like a parent orders for the child, because they can't develop mentally or due to stranger anxiety, which is normal and protective. However, as the child matures the child will begin to order for themselves, they'll be able to self regulate. Maybe the child will feel nervous, but use the strategies to order their own food in a restaurant. It's funny, because actually, Tony mentioned this as well. And then we have the anxious child now. The anxious child will have the same exact accommodation of this child on top. But maturation alone does not lead to self-regulation. The actually the so the family accommodation will persist because they won't, they just won't do it. So the parents will keep ordering for the child what to eat, despite the child's ability, because the child feels too anxious, too distressed, because it's expected. It's a rule that they've always followed. and early in the child it was absolutely adaptive. Parents need to do this, they have to do it. But now it's actually preventing the child from being independent. Okay. alright. So what are the aims of space? So the aim of space is to help children get better at handling any anxiety or distress. It's the feeling that I can handle this feeling. I can get through this situation and not have my parents rescue me and take it away. So the goal is we. The aim is that to to help them handle the feeling. and the number one is because we can't get rid of fear. Nor do we want to. We have this natural, you know. We need to know when danger is happening, so we can't get rid of anxiety. That is an unrealistic expectation to get rid of anxiety number 2. We can't control our thoughts and feelings that's not possible. So anxious thoughts and desires to have things, a certain way will always happen. So we have to just know how to handle. Okay. So the 2 main goals of space are to increase support and to decrease accommodation. I want you to think about these little weights as anxiety. The feelings of anxiety. So support is to show the child. Hey, man, I get it. Anxiety is rough, but I think that you can handle it. and I know it's tough. But look at me. I'm also showing you. I can handle it, too. But I'm not going to help you. You can handle, even though it's hard. decreasing accommodations is by, is the combination of Oh, this parent goes. Oh, I don't think my child can handle this anxiety, so I need to come in and help them. So let me help you, dear. So the goal is to decrease those kinds of accommodations that are not helpful. All right, increasing support. So support in space is very formulated. It has 2 components. The 1st is acceptance and validation of the uncomfortable feeling and confidence that the child can handle the feeling, not do the thing, not get through something. the feeling handle the feeling, and that's what support is in space. So here's an example of a supportive statement. I know it's hard when you have to order for yourself, but I believe that you can get through it. And that's what we call a supportive statement. Okay, family accommodation. So family accommodations are anything a parent says or does or doesn't say or doesn't do to prevent or stop uncomfortable feelings in their child associated with anxiety. So these are 2 examples. So one, we have what we call participatory, and one is modification, so participation and modification accommodation. So the 1st one is the is the modification. So the little kid says, No, you know, eat cereal, only eat cereal right? So then the parents like, oh, no, I'm not having these good feelings. They're gonna yell at me every time I eat my cereal, so maybe I'm going to eat my cereal before the Kid wakes up. Maybe I'm going to eat eggs. Maybe I'm going to eat something else. So the parent might start accommodating and not eating cereal in front of the child, and that would be the accommodation. Okay? And for this parent they might say, I don't care how many degrees you have. Nothing prepares you for a teen who finds their phone didn't charge overnight. Okay? So a parent might begin to, because the child gets very dysregulated. They can't get out the door. It's oh, my goodness, it's a 5 alarm. Parent might charge the child for the phone, but might charge the phone for the child. and I have done both of these in space. These have definitely been 2 accommodations I've addressed. Thanks. Here is so I use young Sheldon a lot in in in my in my treatment. Because there's so many family accommodation. Good examples in that show. Hey? Here's what happened. Was Sheldon choked on a sausage or something in the morning. And he started not eating food, not eating solid food. And so his mom decided, okay, well, we're gonna figure something out. So I'm gonna accommodate. So this is a video of her accommodating his anxiety about eating solid food. Can you hear it? You're actually cutting the crust off before you blend it. I left it on his tuna sandwich yesterday. He said he could tell. Only drank half of it. Mayor, you think this has gone on long enough. No trouble, but it'd be better if I had 2 blenders. Be better if you stopped coddling them. Well, I don't know what else to do. I suggested that we take him to some kind of professional, but you said he'd outgrow it. Well, if you're looking for a psychiatrist, I bet my new fella's related to one. What do you think? Not? Sure. If we take him to a shrink, it feels like we're admitting something's wrong with him. He hasn't had solid food in 5 weeks. Thank you. Okay. needs a few more Cheetos. Okay? So the example there of the accommodation is that she's obviously blending as food. She says that she even needs 2 blenders to make her job easier. She's cutting the crust off his food she's putting in there. She's checking it. Those are all what we would call an accommodation for the child who's experiencing anxiety. And that is how it happens. Some event could happen, and then it gets to that point. And the and a parent just doesn't know what to do. Right? So what I believe is happening is that there's this parallel process happening for parents. So on the one side, we have the child who's feeling uncomfortable. and then they say, Help me, or they're upset, or they're getting dysregulated, and they get the parents to help them take away the feeling they avoid the feeling or thought, and it maintains the anxiety. But what's happening for the parent is that the parents having an uncomfortable thought or feeling about the child having an uncomfortable thought or feeling, they want to avoid the dysregulation for themselves and for their child. They help try to take away that feeling, so they avoid the dysregulation, and that maintains the accommodation. And so we have this, what we call an accommodation track. where the child begins to have distress or worry thought about how things should be expected, and then it becomes a family accommodation. So, for example, the most common accommodation that I have that I see is answering repeated questions. Okay, so, for example, this kid, this parent, this kid, is very anxious about being late. Am I going to be late? The parent says, No, we won't be late. You'll be okay. Am I going to be late, and then the cycle continues until they get to school, and the parent goes made it. It stopped asking me these questions. Then the the parent, the child becomes reliance on the parent for regulation, the child will begin to think. The only way I can be okay is if Dad answers my questions and tells me I will be okay. The symptoms continue. And then the child continues to have the worry thought and the worry thought actually can get worse. I really hope I won't be late if I have to ask 30 times. Okay. One of the questions that was given was, that are all accommodations unhelpful? No. when it is meant to avoid more or cope less, it is unhelpful if it reinforces your child's belief that they can't cope with anxiety, or avoid situations that are likely to trigger it. It is also unhelpful, or there's no path towards independence. So here's an example of the wanting to know what time it is. excuse me. your child wants you to reassure them several times a day. You won't be late. A helpful accommodation would be. say, you respond one time each day about the time, and you provide your child access to a watch. Sorry, I'm telling you I'm overcoming a cult. It was all this talking alright, an unhelpful accommodation, for this is you respond every time your child asks a question, and you reassure them they won't be lit right? So who should consider space. No parents who are providing any family accommodations to help their child cope with anxiety. Children who are unwilling to participate in individual therapy. This isn't a requirement for space. You could be in therapy in individual therapy, and also be having doing space at the same time. Haven't seen individual therapy make much progress. sometimes reducing family accommodations shown to impact the success of the traditional treatment. So like non-responders of individual treatment, it could be because their accommodations were too high. And so we have to get those accommodations down, and then they'll respond better to traditional treatment. The other thing that's really cool about space and family accommodations is that you see, gains in non targeted areas. So, for example, it could be like an a gain in an area that's like not related to a family accommodation, but it's related to their anxiety. So, for example, maybe, like they stop engaging and checking, or something that's not even related to the parent. But we see improvement in their functioning as you reduce family accommodations. Other considerations. So working with a provider that is neurodivergent, informed, and experienced, I think this is extremely important. It goes back to what Tony was saying. Space really needs to be adapted and modified and made to be more neuroaffirming. I have made some accommodations to the way I do space in order to make it more affirming, because we definitely do not want to be trying to mitigate certain restrictive behaviors that are actually meant to kind of cope with anxiety. And they actually are self regulation strategies. So we don't necessarily want to do that. And a trained person might not who isn't understanding of neurodivergent individuals might not understand that. It can be used for insistent on sameness and tolerance of uncertainty. So I have developed a protocol for using space for inflexibility and or insistent on sameness. And I actually have started a research study at Stanford, and we just got for the approval. So we are recruiting for individuals. But the child has to be autistic, and between the ages of 6 and 10. But if you're interested. So it doesn't. It doesn't address anxieties per se. But it is focusing on this, you know. Insistent on sameness. And you could email the study at this email address. All right things to do and not to do so. These are kind of like my takeaways. So one educate yourself. Learn more about space and see if it's something that your family wants to pursue, to try out supportive statements, using statements that have both validation and confidence in the face of distress, are helpful, even if you still accommodate. According to Dr. Lee Bowitz, he actually said that if he could do one thing, it would be to like, meet with all the pediatricians, and just talk about supportive statements. If you only had like 5 min he would teach him about supportive statements. if you listen to this talk. and then you just realize that you're doing accommodations. Do not stop. Start removing these accommodations. Okay, it is just one of the biggest errors is removing accommodations without having proper supports and pieces in place. So remember, you're gonna have to ride this wave of dysregulation. If you don't have what you need to ride that dysregulation, you know you don't know what the plan is that it might be very hard to follow through, and it can make it could maybe make it worse. So we don't want to remove accommodations. And you definitely shouldn't do multiple at a time. all right modeling, so model, using supportive statements on yourself to your child state when you feel anxious, and how you manage that feeling which Tony also talked about earlier modeling. I just can never stress enough how important it is to speak out loud, how you're thinking and feeling, especially individuals who have difficulty with perspective taking they need to hear what you're thinking, all right, getting training. So finding a provider to help you learn space techniques. you can do it in about 12 weeks. Alright, this is the website for space treatment.net where you can find providers. This is his Ted Talk, which I think is really good. That gives you a little bit more explanation. And this book is the most child, friendly or parent friendly book. So the one on the corner that's in blue is the one that was really meant for parents. alright, that's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was amazing. And we got a ton of questions. So I'll probably start with some of those. Kelly, are you able to put our 3 speakers in the spotlight. Kelly or Abby? So some of the questions that we got about space? What ages is space appropriate for? And is it? What about if a child has sensory sensitivities? Is it accommodation which is helpful or not helpful? So space. I mean the youngest I've used it with is 3 and then it can go up to because of failure to launch it definitely goes into the young adult. young adults. I've primarily my practice only goes to 18. So I but I've used it from 3 to 18. If they're younger, it's it's really not something that you can necessarily use. But you can always adapt it using pictures and visuals and use it with kids who are even not not as verbal and have had some really good success. As well. What's the other question about space? Sensory sensitivities? Is it an accommodation to accommodate sensory sensitivities. No, you absolutely should accommodate sensory sensitivities. So that's not. That wouldn't be so, for example. So we one way, I would deal with it in space would be that I would want them to be independent with their sensory accommodations, meaning like, if they need to bring headphones somewhere, it's making them more responsible for bringing their headphones, being, you know, instead of relying on the parent to always be responsible and thinking about those things. But absolutely we need to address the sensory sensitivities. And one last question about that is, does space still work? If only one parent is doing it? Or does a whole family have to be involved. Space does work if just one parent doesn't. No, so I mean, obviously, it's better if everyone's involved. But if just one parent is doing it. Oh, what I will actually to go back to the sensory sensitivity in the book there is an actually like very non nerve affirming sensory, you know example in there, and I just don't agree with how they address it. So that's 1 of the important things where somebody who's traditionally trained in space would consider doing the sensory. Like, yeah, we're just gonna let the blender go as loud as it can be. And all this other stuff. So so. So that is something you have to be aware of that in the book. It actually has an example that is not great. Didn't say so. Look out for that. So we had a bunch of questions asked in advance of the talk. And then someone I'm going to blend them together. Someone asked the space work for kids with the Pda profile. How do you reduce demands and pressure while also not accommodating? And I would love for Tony, Dr. Brad to weigh in on Pda as well, because that's a common topic we hear about on real. So I'll let Dr. Burke with start about space, and Pda. Yes. Yes, Pda, I have had some cases where it has been extremely effective. And of course we take them away slowly and methodically, and and everything. But it absolutely has been a game changer like, because these kids have really, you know, intense, insistent on sameness and and anxiety. You know, we want to make sure that we help them so that they become really proud. What's really cool about space is that I've also seen how proud kids are of themselves. and how much more confident they are things they just didn't believe that they could do just so much stronger functioning a lot better. And you know, space has also been used for school refusal. You know, failure to launch, they also say, is, you know, a symptom of lots of kids who've had school refusal have failure to launch. and a lot of the research on failure launch is really severe anxiety, you know. And so, where these other traditional treatments just haven't been very helpful because you don't place demands on the child. You are just setting your boundaries as a parent. It's like, I will not do this anymore. I will not do this anymore. I will no longer respond in this way, or I'm no longer going to do XY, and Z. And so that's really what they do. they? They don't always like that. They're the parents are doing those things, but eventually they are able to do it themselves. And and I've just seen like a massive change in their self confidence, which is the coolest part about space, is their. Does anyone else want to touch on Pda. Yeah, let me. can you guys hear me? I don't know if my. oh, okay. yeah. So in in a separate note, when I think about. You know, Pda. I do think about the idea. you know. If it is. you know, demand avoidance. Is there a way to move the the demand which I'm going to replace the word to ask, can we move the ask a day in advance? Can we make it transparent? Can we make them predictable. And what I'm wanting to help reduce is the nervous system reactivity. And then that behavioral training that when I you know, I might say, and you know, people with whose parents could really resonate with this was that I was actually asking my kid if they wanted ice cream, and they were like, No, why are you asking me? Is like. is like, Okay, and why would a child be yelling and screaming? If a parent's asking them if they actually want something that they want is because of this behavioral reaction that's been ingrained through the interaction. So if I can take these demands and move them outside of a conflictual time plan on them to say, Hey. you know, can we talk about these things? And I'm not asking you now, but asking you for for the next day. and I'm not suggesting that that's going to be magic, or it's going to remove any you know, any conflict, or all of a sudden, Pda is going to go away. But what we're doing is doing those 2 things, making the ask transparent, and the secondly, is removing that train interaction, that when something comes out of my mouth as a parent, that my my child already is starting to already is gearing up to scream back, or to say no, or to throw something. Those are just my thoughts about that, you know, interventions or or approaches, and even maybe some ways to think slightly differently about that that behavioral piece around it. I would echo what you've both said, and I think my approach has always been to really try to investigate what's going on. You know what is happening in the body, what's happening with the emotions, but also with the parents. So this is a time where I definitely like the parents to be involved in the work. Even if we're traditionally doing individual therapy working with Pda, I think it's so important to look at all of the different dynamics of what's happening, and a lot of the support does go to the parents so that they can feel better, and they can there then help them through the moment. All great advice, and I'm taking notes for myself, and so I wanna acknowledge that it is 8, 30, and it is the official wrap up time. We have so many questions that if you guys are okay but no pressure at all. If you have to go, I want to honor your time. If people can stay 10 more minutes. I'll keep asking questions. But if anyone has to go, I completely understand. Yeah, okay, I appreciate that. So we have some questions. It was asked a little bit tongue in cheek, but it's actually a really good question. How do you ride the wave when there's barely any time to be prepared for the school bus. Yeah, so one of the thing I I did reply, but I'd like to expand on it. And and in my reply I said that. you know, time constriction is a real and time pressure is just a real phenomenon for anyone living or most everyone living in the Bay area. And it really is going to get in the way of of what we have, you know, access to and and certain things that are more involved when when we're late or needing to be somewhere. There's no time to do pros and cons lists, or to, you know, even even be mindful if you know the child's gonna be late, and then you're gonna be late. And then, you know, the 3rd child's gonna be late. We just we just totally understand and empathize that. You know that, you know, riding the wave at that moment. Isn't you know the ideal, you know, approach. So we would pick riding the wave where we can just allow for time and space for a child to experience. You know, experience that emotion. and an experience of emotion is just what emotions are designed to do is designed to just allow us to feel. We oftentimes think that emotions are designed for us to solve. Or it's information. It is that. But it really is. Emotions are just designed for us to feel so if the child's feeling something just allowing them to feel okay. But what do you do? So I don't want to leave you with just this idea that okay, there's nothing we can do, what it's fairly similar to what I just kind of mentioned is that you know, if if there's something that's going on at the moment of leaving, what can we do? The night before the day before, or even the weekend before. Is there a collaborative, you know, to to leverage some other ideologies? A collaborative problem solving approach is that, you know when. So this is a Saturday morning conversation. or or Sunday morning conversation not, you know. Monday or Tuesday morning is like, you know, when this happens, what ideas should we have? What should we put into place? So that, you know, when you're feeling this way? We could. you know, have these tools, or, if appropriate, and and not many of these conversations don't necessarily work. It takes a few tries, because a 7 year old's not necessarily going to be able to to be able to express themselves, or even know to say, you know what kind of things are getting in the way of you, you know, getting, you know. Leaving for school. Is there something that we could do? The you know, the day before the night before? Is it that you want more time with this? Do you want more? And I don't want to suggest that you're asking and doing all this, you know. Sherlock Holmes kind of investigating all these different pieces, but it is really about just opening up a dialogue. You know. Well, in advance. and the final thing that's hard to say is sometimes it is. It is a distress, tolerance, not not on the parents, but distress, tolerance. It is a stressor for the child that they have to, they that that is a developmental, developmentally appropriate stressor, that they need to learn the skills and tools to navigate. And it might be just being patient through. And of course, when I say, being patient also means being late. Enough times just to allow for them to develop that ability to to just sit with the distress without the pressure of you know, being on time, without the demands, without you know the sense of of the fact that when I get upset I'm disappointing all the people around me. So so yeah, I know that's a long answer. It's really I I try to be as specific as possible. Thank you. No, that's a great answer. someone asked. Can kids get over anxiety? Or is it just about accepting that? It's part of who they are. But that was a great question. Who would like to jump on that one. Tony? You have the smile. I was. Gonna say, I mean exact like when I said in my talk, right anxiety is, it's never gonna go away like it's part of who we are, as people right, and I think you know from what we were talking about, it's like, but how do you manage when anxiety comes. And are you gonna manage those feelings in it? You know? you know, especially if you have these things that you want to be doing. But you have this anxiety and this, you know. And so, you know, we talk a lot. I mean, I know Dvts like that act like that like we talk a lot about. What do we care about? How can we allow anxiety to be there and still do the things we want to do and have the life we want to live. And and even when anxiety shows up right? It's anxiety is never going to go away. If you could improve or lessen the like symptoms, or the you know. If it's been like your your world has gotten smaller, is kind of like how we talk about it is like as your functioning got less as your life gotten smaller. And how do we expand your life so that it's a meaningful life that you want to be living. And you're not just. you know, shrinking your world because of anxiety. And so that's really that definitive line of like when anxiety is paralyzing versus and and really impacting the quality of your life. And when is it like there? Because, like. it's just there, and it always will be. And it's part of us just like happiness and sadness, and all those other wonderful emotions that we have. And and that's really like more. How I would talk about it with your child. As that, like the the goal is never to get rid of it. It's it's just how do I manage it and live the life I want. I love that we have a couple questions about diet. That I'll weave together. How much can diet be the cause of anxiety and dysregulation and then there's a question about arfid it. I think Dr. B. You said space can be good for arfid, but then, later, that we shouldn't use space on sensory issues. So I just wanted to clarify that. So our fed like, there's 3 different categories of what our fed like. There's different kinds of permutations of what our food shows up as it could be, like phobia of new food. It could be sensitivity of like certain and things like that. But then there could also be these other components of like trauma that you had with the food like kind of like young Sheldon and so there are different components. And so there's like the sensory issues. And then there's other things. So they're they're not all the same and so, but a lot of kids who who have arfid they just. They're not meeting their nutrition and things like that. So we have to think of, you know, especially if it's like neophobia like fear of new foods. Or I have rules around foods. Or I just don't eat new things. And we definitely want to use something like space or other strategies to help the the child be able to expand their their diet, especially if they're not meeting their their weights. They're not, you know, growing. You know those kinds of things so that feels more of like, it's not just sensory, that's like the bottom answer, or like the. But it can be like in some ways. And so like, you need a professional in order to like, actually diagnose or figure out what's going on, and what would be an appropriate treatment for your child. I'm going to close on a super timely question. I'm glad Dr. Brad mentioned sensitivity to current events, political and geopolitical. How can we help 2 kids who are deeply troubled by the recent election cope with their anxiety about how it may cause suffering to people animals and the planet. Tough, tough question. Anyone want to weigh in. I can jump in with how I've been working with people over the last week or so, and a lot of it is validating their feelings like letting them know that it's okay that those feelings are there and asking them what they need. And I let them be the guide. This has worked for for many different ages. But you know, what do you need right now? And if it's okay, I need a sense of safety. Okay? And I'll ask, Hey, should what should we do? Should we look at it and try to find reasons that you can feel safe? Should we find people you can talk to at home and and co-create that with them. But not take away that this is really hard, or that they're having those feelings, and that they're scared, just leaning into what they want then, and that it's okay that the feelings are there. All right. Thank you all so much. We have a bunch of other questions. But I want to honor everyone's time, and it's getting quite late. And so to everyone who's here, we will send out slides and the recording and contact information for our 3 speakers. Thank you all so much for being here tonight. I learned a lot from this talk, and I'm sure everyone else did, too. And there's a lot of kudos in the chat. So thank you all so much. You've helped a lot of people tonight, so have a good night. Thank you. Thank you. Read the AI summary here This article, adapted with the support of AI, is based on a previous REEL webinar featuring Dr. Kari Berquist, Dr. Bradley Siu, and Toni Ratzburg, LMFT. Anxiety is one of the most common challenges faced by twice-exceptional (2e) learners—but understanding why it shows up, and how to support it effectively, can feel overwhelming. At this REEL Speaker Series event, three expert clinicians came together to unpack anxiety in 2e children—from the neuroscience behind it to practical strategies families can use at home and in therapy. Here’s what we learned. Understanding Anxiety in 2e Learners Twice-exceptional learners are both highly capable and face meaningful challenges such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, or anxiety. These traits don’t exist separately—they interact in complex ways. 2e learners are often “spiky”—they show strengths and challenges simultaneously. That complexity can make them especially vulnerable to anxiety. Why anxiety is more intense for 2e kids Several key factors contribute: 1. Heightened sensitivity (overexcitabilities) Many 2e children experience the world more intensely: Intellectual sensitivity → deep thinking, rumination, “what if” spirals Emotional sensitivity → big feelings, quick overwhelm Sensory sensitivity → noise, textures, or environments can overload the system 2. Pattern recognition + negativity bias Their brains are excellent at spotting patterns—including past negative experiences. This can lead to: Anticipating problems before they happen Increased worry and self-criticism 3. Nervous system differences Some 2e children have a harder time exiting “fight or flight.” This makes it difficult to calm down—even when they want to. 4. Big-picture awareness Many gifted learners absorb global issues—climate change, injustice, world events—at a young age. Without the tools to process this, it can lead to: Feelings of helplessness Existential anxiety What You Can Do at Home There’s a lot parents can do to support anxiety in everyday life. 1. Start with yourself You can’t co-regulate your child if you’re overwhelmed. When you model: Talking through your own stress Managing emotions out loud You normalize their experience and teach coping in real time. 2. Use connection as your foundation Connection is not optional—it’s the gateway to growth. It might look like: A quick check-in Shared play Sitting together quietly When kids feel safe, they’re more willing to try hard things. 3. Lean into strengths and interests Use what your child loves as an entry point: Harry Potter → discuss fear through characters Pokémon → explore emotions through analogies This makes abstract feelings more accessible. 4. Practice in low-stakes, real-life ways One creative example: Practice ordering hot cocoa together Gradually shift responsibility to your child Build confidence through small wins This helps with: Social anxiety Self-advocacy Flexibility 5. Use co-regulation wisely Co-regulation (helping your child calm down) is essential—but can become a crutch. The goal is: Support → not rescue Presence → not control Eventually, children need space to build self-management skills. When to Consider Therapy Therapy can be helpful—but timing and fit matter. Signs it may be time: Anxiety is impacting daily life (school, friendships, activities) Your child asks for help You feel “stuck” despite trying strategies Safety concerns (self-harm, severe distress) What to Look for in a Therapist Not all therapy is created equal—especially for 2e learners. Prioritize: Neurodiversity-affirming approach Strong connection and trust Flexibility (not rigid methods) Willingness to collaborate with parents Be cautious of: One-size-fits-all approaches Dismissing giftedness or neurodivergence Overly rigid or defensive providers The relationship matters more than the method. Therapy Approaches That Can Help 1. Integrative Therapy A flexible, personalized approach that: Adapts to the child Combines multiple strategies Centers strengths and identity This is often a strong fit for 2e learners. 2. DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) DBT focuses on skills, including: Mindfulness (awareness) Distress tolerance Emotional self-management Interpersonal skills A key concept: Holding two truths at once “I want to succeed and I feel afraid.” A powerful takeaway: Ride the wave Emotions rise and fall like waves. Instead of stopping them, we: Notice them Allow them Let them pass For parents, this often means: Under-reacting Giving kids space to regulate themselves. 3. SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) A parent-based therapy that’s gaining traction. Key idea: Anxiety is not just within the child—it exists in the parent-child interaction. Instead of focusing on the child changing, SPACE helps parents: 1. Increase support “I know this is hard, and I believe you can handle it.” 2. Decrease accommodations Reduce behaviors that unintentionally reinforce anxiety (e.g., answering repeated reassurance questions) Why SPACE is powerful Works even if the child won’t attend therapy Builds independence Reduces long-term anxiety patterns A Critical Insight: Accommodation Cycles Many families fall into this loop: Child feels anxious Parent steps in to reduce distress Child feels temporary relief Anxiety returns stronger Over time: Child becomes dependent on parent regulation Confidence decreases Breaking this cycle—gently and intentionally—is key. Final Takeaways Supporting a 2e child with anxiety isn’t about eliminating anxiety. It’s about helping them learn: “I can handle this feeling.” “I can get through hard moments.” “I am capable—even when it’s uncomfortable.” If you remember just a few things: Start with connection Model emotional awareness Support without over-rescuing Find the right therapeutic fit (not just any help) You’re Not Alone If this feels complex—that’s because it is. 2e learners require nuance, flexibility, and a strengths-based lens. But with the right understanding and tools, anxiety can shift from something overwhelming… to something manageable—and even growth-producing.

Neurodivergent students often experience energy dysregulation and display unexpected behaviors that can be misunderstood. When we launched our Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for school counselors and school psychologists in the Fall of 2025, emotional regulation was one of their top areas of interest. They expressed their desire to help educators and families normalize emotional reactions as human responses, and to remove the shame many neurodivergent students internalize when their energy levels don’t match what’s expected in traditional classroom settings. They even came up with their own set of neurodiversity-affirming mantras - see poster image to the right - including “Normalize dysregulation - it’s a human thing.” We invited Emily Kircher-Morris, a national leader in the field of neurodiversity, to bring her immense expertise on emotional and energy regulation to our group. Emily, a licensed professional counselor who began her career as a classroom teacher and also served as a school counselor, hosts The Neurodiversity Podcast; is the author of several books, including Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools: Transforming Practices So All Students Feel Accepted and Supported (2025); and travels the country helping educators adopt strategies to better support neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students. After explaining the neurology of energy regulation, Emily offered strategies to support students such as co-regulation, sensory tools, and accommodations that help, as well as suggested resources that make a difference. Why are Energy and Emotional Regulation an Important Topic for Neurodivergent and 2e Learners? What the Literature Says. Educators lean on school counselors to help with students’ social-emotional and behavioral needs, which often result from perceived challenges with emotional regulation (Cholewa et al., 2016). Emotional dysregulation sometimes leads to perceived unexpected behaviors that complicate the educational journey of neurodivergent learners, in particular those who are autistic and/or ADHDers (Laurent & Fede, 2021). Emotional volatility is also a trait commonly identified with twice-exceptional students (who experience both advanced abilities and neurodivergent conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia) and addressing social-emotional characteristics is a critical part of a comprehensive plan to ensure these uniquely wired learners have the opportunity to thrive (Carpenter, 2021; Reis et al., 2014). In particular, 2e learners share common traits with students identified as gifted such as challenges with frustration tolerance, as well as emotional and mental intensity, creating a complicated emotional regulation profile (Rizzo et al., 2025). However, focusing on emotions alone may be too abstract; a focus on energy regulation provides a more concrete foundation for neurodivergent students to understand their own individual needs (Laurent & Fede, 2021). In addition, emotional regulation differences likely result from an interplay between the person and their environment rather than from the person alone, especially when neurotypical expectations create a mismatch due to sensory, social, and perceptual experiences (Griffin et al., 2026). The 2e profile creates even more complexities in assessment of individual needs and interventions, when emotional responses and behavioral manifestations are interpreted as within the student’s control and don’t take into consideration a misalignment between the child’s environment and capabilities (Ronksley-Pavia & Clark, 2025). This all leads to the need to rethink our approaches to emotional and energy regulation for neurodivergent and 2e learners, with a greater emphasis on creating responsive educational environments and strategies that help students learn about their needs, leading to increased self-regulation and self-advocacy (Rizzo et al., 2025). Understanding Neurology and Energy Regulation Emily emphasized that the ability for a person to regulate their energy and emotions emerges as part of their development process. As she said, “It’s built over time and is not something students are born knowing how to do.” That’s because emotional regulation depends on brain development, such as the pre-frontal cortex coming online to manage executive functions and attention as well as the amygdala’s ability to accurately detect threats and develop appropriate and timely fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. Being autistic, an ADHDer, or both, impacts these functions and developmental timelines. Emily underscored that energy regulation goes beyond just the students’ obvious emotions. For example, sometimes these students may look calm, even while experiencing internal turmoil. Other areas of regulation relate to sensory over and under-responsivity, autistic inertia that impedes starting a task (or, alternatively, creates unstoppable momentum that puts a student into potentially an unhealthy mode of overdrive), and cognitive energy discrepancies when a brain is overactive but the body is out of gas, or vice versa. Understanding this neurological basis for various expressions of energy regulation can help educators and parents better understand students’ experiences and development, and how their brains may be interacting with their environments, to focus on supporting the child rather than blaming them for responses beyond their control. What Works? Helping Students with Energy Regulation Emily presented strategies to support children when they feel dysregulated, ways to adjust the environment that support everyone’s ability to regulate their energy, and how to help students learn more about what they need to match their energy to the demands at hand. Emily emphasized that “in the moment supports” when energy and emotions are heightened rely on giving students time and space to process their emotions – without making demands. She highlighted the value of parallel regulation, where the adult remains calm and present without escalating the situation. This is a time when co-regulation between a trusted adult and the child are paramount. She suggested using simple breathing exercises, offering choices instead of instructions, and providing alternative communication methods like visual tools or dry erase boards. She warned against teaching coping skills during a crisis but rather advised practicing them during moments of calm. Emily talked the group through environmental modifications and strategies to support energy regulation. Classroom fidgets that are available to everyone are an easy and effective option, but do require thoughtful implementation with a focus on boundaries, patience, and practice. In addition, Emily encouraged educators to think of time as a factor of environmental modification. Sometimes creating urgency motivates students and other times removing urgency gives them the space to process their experiences, energy, and emotions. For example, using games with time limits as a way to energize students or providing extensions to assignments to alleviate stress, are environmental modifications that can be used to help students manage their energy and emotions. Educators and parents can help students understand what they need to manage their own energy. Emily discussed the importance of metacognitive reflection and awareness rather than strict accountability for behavioral responses. She suggested that everyone should frame potential interventions as science experiments to reduce resistance and feelings of failure. Emily explained the difference between enabling and accommodating support, highlighting that accommodations become effective when students are actively involved in the process and when there is a clear plan for gradually reducing support as they become more independent. As an example, adults often expect students to make eye contact to show they are ready to learn and are engaged in communication; however, eye contact is notoriously uncomfortable for many neurodivergent people. Rather than assuming that either students don’t want to make eye contact at all under any circumstances or that students are required to make eye contact, she suggested talking directly with each student to understand their goals: “Would you like to make eye contact? Or would you like to learn to self-advocate for the way you communicate?” and then set small experiments to move the child in the direction of their needs. Emily’s Mantras Throughout her talk, Emily shared bite-sized pieces of wisdom – or what we might think of as “Emily’s Mantras” – that frame students’ experiences with energy regulation. Keeping these phrases in mind can help educators and parents reframe their thinking about self-regulation. Separate compliance from personal rebellion. Notice patterns not incidences. Focus on capacity versus compliance. Use fewer words - you cannot talk a kid out of dysregulation. Time - separate “No” from “Not now.” Shifts come in small ways and small conversations Suggested Resources Emily shared the top resources she recommends to educators to learn more about and support the development of students’ energy and emotional regulation, as well as a few that the REEL team has found helpful. Creating Neurodiversity Affirming Schools Podcast. This limited edition series features Emily and her co-author, Amanda Morin, talking through core aspects of their best-selling book, with several episodes that go in-depth energy regulation and emotional regulation. Intensive Intervention Practice Guide: Teaching Self-Regulation Skills to Students with Disabilities. This 2022 guide from the National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention outlines the meaning and purpose of self-regulation, as well as how it varies by age and application within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. Zones of Regulation Podcast Episode. The Zones of Regulation have been a popular tool for understanding energy regulation for decades, and have been recently updated through a neurodiversity-affirming lens. Emily hosted a podcast episode to learn more about these updates. Whole Body Learning Podcast Episode. Whole body listening is another emotional regulation concept that teachers have long used to set expectations for how students’ bodies should be in the classroom. This concept has been updated as a tool to help a student consider how their body learns best, rather than imposing an outside norm on each student. This episode of Emily’s podcast explores this important change. Interoception Resources. Interoception describes the body’s ability to recognize and properly interpret its own internal senses, such as hunger, thirst, temperature, the need to go to the bathroom, etc. Many neurodivergent people experience interoception differently than commonly understood – and these differences can invisibly impact their emotional and energy regulation capacity. Emily recommends educators and parents explore Kelly Mahler’s online resources and courses to expand their understanding of how interoception may impact children’s self-regulation experiences. Effective Strategies for Educators: Talking to Parents About Student Challenges. The Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative members asked questions about how to talk to parents in relation to their child’s neurodiversity and twice-exceptionality, since sometimes emotional dysregulation expressed as unexpected externalizing behaviors is the first sign that the child needs more support. This article from REEL offers guidance to educators about how to initiate these conversations, which can feel daunting. Sensory Audit Tool. Sensory differences are often unseen factors in a child’s ability to regulate their energy and emotions. Neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners are more likely to be hypersensitive and/or hyposensitive – sometimes simultaneously – to sound, textures, lighting, smells, and touch. A sensory audit can help educators and students identify and ameliorate sensory triggers that may unduly create misunderstood emotional and energy responses. This talk was hosted as part of REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for School Psychologists and School Counselors made possible by generous funding from the Jockers Family Foundation and the Mary A. Crocker Trust. References: Carpenter, A. Y. (2021). Twice-exceptional students. In T. L. Cross & J. R. Cross (Eds.), Handbook for counselors serving students with gifts and talents (2nd ed., pp. 305–323). Routledge. Cholewa, B., Goodman-Scott, E., Thomas, A., & Cook, J. (2016). Teachers’ perceptions and experiences consulting with school counselors: A qualitative study. Professional School Counseling, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.5330/1096-2409-20.1.77 Griffin, B., Gosrani, R., & Eccles, J. (2026). Beyond comorbidity: Evolutionary insights into the concomitance of Neurodivergence, major depressive disorder, and anxiety disorders. Evolutionary Applications, 19(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.70221 Laurent, A. C., & Fede, J. (2021). Leveling up regulatory support through community collaboration. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 6(2), 288-305. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_persp-20-00197 Reis, S. M., Baum, S. M., & Burke, E. (2014). An operational definition of twice-exceptional learners: Implications and applications. Gifted Child Quarterly, 58(3), 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986214534976 Rizzo, L., Pinnelli, S., & Minnaert, A. (2025). Twice-exceptional students: A systematic review to outline the distinctive characteristics through a multidimensional lens. Frontiers in Education, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1696805 Ronksley-Pavia, M., & Clark, C. (2025). Compounded disadvantage: Issues in addressing the educational requirements of twice-exceptional students in schools. Education Sciences, 15(12), 1593. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121593

Curiosity, Connection, and Confidence: A New Path to Motivation for 2e Kids Why can a twice-exceptional learner spend hours deep in a passion project — yet struggle to begin a simple homework assignment? The answer isn't laziness or defiance. It's neuroscience. In this talk from REEL's 2026 Parent Speaker Series, four experts come together to explain the real brain-based reasons motivation breaks down for 2e kids, and what parents can actually do about it. You'll learn: 🧠 The dopamine science behind motivation vs. activation — and why these are not the same thing 🔬 Why "I don't want to" and "I can't" are neurologically the same thing 🧰 How to identify your child's personal "sparks" and "blockers" 🏎️ How to be an effective "pit crew" for your 2e learner 🤝 A curiosity-first, shame-free framework for collaborative problem solving 🌿 Why recovery and feedback are essential parts of the motivation cycle Speakers: Gustav Steinhardt — Lecturer, UC Berkeley (Behavioral Science & Neurodiversity) Courtney Edman — Founder, 2tametheshamE, Inc.; Host, See Me Podcast Elizabeth Cobb — Neurodivergent Parent Educator & Neuroanthropologist Teresa Nair — REEL Parent Community Program Manager, M.Ed. in Cognitive Diversity Read the transcript here: ## Speakers - **Gustav Steinhardt** — Lecturer, UC Berkeley (Behavioral Science, Biological Anthropology & Neurodiversity) - **Courtney Edman** — Founder, 2tametheshamE, Inc.; Co-host, See Me Podcast - **Elizabeth Cobb** — Neurodivergent Parent Educator & Neuroanthropologist - **Teresa Nair** — REEL Parent Community Services & Program Manager --- ## The Dopamine Story: Motivation and Motor Action **Gustav Steinhardt:** We're going to be talking about motivation. When we talk about motivation, that is the dopamine story — dopamine is what makes the connection between motivation and motor action. It's one thing to have the abstract state of "I want to," but it's another thing to actually move your muscles and do what you need to do to achieve that goal. I want to think of these things in a continuum, because we intuitively tend to distinguish between problems of motivation — "I don't want to" — versus problems of motor control. What I want to try to convince you of is that neurologically, there really is no line between "I don't want to" and "I can't." If you know nothing else about dopamine, you probably know that it's associated with repeated, rewarding behaviors — food, scrolling on your phone, gambling. It's pretty clearly involved in ADHD. If you're familiar with ADHD medication, Adderall is chemically very similar to dopamine, and if ADHD is an issue in the dopamine circuitry of the brain, Adderall is addressing that. Dopamine is also involved in autism, although for reasons that are less clear. Autism has so many different presentations, probably caused by many different underlying neurological phenomena, whereas ADHD is a little bit more narrowly defined. --- ## Key Brain Regions: Where Dopamine Does Its Work **Gustav Steinhardt:** What's important is not dopamine itself, but where the dopamine is going — it does very different things in different parts of the brain. The nucleus accumbens is probably the biggest one; when people say they got a "dopamine hit," what they mean is they got a hit to their nucleus accumbens — that rewarding sensation of "I want to do that again." There's also a lot of dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex, where planning happens — what we think of as executive function, the ability to lay things out in a linear way, identify sub-goals, and execute on tasks. Less talked about is the striatum, also called the basal ganglia, which is involved in rote memory — riding a bicycle, the alphabet. The striatum also chooses motor activity and inhibits all the other things you could be doing so you can focus on what you've decided to do. The nucleus accumbens gives you that sense of reward and pleasure. Interestingly, you can actually get a stronger response by making reinforcement less consistent — which is a little odd. You'd think it would make more sense to invest in a reward you're confident in, but it turns out an uncertain reward is actually more motivating. Gambling works this way, and so does social media — as you scroll, you get inconsistent hits, which is exactly what makes it so compelling. It's kind of a sad fact about the mammalian brain that we're more reinforced by uncertainty. --- ## Anticipation vs. Pleasure: The Striatum's Role **Gustav Steinhardt:** There's also a lot of dopamine activity in the seconds *before* a rewarding moment — that's the anticipatory function of dopamine, and it happens in the striatum. I love a study done with music where participants identified their favorite moment in a piece — the key change, the guitar solo breaking out. When they listened in a scanner, the nucleus accumbens shot up right when that rewarding moment happened. But in the seconds before, the striatum was already waking up, starting to anticipate that reward. That anticipation is what causes the motor system to come online — because most rewards require action. You have to reach for the food, go in for the hug, do the thing. The striatum says, "I anticipate a reward, so I'm going to take the steps required to realize it." The prefrontal cortex is most often associated with ADHD — it's where a lot of things get stuck that parents and teachers want most, including goal-directed behavior and the ability to hold off on an immediate reward (like scrolling on social media) for a long-term reward (like studying). There's an important study from MIT in 2014 that looked at people who were diagnosed with ADHD versus those who no longer presented that way after treatment. The key finding is that the difference doesn't mean less activity in the prefrontal cortex — it means less coordination of activity between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain. Someone with ADHD doesn't have a silent prefrontal cortex; it's very likely constantly active, it's just going off in its own direction. Getting everybody on the same page to do something like get out the door or sit down for homework takes a lot more effort when the brain isn't already coordinated. With ADHD, you're not seeing a reduction in planning, motivation, or executive function — you're seeing planning, motivation, and executive function that are going off in their own direction rather than being tied to the rest of the brain. Another helpful way to think about this: during a task, we expect the prefrontal cortex to be very active; during a non-task "default" state, we expect it to wander. That distinction is largely true for non-ADHD brains. For ADHD brains, there's less difference between task and non-task — the prefrontal cortex is always online, and it's very hard to signal "now is when I need to focus" versus "now is my default state." --- ## Parkinson's, ADHD, and the Continuum of "Can't" and "Won't" **Gustav Steinhardt:** There's another condition that very strongly involves dopamine — specifically the striatum — and that's Parkinson's disease. A lot of its presentations have parallels with ADHD, and yet nobody ever says to someone with Parkinson's, "Just try harder." We recognize that as a neurological problem. But the kinds of presentations you see in Parkinson's — difficulty initiating movement, tremor (which is basically an uninhibited motor system where the striatum can't suppress competing movements) — these are very similar to what we see in ADHD. Parkinson's and ADHD even have similar treatments, in that both are often treated with a version of dopamine or a stand-in for dopamine. And yet we think of Parkinson's as a motor issue and ADHD as a motivation issue — which is not wrong, but it misses the fact that they're rooted in the same neural structure and circuitry. Neurologically, "I can't" and "I don't want to" are part of the same thing. In order to understand why somebody might be lacking motivation, or why they might be motivated in some contexts but not others, we really have to think of these as all part of the same system. --- ## From "They Won't" to "They Can't": Reframing Our Perspective **Courtney Edman:** What Gustav described is a great explanation of how dopamine is involved with motivation and motor action, and it's really only a small part of what affects our brain. Taking action is a complex process involving nutrition, sleep, time of day, any history or trauma we've experienced, our general preferences — there are so many factors. And I love how Gustav highlighted that motor control is involved in achieving our goals in a way that the neurodivergent space doesn't always talk about. As Gustav mentioned, our perspective matters — how we see whether people are taking action or not. The key question is: is it that they *won't*, they *can't*, or they *did it*? We can start with the idea of "I want to," and go through the roadmap of the brain. If the dopamine pathway is working smoothly and effectively, we get to do what we want. But a lot of times, our emotions — the things we prefer to do — create detours or roadblocks that result in us doing other things, because they impact dopamine processing. That's why we get confused about why our kids can attend well to certain things and not to others. The truth is the underlying reason for the inaction is neurophysiologically based — similar to Huntington's and Parkinson's. Our perspective matters because it's a neurophysiological basis that's making it hard at the cellular level for our kids to take action. So here's the breaking news: we can be motivated and still be unable to take action toward our goal. It's brain-based, not behaviorally based. What we perceive to be a motivation problem is really difficulty with taking action. When we shift our perspective, it changes our response. When we go from "they won't" to "they can't," it changes the way we communicate. When we perceive someone as having Parkinson's, we shift into "how can I help?" But when we perceive someone as not wanting to do something, we tend to use rewards, consequences, or logic — telling them "all you have to do is this" or explaining what will happen if they don't. What we have to do instead is get curious. We become compassionate and collaborative. When we can perceive things from a brain-based perspective, we realize that changing our inputs can change our kids' outputs. Those inputs could be the way we communicate, medication, sensory adjustments — there are a variety of different inputs that can be changed to meet the underlying needs of an individual's brain. The only way we go about doing that is to become curious, connect with our kids, and become what I like to call partners in problem solving. That's how we start to build a toolbox for our individual child — one that responds to their individualized brain-based needs. We can use things like activators — things that get them going, which Teresa will also refer to as sparks — and we can understand the blockers that derail them. --- ## Thinking Like an Anthropologist: The Biocultural Framework **Elizabeth Cobb:** Thank you so much, Courtney. We are so excited to be here at Built Curious. Today we're going to think like anthropologists. I studied cultural anthropology at Princeton, and I return to anthropology anytime I need to understand something. I went to UC Berkeley, to Gustav's class — Diversities of the Human Brain — and it was so helpful to me in my work with my kids that I asked if he would talk to parents about this information, and he said yes. What has been so wonderful to see is how just having the neuroscience information available can transform parents' understanding of their kids. We're going to learn neuroanthropology concepts that reframe behaviors, and apply a biocultural framework to our everyday experiences. With this framework, we recognize that our understanding of neurodiversity has to consider both biological and cultural factors. Neurodivergence is not an individual trait — it's a mismatch between a person and their environment. But we always have to hold the biological in mind, because if you've got a kid who gets dysregulated on windy days, changing the environment doesn't change everything. We need to hold both. These are not how-tos to change behavior — this is how to think *differently* about behavior. It's not deficit-based or strength-based. It's about how to think about *difference*. I think it's important to mention this because strength-based approaches often get misunderstood and used as a kind of superpower narrative, and it's important to remember that everyone deserves respect and understanding regardless of whether or not they have superpowers. --- ## Shame, Motivation, and the Pit Crew **Elizabeth Cobb:** Building on Courtney's excellent point about motivation versus activation — when shame enters the picture, it can make it hard to see that all behavior is communication. Once shame isn't in the driver's seat, we can ask: what does my child need? That question alone can often transform motivation into activation. Think of the dopamine circuits working in concert like a Formula 1 race — getting from your child's bedroom to the front door in the morning can feel exactly that challenging. We can be the activation pit crew. Interest is the fuel, autonomy is the engine, and sensory processing is where the rubber meets the road. When we're trying to understand what our children need, sometimes all three of those are at play at once — if a child won't brush their teeth on the way out the door, it could be a lack of interest, a lack of autonomy, or that the brush doesn't feel good or the water is too loud. We are the pit crew who gets to decide, "I'm going to listen to my driver" — hear the child and really try to understand what's going on. --- ## Pervasive Drive for Autonomy (PDA) **Elizabeth Cobb:** One area where all three aspects of activation come into play is in the Pervasive Drive for Autonomy — PDA. You may have heard it called Pathological Demand Avoidance, which is what it used to be called. What it is: when a child has a very difficult time with any request perceived as a demand — even preferred activities. A kid who loves chess club might refuse to go simply because being asked is perceived as a demand. PDA is a response to perceived demands — it's not defiance, it's not manipulation. Using Gustav's movement-and-motivation continuum, if we understand that "I don't want to" is a little closer to "I can't," we can understand what's going on with PDA. A good example is PDA equalizing or leveling — a child might say "no" when you ask them to take their dishes to the kitchen, then do it ten minutes later. That is very often a result of PDA equalizing: there's a need to exert some control to regain autonomy before the task can be done. Or if a child says, "I'll only do it if you do this for me" — if we understand those apparent negotiation tactics as a form of balancing, we can start to work with what our kids are actually saying. There's a quote from Christy Forbes, an Australian PDA-er with PDA children: she encourages us to consider the behaviors we're told are unacceptable or confrontational in our children as forms of balancing in a person who requires equity. The wording of a request can make a real difference: "Let's all go out for pizza" might get a "no way," but "Could we go out for pizza?" is often perceived very differently by a PDA-er. In the parent-child relationship, which is inherently unequal, neurodivergent kids with their neuro-spicy sense of justice often bristle at that inequality. My oldest made this very clear to me — when I asked what she'd do if invited to lunch with the Queen, she said, "I'd just tell her, I'm here for the corgis." She told me in no uncertain terms that it didn't matter if you were the Queen of England — she considered herself deserving of the same respect. We're the pit crew, and just like it's the pit crew's job to decide what needs attention and when, we can also recognize that similar behaviors might have different causes depending on the kid or the day. Is procrastination a PDA equalizing challenge? An ADHD multi-step instruction issue? A task initiation issue? Is it both? Is it neither? When we only study symptoms like anxiety, we miss opportunities for understanding. --- ## Sparks, Blockers, and the Motivation Cycle **Teresa Nair:** Alright, I'm Teresa Nair, REEL's Parent Community Program Manager. I get to work with amazing colleagues like the three you've heard from tonight, and then take that information and tell you what we do with it in our community — how we use it as parents. A lot of it is strategy, curiosity, and learning from each other. Instead of relying on willpower or pressure for this "motivation" idea, let's take this opportunity to learn what actually helps the neurodivergent brain. We need to help them begin the whole scenario, but we also need them to continue and reset — because for a neurodivergent kiddo, and for many of us, it's not a one-and-done. That brought us to looking at motivation as a cycle. Because oftentimes we're coming across this need to activate the brain, spark it, get it going — and then, because the world is not designed for neurodivergent brains, blockers come in. Lights, sounds, smells, executive function overwhelm — there are so many reasons. There are two different systems worth understanding. There's the interest-based ADHD system — sparked and fueled by novelty, curiosity, play, and those unique things the ADHD brain craves. That's the dopamine-driven activation system. For autism, it runs a little differently — fueled more by clarity, fairness, predictability, and deep interest. For example, if I said something extremely unfair to my autistic child, motivation to do what we needed to get done stopped immediately — "that's not fair" became the blocker. Sometimes just understanding our child's neurology begins those conversations. Sparks can be many things, and I encourage you to explore them with your kids. Your kiddo really does need autonomy — so how can you build autonomy into your motivation cycle, whether it's getting out the door in the morning or getting homework done? My family loves playlists — they spark so many things. My daughter's Hamilton playlist for cleaning? Spark right there. I have a playlist for showers — just putting it on can help me engage. Working with your kids to think about sparks and blockers can be fun, and listen closely: some of the sparks they come up with you might never have thought of yourself. Sensory experience can be a big spark. I had a parent in a small group whose kid would only shower if they could use all the soap — all the shampoo, all the soap. Mom understandably couldn't sustain that. As a group, parents strategized: what if you get those little travel sizes? And before the shower starts, he gets to choose — autonomy is great — which little bottle he wants, each one with a different soap and sensory experience. Building sparks in when you know you have a challenge can work beautifully. Blockers can be things like executive function overwhelm — when the air traffic control of the brain skips and everything stops. How can we put things into place to take out blockers before they happen? If we know transitions are a blocker, or unpredictability is a blocker, let's write that down. You might be having a rough night and look at that list and suddenly remember: "Oh, that's right — end of the day, no snack — blocker. I just need to feed the kid." We're not always going to remember everything in the moment, and these little hints become invaluable. --- ## Real Stories: Sparks and Blockers in Practice **Teresa Nair:** I had a parent who said their teenage son would not clean the bathroom. Mom put all the cleaning supplies on the floor of his bathroom for weeks, and he just walked past them. I noticed he seemed angry about it when it came up — which told me he wasn't indifferent. There was something more going on. I asked him: "Hey, is there something blocking you about this bathroom cleaning thing?" And he said the words, "I don't even know what to do with all those things." Boom. We've got a dialogue. The blocker is executive function — task initiation, working memory. We can work with that now. Another one: a kid who said he wasn't motivated, didn't care about anything, wasn't doing homework. Dr. Mason, a colleague, said something that really landed: "Your child obviously cares — and he cares very deeply. Because if you think about somebody who doesn't care, it looks very different. You've got that footloose, fancy-free 'I don't care' attitude." Our kids, when they're withdrawn and angry and having a really difficult time, are often in a cycle of being activated to do something, being let down by their executive functions, failing, and then having to try to get back up again. They care — it's just that the cycle has failed them repeatedly. That's where this language of sparks and blockers can help, even with older kids. My 14- and 16-year-olds will say they need a spark to get started on homework. "What kind of spark do you think you might need?" "Popcorn." "All right, let's go with the popcorn." Even if it's just a way to begin the dialogue — "I see you, and I want to be a part of this. How can I support you?" — sparks and blockers give us something to work with. --- ## Scripts for Parents **Teresa Nair:** One thing we love about our groups is scripts — because we weren't necessarily taught how to have positive conversations that aren't judgmental. Instead of "Stop wasting time!" — how about "Do you need a different way in? Do you need a reset? How can I help here? Sometimes the brain needs a spark to get moving. What could your spark be? Is there something I can help provide?" It's not something you've done wrong — it's something we can solve by taking a different action. One family had a teenage son who wouldn't study for spelling. What does he enjoy? He loves slime. Could he play with slime while they review spelling words? Involving the body and the brain and the sensory all in one can really expand what it means to be activated. And regarding extrinsic motivation — Dr. Megan Neff has made the point that we've been perhaps too hard on it. How often do we, as adults having a tough time, say "I have to go to work because I need a paycheck"? That's extrinsic, and it's fine. When our kids need something to help them get a little motivated — whether it's popcorn or slime — let it be. --- ## Recovery and Feedback: The Missing Pieces **Teresa Nair:** Recovery and feedback are essential pieces of the motivation cycle — without them, we don't really get a chance to understand what motivates our children. Our kids are using enormous brain power, and they're physically very active. We need to make space for their nervous system and bodies to recover. Have you ever been completely exhausted and thought, "I'm not motivated to do anything"? Our kids experience that almost every single day — eight hours at school and then coming home to more work. Let's build in recovery. Finding whether active or passive movement works for them — humor, play, reading under a weighted blanket — include that in the system. Without recovery, we won't get very far with motivation or the feedback loop. Verbalize sparks and blockers; put them in the calendar. Make it a casual, ongoing habit to look back on when things went really well. "That went pretty smooth tonight — bedtime routine was smooth. What do you think helped?" Listen to understand, not to react. Maybe it's a daily check-in, maybe weekly, but make it a habit. And when things didn't go well — let them tell you. One family couldn't get their kid motivated for swim lessons. When the parent finally asked what was going on, the kid said: "I was tired, it was at the end of the day, I didn't have any snacks, it was so loud in there, and I was cold, and everybody kept yelling." Don't react — that's all data. Take a moment in the car to say, "Okay, so let's put it in the calendar for next week: bring a snack, bring your comfy sweatsuit." You might not get it all right the first time, but you've shown them they have the power to be part of the cycle. Ultimately, our goal is for our kids to understand and enjoy figuring out how their own system works for them. --- ## Q&A: Dopamine Transfer and "Why Don't They Remember It Went Fine?" **Yael Valek:** With ADHD, I've noticed that the dopamine will hit, but they will have forgotten about it the next time the same event happens. How can we help this process of not remembering, "I did it like this, it wasn't so bad, I can do this"? People often say "they'll learn if they just keep doing it" — but that's not my experience. **Gustav Steinhardt:** There's a name for this: dopamine transfer. Dopamine transfer is the movement of the dopamine response into the anticipatory phase after you've repeated something a few times. For a neurotypical person, after a few trials of something rewarding, the dopamine shifts from the nucleus accumbens — that reactive hit — into the striatum, which starts anticipating and taking steps toward the reward. One of the things that shows up with ADHD is that that transfer doesn't happen. So the sparks-and-blockers conversation that happens the first time probably needs to happen the 30th time too — that's just what's going to happen. We have a lot of systems based on the assumption that people's brains will logically maximize their return on investment, and that barely works even for neurotypical people. There isn't a brain-based solution that works for everyone — anybody who says otherwise is selling you something. What Courtney and Teresa and Elizabeth have been saying about getting collaborative is so important — you have someone in your household who has the expertise on what works for your particular situation, and recruiting them as an ally is everything. **Courtney Edman:** A lot of times we as parents want to help our kids remember what they're not remembering — "Don't you remember this happened?" Instead, try getting curious or reflective with them: "Do you remember what happened the last time we did this? Walk me through what we did." You're helping them tap into what they remember of their experience, which informs you about their thought process. If they don't remember that the outcome was positive, you know that's not what they're carrying — what they're carrying is the exhausting effort it took to get started. That's the blocker. So you figure out: when you feel that way, what's your spark? How can we bring a spark into this? The language around kids — "you should," "you need to" — if we replace that with curiosity, sparks and blockers, and help them understand their motivation cycle instead of telling them how to do it, that is going to help melt away the protective layer of shame that has built up over the years. --- ## Q&A: How Teachers Can Tell the Difference **Yael Valek:** How can a teacher tell the difference between a student who is lacking motivation due to a lagging skill or neurodivergence versus a student who just doesn't want to do the work? **Courtney Edman:** My answer is: if you give them an incentive and they immediately change, or you give them a consequence and they immediately change, their brain works with rewards and consequences. For example — "If you don't do it now, you'll have to do it at home" — many kids won't want that, and they'll use that logic to get started. If you mention that and they still don't get started, there's probably something else blocking them. If traditional approaches don't work, they probably won't ever work, and we need to use a different approach. The sooner we use a different approach, the less shame, guilt, and negative self-narrative our kids will develop. **Teresa Nair:** Most of us here lean into Dr. Ross Greene's framework — "kids do well when they can." I hope teachers can take that idea and know that this kid does not want to be the failure of the class. If they've taken that label on, it's because it's been part of their cycle and it's where they feel comfortable staying, because it's what's expected. But underneath, most kids want to succeed. Look at the neurodivergence: is there a processing issue? Is there an IEP that gives insights? Working memory issues, processing challenges — these can all be the block. As a former teacher, I know it's a lot on your plate to do this for each kid, but it's important and it's valuable. --- ## Q&A: When Motivation Drops Off Mid-Task **Yael Valek:** Sometimes motivation is there, but partway through, it's no longer there. If I take a break, it's hard to come back. What to do? **Courtney Edman:** If you know you're going to take a break and you know you have a hard time coming back, what can you do in anticipation of that blocker? I call it a "boundary blocker" — not quite a spark, not quite a blocker, but something you set up in advance. Maybe it's an alarm. Maybe you call a friend and say, "Can you call me in five minutes? I'm taking a break and I need to make sure I'm back on track." Then you add in a spark when you return — jumping jacks if movement works for you, or a different playlist to activate a different part of your brain. Figure out your "phone a friend" moves so you don't get lost in the break. **Gustav Steinhardt:** I want to echo the point about community. I work with neurodivergent college students, and I see the value of community — especially neurodivergent community. If you can get some ADHDers together to compare notes, that's incredibly helpful. Both for accountability, and for the validating sense of "there are other people out here who also work this way." It can sound like a hokey answer, but community solves a lot of these problems, or at least gives you the platform from which to solve them. Sometimes the "push through" framing is motivating. Sometimes it isn't — and in those moments, try "allow yourself through." Instead of "I'm going to grip my teeth and push through this reading," try "I'm going to allow myself the privilege of reading this thing." That doesn't always work either, but when pushing through isn't working, letting yourself flow around the obstacle might. **Courtney Edman:** I'm also a fan of allowing yourself to feel the block — naming it, saying "This really stinks, I am stuck right now." Emotions have a physiological lifespan of about 30 seconds, but if we keep feeding them energy, they keep building. If you can name it and release it, change scenery, or reach out to someone and say "I'm really having a hard time — do you have any ideas?" — that vulnerability and asking for help can help you find flow again. Developing awareness of what environments and times of day give you sparks, and setting yourself up to do the hardest things when you have the most success — that's an experimental mindset. Give yourself grace to recover when you hit a block. Then iterate on that cycle so you build a deeper understanding of what your brain needs. --- ## Q&A: What if the Spark Seems Counterproductive? **Yael Valek:** What if a kid asks for sparks that seem distracting? My kid wants me to read aloud while she does her math homework. **Gustav Steinhardt:** I'm tempted to say: try it. Give it a shot. **Courtney Edman:** Counterproductive to whom, right? Let's check that assumption. **Gustav Steinhardt:** Sometimes a spark isn't workable exactly as stated — but even just asking the question starts getting you to the insight. If the sensory experience of being read to is what activates that anticipatory dopamine spike, that's your first clue, and that's where you start digging until you find something that does work. Whatever the spark is, is informative at the very least. **Teresa Nair:** Right — it might not be you reading aloud specifically, as much as they just need an auditory something in the background. Bach worked great for me when I was studying; for animation, I'd put on rave music. Maybe try music instead, or explore what that auditory need might mean in other ways. **Courtney Edman:** This is why some people have to think carefully about their environment. Are they in a quiet library? A coffee shop? The louder part of the library? At home with the TV on? There's something called a counter-stimulus — sometimes people need something in the background auditorially in order to focus and attend. It's a real thing. --- ## Q&A: How Does Anxiety Fit with PDA? **Yael Valek:** I've understood PDA as being more related to anxiety. How does anxiety fit into PDA and into motivation in general? **Elizabeth Cobb:** We talked about this at last year's Stanford conference and there wasn't a clear consensus, but here's how I'd reframe it: anxiety is a symptom of PDA — it's an indicator of something we need to pay attention to. When we study anxiety as the primary lens, it's so amorphous that it doesn't give us much actionable information. But drilling down into PDA really helps us identify: where are we seeing equalizing happen? What is the underlying need — sensory, autonomy? That specificity is what gives us something to work with. **Courtney Edman:** The way I perceive it is that anxiety is our brain trying to protect us from something, whether real or perceived. It activates our sympathetic nervous system — fight, flight, or freeze. What the person with PDA is doing when they become avoidant is saying, "I don't feel safe right now." Subconsciously, their fight-flight mechanism is saying, "I need to be protected." That could look like anger, shutting down, any number of things. So we have to find a way to help them feel comfortable and activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the half that helps us feel calm — in order for the rest of the brain to come online. That's what equalizing does: it shifts them from sympathetic fight-or-flight into parasympathetic calm, where they can access the rest of their brain. It's like Monopoly — they pass Go. Once they're in a calm state, everything else opens up. **Gustav Steinhardt:** Or even just being activated all day in a school environment that doesn't feel supportive. The stress response — that sympathetic nervous system — is pretty sensitive, and it gets more sensitive as it's reinforced. When you have a negative experience, every element of that experience becomes negative for you. If you're in a car accident, every time you pass that corner, you start to get activated, because the amygdala is remembering everything about that experience indiscriminately — not just the specific cause, but everything. Young people have just an enormous number of aversive stimuli in their lives, and if you spend all day activated that way, yes, you're going to look for ways to protect yourself. Those responses aren't always rational, and they're not always aimed at the actual problem — especially for someone whose nervous system is still developing. **Courtney Edman:** And our brains are wired to hold on to the negative much more strongly than the positive. **Gustav Steinhardt:** Any experience with a strong negative valence forms a very strong memory. We could do a whole other hour just on the way the memory system responds to emotions — but yes, that's the basic idea. --- ## Q&A: How Does ADHD Medication Work on the Brain? **Yael Valek:** What does ADHD medication do to the brain things we talked about? Does it help with dopamine transfer between the various parts of the brain? **Gustav Steinhardt:** Depending on the specific medication, yes — one of the things it can do is either elevate or stabilize the total amount of dopamine or the activity of dopamine. If what you're dealing with is a dopamine system that's quieter, or intermittently quieter and louder, either of those might present as someone who has trouble getting things started or has trouble with dopamine transfer. So yes, ADHD meds absolutely will help people with those kinds of executive function things — though it's hard to say in the abstract whether it will work for any one person's particular circumstance. As with all psychoactive drugs, everybody's brain is different and everybody responds differently. We often don't really know the exact mechanism. I'm a strong advocate for being open to medication. I don't think it's the right solution for everyone, but it absolutely helps the people that it helps. --- ## Q&A: A Student Asks — How to Maintain Sparks and Avoid Burnout **Yael Valek:** From a neurodivergent student: what is the best way to identify a blocker, find a way to push through with a spark, and keep those helpful habits as consistent as possible so I don't go back to dealing with the block or burning out and repeating the harmful cycle? **Teresa Nair:** Have a list of sparks, because one might work in one moment and not another. For blockers — those are the ones we want to mitigate. If you can take a blocker out of the picture even before the situation arises, that's ideal. If being interrupted is a challenge and a blocker, try to get to a place where you can prevent that from happening. Know your blockers beforehand and minimize their presence. Having a couple of go-to sparks, knowing what's going to make you stall, and having a plan for re-sparking when you need to. And when you hit a block — give yourself grace. Sometimes you're going to run out of spoons, and no matter what spark or blocker you encounter, it's over for the day. That's the time to go into recovery and reset yourself. **Gustav Steinhardt:** Sometimes "push through" is helpful. Sometimes it isn't — and sometimes "allow yourself through" works better. If you're gritting your teeth and pushing through a reading you dread, try reframing it as, "I'm going to allow myself the privilege of reading this thing I'm actually kind of curious about." That's not always going to work, but when pushing through doesn't, allowing yourself through might. **Courtney Edman:** Developing awareness around what environments and times of day give you sparks — and then setting yourself up to do the hardest things at the times when you tend to have the most success — that's an experimental, iterative mindset. Give yourself grace to recover when you hit a block, and then learn from that cycle. Iterate on it, so that you build an understanding of who you are, what your brain needs, and when and where and how you can have more success more frequently. --- ## Q&A: Getting Shame Out of the Driver's Seat **Yael Valek:** How do we get shame out of the driver's seat? Shame, rejection, and fear of failure are usually at the forefront of inhibiting action. **Teresa Nair:** There's something called the giftedness trap — both Dr. Megan Neff and Jamie Roberts have done great talks on this. The idea is that for 2E kids, the identity of "the smart kid" gets built up, and then when the struggles come, the shame piles on because they can no longer be that smart kid. "They're so smart, but..." — that *but* carries enormous weight. We as parents and educators need to be aware of how we talk about giftedness, effort, and creativity without setting up a trap where, when things get hard, kids don't know who they are anymore. They used to get straight A's, and all of a sudden the shame of not being able to do it becomes a spiral. **Courtney Edman:** This goes back to the Ross Greene language: "It looks like you're having a hard time" rather than "you're giving me a hard time." Our 2E kids have had such a strong sense of agency and ability for so long — and when they hit a wall, we have to be there to hold them and put the pieces back together so they don't create the narrative "I'm a failure." I always encourage people to use the word AND as a connector, not BUT. "You're having a hard time, but I know you can do it" — the "but" invalidates everything that came before it. "You're having a hard time AND we can figure this out together" — both things are true, and neither cancels the other. Through figuring things out together, we model for our kids that using help is something everybody does — and we normalize asking for and accepting help, because some kids don't learn that until adulthood, and that can be a really hard crash. --- ## Q&A: When the Parent Also Needs a Pit Crew **Yael Valek:** How do we go about being a pit crew when we ourselves could use one? I struggle with my own dopamine pathways and activation, which makes it incredibly challenging to monitor and regulate someone else's — especially the follow-through piece. **Courtney Edman:** It's hard. It really is. It's about starting by identifying your own underlying needs — maybe writing them down. What builds your ability to have energy for the day? I think about battery life: what do I need to do to recharge for what I have to do for the rest of the day? And it's modeling for our kids that it's okay to take time to recharge. Who's on our pit crew? Do I have friends, music, exercise, nutrition, sleep? Where is the pit crew I haven't yet thought of? REEL could be part of your pit crew. And how do we let go of — and I know this was a process for me — the vision of the child I thought I was going to have, and the relationship I thought I was going to have? Seven years later, I'm doing it. But it was a process. How do I let go of what I expected in order to embrace the person that I actually have — the child's timeline, their interests — and join with them to decrease the resistance I'm creating for myself? That's a huge ask and a huge process. It takes time. I did a lot of holding it together in the moment — being communicative, collaborative, compassionate with my son — and then going to cry, or calling a friend and saying, "I can't believe he did it again." Allowing yourself to have the full human emotional experience so that it doesn't get stuck in your body. Building that acceptance and finding your pit crew — both internally and the one you surround yourself with externally — is a process for all of us. --- ## Closing **Yael Valek:** Thank you all so much, and thank you for staying extra time, everyone. I really appreciated this conversation and all of your expertise — the way it wove together coming from all different angles. I hope everyone gets some sparks, clears some blockers, finds new perspectives, hits cruise, and gets that magnifying glass to become the detective. Thank you all so much. **Courtney Edman:** Thank you so much for putting this together. I really appreciate being a part of it and hearing all the questions.

Struggling with a "reluctant writer"? Join tutor and researcher Lucy Wallace for a science-based deep dive into the emotional hurdles of twice-exceptional (2e) learners. Discover a practical toolkit to move from "blank page" panic to productive transitions using four key strategies: Calm Your Body: Physiological resets for the nervous system. Change Your Thoughts: Reframing rigid thinking and anxiety. Lighten the Load: Reducing cognitive overload and "decluttering" the process. Rethink Rewards: Shifting to immediate, dopamine-friendly payoffs. Stop the writing wars and start building your student's confidence today! #2e #Neurodiversity #WritingTips Read the transcript here - REEL Overview Introduction and REEL Overview Yael Valek, REEL: Okay, welcome everyone to today's REEL Talk. We're so excited to have Lucy Wallace here talking about When Writing Feels Hard, Science-Based Strategies for Managing Emotion in 2E Writers. And this talk is also offered in Spanish on another channel, so Callie will write that for you in Spanish. In case you're not familiar with REEL, we are a non-profit based in Silicon Valley, and we help twice-exceptional students thrive in school by raising parent and educator awareness and understanding. Of practical research-based strategies to address their needs successfully. So, for parents, we have talks like this, online resources and tools, and support groups, and then for educators, I'll show you more about what we do in the classroom. So just in case you're not familiar with what is 2E, REEL uses the definition that comes out of the Bridges 2E Center, which is an intersection of yellow, distinguishing strengths, high abilities in one or more areas. With the blue complex challenges, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, and others that combine. To make a green 2E child, and because you have to address both the strengths and the challenges simultaneously, this becomes a challenging profile to educate in the classroom, which is why REEL's here. REEL Resources for Parents and Educators For parents, we have a lot of free services, such as this expert speaker series. We also offer a bi-monthly Zoom support group, and a private Google group that just hit over a thousand members, with people asking and answering each other's questions about where to go to school, and where to find a writing tutor, all kinds of things like that. We also offer free downloadable parent toolkits, and I know Callie's putting some of these down in the chat. And many online resources and articles. Lucy has written a lot of wonderful articles on our website about writing. We have a school list so that you can browse local schools to the Bay Area. And then the only two things that we charge parents for are if you want more one-on-one support or small facilitated group learning. Here's an example of our parent toolkits. You can see you can download, at no cost, what is it like?. What do you do to support your 2E learner? How do you partner with your school?. And what if you just got a diagnosis? What are the first steps you should take?. And then for educators, we offer professional development at your school, and we can customize that. Most of our educators like to do our learning difference simulation, where you can feel what it feels like to have learning differences, and then we also do a vignette workshop where we work through specific students and how you might support them. We also have all kinds of online resources for educators and a newsletter. The Dear REEL Model and Upcoming Schedule And for educators, we have our Dear REEL model, which may also be relevant, I like to read it as well, about students developing connection, sorry, teachers developing connection, embracing flexibility, attending to students' strengths, and reframing behaviors, and we give a lot of concrete examples across, all kinds of age ranges of how you might support learners in the classroom. So we are getting close to the end of our winter-spring semester events. May 4th, we have a talk about Curiosity, connection, and confidence, a new path to motivation for 2E-learners, including a brain scientist from Berkeley showing, what's happening in the brain around motivation and activation, and then some experts speaking about it as well. And on May 7th, we have, our last parent support group of this school year, but there will be… they will continue on bi-monthly. So please, come to our website and RSVP for those. And again, as I mentioned, you can join our Google group, and you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and see our previous recordings on YouTube, and all of these will let you know when we have events coming up. And then now, I'm so happy to introduce Lucy, and Lucy, what is your dog's name?. Lucy Wallace: sticky. Yael Valek, REEL: Tiki? Lucy Wallace: Tiki. Yael Valek, REEL: Tiki, that's so cute. Okay, so Lucy, I found out, has loved writing since before she could hold a pen. As a teenager, she discovered her passion for teaching, and in college, she started her first tutoring business. After graduating in 2024, Lucy moved to Boston to launch Lucy's Learning Lab. Lucy Wallace's Presentation: Meeting the Writers She works one-on-one with students of all ages, helping them strengthen their writing and thinking skills. She has extensive experience supporting neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners. Outside of work, Lucy loves reading, rollerblading, and studying Russian, usually not all at once. And we will put a link to Lucy's Learning Lab in the chat, and I will let Lucy now share her slides. So welcome, we're so excited to have you. Lucy Wallace: Thank you for the introduction. Am I talking loud enough? Is this good? Okay, great. I'm told I have a quiet voice. Let me share my screen. Alright, is that working? Awesome. Let's meet some young writers. This is Henry. Henry is a walking encyclopedia. He's a third grader, absolutely loves history, particularly enjoys evaluating historical fiction based on the historical accuracy. He could go on for hours with that. Henry is autistic and easily overwhelmed. He struggles with flexibility, and writing can be really hit or miss. Case Studies: Henry, Ava, and Eli When he likes what he's writing about, it's easy, and the words flow, but when he doesn't like the topic, it's like pulling teeth. So right now, he has an assignment that seems simple to his parents. He has to write a paragraph about a book that he understood really well. But Henry is screaming and crying and refusing to write, and his parents don't know what to do. This is Ava. She's in 8th grade. She's especially strong in math and art. She has great visual skills and spatial reasoning, and she's outdoorsy and really appreciates natural beauty and small details that many people might overlook. She was recently diagnosed with dyslexia and slow processing speed. And although in the past Ava enjoyed writing, she has really been struggling this year. Her assignments are more challenging and complex. They're taking up a lot of her time, she really struggles to get started, she gets stuck and feels like she doesn't know what to write, and sometimes it takes her hours or days to begin. She's recently started calling herself stupid and saying she's terrible at writing. And right now, she has to write an essay about Frankenstein, and has been at her computer for hours, just writing and deleting. And her parents don't know what to do. This is Eli. He's a junior in high school, very bright, hyper-verbal, super outgoing, star of the debate team, loves it. And he has ADHD, so his mind moves really quickly, he gets bored easily, he's always jumping on to the next thing. He's currently taking a challenging history class that he really likes in general, but he's developed this pattern of procrastinating on writing assignments. He usually starts the assignment the night before it's due, and often gets it done late, but because of his IEP, he is able to turn the assignments in late and not get penalized for it. Now it's close to the end of the year. And he has a big essay that his parents know can't be started the night before, like, this is something you really do need to begin in advance. The Toolkit: Understanding Emotion and Writing And they're trying to tell him he's gotta get started, but he really doesn't want to. They don't know what to do. If any of these struggles sound familiar, you are in the right place. My name is Lucy, I'm a writing tutor. This is now repetitive because y'all already established this, but I've been working with kids like Ava and Henry and Eli for years. And through this work, I've learned and developed lots of strategies, to work with these writing challenges and the tricky emotions that come with writing. So today, I want to share those with you. I'm going to provide a comprehensive toolkit to help 2E kids overcome writing difficulties. And I'll show you how to implement these strategies, so we're going to revisit these three writers and think about how to help them. But before I get into that, let me just say a little bit more about myself. So… Who are you again? It's… I get this question a lot, it's a good one. As established, I am Lucy. I'm 2E, so at age 7 or so, I was fascinated by Shakespeare and performed, Juliet's Balcony speech for my confused classmates, but I didn't really understand the concept of taking turns in conversations. So that kind of sums up my childhood. Here I am, having won some small writing prize at the library. I don't know why I'm wearing a beanie. Connecting Science and Strategy California's not that cold. And then here I am at this big football game, and all I want to do is read Harry Potter. In high school, I discovered that I love teaching writing, and teaching in general. So I volunteered with various nonprofits, ran an academic program at my school, and started a tutoring business. In college, I majored in psychology, I did undergrad at Stanford, and I was really fortunate to join a lab focused on emotion research. So I've gotten to work with and be mentored by amazing scientists who are spending their careers trying to understand emotion and how people manage emotions. And I've gotten to learn in depth about this whole scientific field that provides really valuable insights. I started drawing on those insights in my tutoring work, as I encountered more and more students who struggled with writing. And the observations from tutoring have informed my research. I graduated from college a couple of years ago, moved to Boston, where I currently live, so I tutor full-time now, and this fall, I'll apply to PhD programs, so I'm still hoping to study these writing interventions formally. In today's talk, I'll be drawing on these two experiences as a tutor and as a budding researcher to give you some really practical tools to help 2E writers. And this is the new site for Lucy's Learning Lab. There'll be a link at some point, or maybe already, so feel free to check that out. Before, actually, before we get into those strategies, let's talk for a minute about emotion. When I started in the lab, I think my first day, I asked, what are emotions, and I expected, if people are studying this for their whole careers, surely they have a simple, straightforward definition that everyone agrees on. The Four Core Strategies Nope. Scientists debate the definition of emotion endlessly, but for our purposes, emotions consist of thoughts. Physical sensations in the body, and behaviors. And if we can change those components, then we can change the emotion. So each of these strategies aims to shift emotions from a different perspective, a different understanding of emotion. We've got Calm Your Body, which focuses on the physiology. Change your thoughts, so those are the cognitive aspects. Lighten the load, this has to do with cognitive load. And finally, rethink rewards, and that's with more of a behaviorist understanding of writing behavior. We'll go through each of these in more detail, and then apply them to the writers. Strategy 1: Calm Your Body Strategy 1, calm your body. So you may have heard of the sympathetic nervous system. This is the division of the autonomic nervous system that controls involuntary functions, and specifically the fight-or-flight response. So this is what helped our ancestors fight woolly mammoths or other big scary creatures. It increases the heart rate, makes us breathe faster, tenses our muscles, releases adrenaline, and slows down non-essential functions in the body. Its counterpart is the parasympathetic nervous system. Which is responsible for rest and digest. It promotes relaxation and recovery, helps us feel calm and safe, slows down our heart rate and breathing, all of that good stuff. In general, when a kid is freaking out about writing, or really anything, the sympathetic nervous system is more active, and we want to calm that down so that they can get into writing mode and tackle the task at hand. The first strategy to do this, I think of this as tip the scales. TIP is an acronym, represents four effective ways to calm intense emotions. And this comes from dialectical behavior therapy, which was originally developed for borderline personality disorder, but I think is really applicable to a wide range of experiences. So T is for temperature. This is an example of putting your face in ice water that triggers what's called the dive reflex, so it lowers the heart rate and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Intense exercise matches intense emotions, so you could do jumping japs, run up and down the stairs, sprint, even push-ups. Physiological and Cognitive Shifts Paced breathing. I think this is very fast-paced breathing. I think you're supposed to do it a little slower than in this image. But in general, breathing slowly activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And finally, progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing and relaxing one muscle group at a time. I really like this one, and have been doing it regularly for quite a while, actually. It helps in the moment, and it also helps me be more aware of when I'm physically stressed, so I'm a huge fan of PMR. So that's Tip the Scales. A couple of others. I know we just talked about breathing, so maybe it's cheating to list this as a different strategy, but Tip is specifically for really intense emotions, and taking a breath is good pretty much all the time. I have a little GIF that shows you how to breathe and times it on my desktop, and I often have my students do that during sessions when I see that they're really tense. Finally, I strongly recommend getting a dog. This is my dog, as we have seen. She is great, she's very fluffy. If you don't have a dog, and you're not getting one for some reason, you could also substitute other animals, soft, furry things, but really, dogs are the best. Okay, so that is our first strategy, calm your body. Next up is change your thoughts. Strategy 2: Change Your Thoughts So, appraisal theory is, scientists speak for, our emotions depend on beliefs about a situation. So when a kid gets a writing assignment, and they start to freak out, it's not just the writing assignment that's causing the freaking out, it's the thoughts about that assignment. Like, this is gonna be so painful, I can't do it, I hate it, I don't want to, etc. So, in theory, if we can change those thoughts, we can change the emotional response. Now, thoughts are generally built on past experiences, and usually when kids have these thoughts about writing, it's because they have very real struggles and skill gaps, so it's a lot more complicated than just saying, think something different, and all will be well. I think of shifting thoughts as a long-term process that we keep circling back to. It doesn't happen overnight, but it is worth thinking about and revisiting these beliefs to gradually change them over time. So here are some ways you can do that. Checking the facts, means taking a belief that might be distorted and trying to match it against reality. So one example, I worked with a high schooler who really, really struggled with procrastination. Actually, most of my high schoolers struggle with procrastination. But this particular student, just really struggled to get started on assignments. And when we started working together, first time, I asked him, scale of 1 to 10, how painful do you think this essay will be?. And he said, I think a 7. And then we got started, and I said, okay, how bad was it actually? Scale of 1 to 10? 5. So still pretty bad, but that's a difference, right?. Reframing Rigid Beliefs 5 versus 7? And we repeated that, and over time, he came to see that writing wasn't always fun, but it also wasn't quite as terrible as he anticipated, and that made it easier to get started. So that's one example of how you could check the facts. Also, when you hang out with psychologists enough, you find yourself just asking people survey questions in everyday life, getting them to rate things on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a whole thing. Next, loosen your grip. Thoughts can be distorted, but sometimes trying to change thoughts gets really exhausting and doesn't necessarily work. So instead of changing our thoughts, we can also change how we relate to those thoughts. I've done this in my own writing. I tend toward perfectionism. I may have redone these slides way too many times. And so I've learned that when I start writing. And I stop and hear the thought, that sentence is awful, you have to delete it, it's no good. It's not gonna help me to try to play tug-of-war with those thoughts. Instead, I tell myself, that's just the noise that my mind makes. There's that thought again, same old. I'm thinking it, but I don't have to act on it. I can just keep writing. This is hard, it takes practice, but it's been really effective for me. Third option is planting seeds, and this is in particular for the rigid thinkers out there, including a lot of my students on the spectrum, who have very strong beliefs about all sorts of things. There's not always an obvious reason behind that belief, but it is very firmly held. For example, I worked with a student who refused to outline. A middle schooler, she was just very opposed to outlines. I was never fully sure why, but she… I don't like outlines, I hate outlines, and you can't make me outline. Strategy 3: Lighten the Load Not the mistake of getting into a debate about outlines. It lasted 20 minutes, and I lost. Because arguing with rigid thinkers rarely ends well. So, I've learned to plant seeds instead. And I really like starting with maybe or I wonder. So if someone tells me outlines are useless, I might say, I wonder if there's a version of outlining that could work for you. Maybe. Maybe not. I just wonder. Another funny example of this, when I was working with a high schooler who was reading Hamlet and was outraged by this. Hamlet is stupid, I hate this, why do I have to do this?. And I think I said, maybe you'll find some meaning in the play, and he goes. From Shakespeare, as though I just asked him to find the meaning of life in a cereal box, and I couldn't help but laugh, that was pretty funny. So planting seeds, a good strategy, much more effective than arguing about outlines. Next up is Lighten the Load. This comes from what's called cognitive load theory, which has to do with how much information our brains can process at once. And the answer to that is not a lot. Our working memory has pretty limited capacity, and if we overwhelm that capacity, it gets hard to learn or really do anything. And this is especially relevant for our 2E kids, many of whom have slower processing speed, working memory limitations, etc. In my experience, overload from writing comes from two sources. So one issue is too much information. That's when we've got two pages of requirements, a rubric, a binder, 5 tabs open, a really long book, maybe a paper that was left in a backpack somewhere, etc. Strategy 4: Rethink Rewards It's a lot, and in a couple minutes, when we revisit Ava, I'll show you exactly how to declutter a messy Google Doc. So that's the first source of overload. The second source, paradoxically, is too little information. Leave a really open-ended prompt, like, write about whatever you want. Which sounds simple, but actually, that's so broad. How are you supposed to decide?. A student showed me this meme a couple years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. How to draw an owl, to draw the oval, and then do the rest. And they said, this is what writing assignments feel like. And I thought that was so spot on, because really, a lot of writing assignments are like this. It's like, just write the thing, figure it out. That's really overwhelming. So, in this case, we want to add structure. I think most important is to find a first step, and it actually doesn't matter a lot, in my opinion, where you start, you just have to start somewhere. So maybe you spend 2 minutes writing down bad ideas only. This is a fun one, it gets kids relaxed, and we can joke around a little. Maybe you spend 2 minutes gathering your materials, or making a mind map, or talking it through, or even doing the tip skill. If someone's really stressed, that would be a great starting point. Notice that all of those are under 2 minutes. That's really important. Keeping it brief makes it so much more manageable. And finally, we've got rethinking rewards. This strategy reflects a behaviorist understanding of psychology, of human behavior. Immediate vs. Long-term Rewards Basically, to simplify a little, if a behavior is rewarding, leads to something positive, we are more likely to repeat that behavior. I take a bite of a delicious cookie, it tastes good, I'll take another bite. If a behavior leads to something bad, we're less likely to repeat it, like drinking spoiled milk. So, what about writing? Well, here's the challenge with writing. In the short term, when kids are struggling with writing, or when anyone is struggling with writing, writing is the opposite of rewarding. It's painful and difficult and unpleasant, and avoiding writing feels great, because then you don't have to deal with that. In the long term, though, writing is beneficial, as seen by these happy minions. You build skills, you get better, you don't have to deal with the assignment you procrastinated on. And avoiding writing creates more stress and pain. So, if we can find some way to make writing more immediately rewarding. Then we can start to tip the balance here. So here are a couple strategies for accomplishing that. One is cheerleading, being like this penguin. I keep this really simple, I will just say things like, you've got this, great, nice work. I know a lot of my students are giving themselves the opposite of this, lots of negative self-talk going on internally, so I want to counteract that. And that's where cheerleading comes in. Doesn't have to be super complicated, but it's helpful. Second option is to picture the payoff. And I'll do this with kids by asking them to visualize. So I might say. Visualization and Practical Application (Henry) I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself two days from now. And let's say you really buckle down, you finish the essay. You're done, you don't have to worry about it. How does that feel? If we're worried about procrastination, I might also ask them to imagine what it will be like if they've put it off and they have to do the whole thing the night before. That's not comfortable, but I would much rather they think about it now and take a different course of action than have to actually experience that in 2 days. I find this particularly helpful for those with ADHD. People sometimes say there are two times in ADHD, now and not now, so time can be really slippery, and two days in the future might as well be two decades, so the visualization makes it much more concrete. And then after we've… we have visualized, the question is, how can you make your future self happier?. Finally, treat yourself. After I finish insert concrete task here, I get to insert enjoyable thing. So here are just some examples. Cupcakes, obviously, there's a limitation to some of these. I also find that when I ask kids to identify treats, it's almost always chocolate. I'm like, okay, but you can't eat a chocolate bar for every… no, your parents are not going to be on board with that. So there are other ones too, right?. Anything that's fun that someone looks forward to can be a good reward. I've got this talking person here because some of my students just love to talk about their interests, and so I'll say, I would love to hear all about, I don't know, manatees. But we need to finish this writing task, so let's do 8 minutes of writing, and then you can tell me about manatees. So they get writing done, and I learn a lot about very random topics. Video games, you do have to be careful with those, but in theory, they could help. Applying Strategies to Henry Those are our four strategies, high level, with some specific tactics for each. So now, let's go back to our writers and see how we might apply them. This is Henry. Remember, he's our 3rd grade history buff, he's on the spectrum, he's overwhelmed by a ridiculously open-ended writing assignment. We're gonna start with the calm your body skill tip. So, having him run up and down the stairs. He is really, really panicking, and we need him to just get in a calmer state. Otherwise, this is gonna be challenging. So, we might gamify this by saying, let's set a timer, we want them to run up and down the stairs, see how many times you can do it in one minute. If he's competitive, this might bring out that competitive urge, and help him calm down a little. Change in thoughts. So, Henry is a rigid thinker. I'm not really banking on this strategy being all that effective. Because his mind probably isn't going to change that quickly, but I might plant a seed or two, by suggesting that maybe writing won't always be this hard, or that this feeling will pass. And he may or may not agree with me in the moment. Lightening the Load and Special Interests Lightening the load, this is especially important because he's got this super, super open-ended assignment that's just add a paragraph, or write a paragraph about whatever you want. So I've got a little demo of what we might do. I really like the five W's of journalism. Those are the who, what, when, where, why. And they're surprisingly easy to adapt to different assignments. So here, I might tell him to write down who are the characters, name a couple, what are the main events. He might get hung up on the definition of main, but we could just say name any three events, the first that come to mind. When does the story take place? where is it set?. Why would you recommend it to your classmates, or not?. So we've taken this wildly open-ended task and turned it into a really specific list of things to do. So that definitely lightens the cognitive load of writing. And finally, oh, I jumped ahead. We're going to use his special interest as a reward, because he definitely wants to talk about medieval catapults, or knights, or something medieval. And that will be a great reward as soon as he is done with this writing task. Applying Strategies to Ava: Decluttering We will learn a lot about the medieval era. Awesome. Okay, that is Henry. Let's move on to Ava. So with the Calm Your Body, she's not freaking out on the same level that Henry was, but she's still pretty physically tense, visibly tense. And so taking deep breaths is definitely going to be helpful. I often ask students to take deep breaths while I figure out what the assignment is about, and we might do it together. Ava also has a very nice mouse named Fred, so we will grab Fred and have him on hand for this whole experience. Fred is a supportive presence. We like Fred. Second, lightening the load, we are going to declutter a Google Doc. And I just need to stop this screen share and start another one. But if the Zoom gods favor me, then this should go okay. Let's give it a try. Okay. Can people see this, this Google Doc? Yes, okay. Practical Demo: Organizing a Google Doc So this is the original Google Doc. And you can see it is pretty long, it's very long. And all of the text looks the same, so it's really hard to just tell what's what here. So, in order to declutter this, I'm gonna take a few steps. First thing, I'm gonna add headings. So I'll go… this is our little style thing, I'll select Heading 1. These look like assignment instructions, so I'm gonna say… Assignment instructions… Super creative. These are key dates and deadlines, so I'll also make this a heading. These look like a rubric of some sort, so I'm gonna do that too. Let's go rubric… And I'll leave out the rest, but adding headings would be the first step. Step 2. I'm gonna go to File, Page Setup, down here. And currently, we're on Pages. I'm going to select Page Lists. I think this looks slightly nicer, but really the big bonus is now we've got these little arrows, and we can actually collapse this. So it's all still there, but we're gonna hide it, and so we don't have to look at it. Formatting Tools for Scannability This is just helpful in general, in my opinion, but especially for my students with dyslexia, slow processing speed, it feels so much better not to have a massive wall of text in front of you. So, we've already made a lot of progress with this. We can go further, though. We're gonna do some subheadings, yay. So this seems like… general instructions… I know that should be capitalized, but we're gonna leave it for now. Paragraph, something… This looks like additional. Oh, and I forgot, another bonus. Click tabs over here, and you get all of these. You can easily jump around and navigate. Okay, a couple more handy things. I really like to put things in boxes. My students make fun of me for this, but I stand by the boxes anyway. So we'll go insert… table. And I'm gonna select just a 1x1 table, like this, and now we have a handy box. And if we put this in here, it looks visually contained, and it just becomes easier to move our attention around the document. I also adore checklists. The Psychology of Checklists and Color Making checklists makes me feel powerful. That's also helpful. So we could do step one, step two, step three, and then we can actually check those off. Very exciting. A couple of my younger kids enjoy just checking these off the moment they appear on the screen, and then we have to talk about how checkboxes are significantly less useful if you check them off before they're completed. So it's a good opportunity to practice self-control, but otherwise, these are great. All right. And finally, I really like changing the colors, and I'm actually just gonna show you the final version, so you're not sitting here watching me do this for 10 minutes. This actually, this screen reader thing came from yet another student who's so sensitive to light that just a screen like this bothers their eyes. Meanwhile, I have another student on the spectrum whose favorite colors are neon pink and neon green together. So it's just a fascinating variety. Here is our final version, so I've colored these, and you can see this looks so much nicer, so much easier to see what is where. And we can also see that Ava actually has a number of ideas that are reasonably well finished. reasonably well-developed, so that's great. Okay, so we've done all of this, and I'm going to stay on the Google Doc for just one more minute. Breaking the Perfectionist Spiral So let's say now Ava is starting to write. I think that the biggest monster in Frankenstein and then she pauses, and selects all of this, and deletes it. And maybe she does that again a couple times. I see this a lot, I do this a lot. It's this perfectionist spiral of, I write something, I don't like the way it sounds, let me get rid of it and make it better, and that can just go on forever. And it's really hard to write something and just leave it there when you hate it. So here is the strategy that I really like to use in this situation. So let's say… I'm Ava, I'm writing this, I really want to delete it, but I also need to break this spiral. Instead, I'm going to highlight, I'm gonna go to this little highlight thing, and color it black. So I can't see it anymore, it can't bother me as much, but it's still there, and so I'm still building up a tolerance for that imperfection, and if it turns out this wasn't a terrible idea, it's right there on the document. This also stops us from spending half an hour writing and deleting and having nothing on the page, which can be incredibly discouraging. So, I'm gonna go back to the slides. That was our little Google Doc adventure. And… Here we are. Applying Strategies to Ava (Recap) Awesome. And changing thoughts-wise, we might be practicing this whole letting go of the inner editor, trying to disregard that voice that says what you're writing is terrible, change it at once. I definitely have that voice. It's loud. Okay, and finally, Ava is pretty motivated to work on this project, so she doesn't need a ton of rewards, but I'm definitely gonna be saying, you got this, great job, it doesn't have to be perfect, because I know that in her head, she's hearing the exact opposite, and I want to counteract that. So, awesome. We've gotten her through the first draft, she gets to go hang out with Fred the Mouse and be done for now. Yay. And yeah, this is the before and after, so you can just appreciate the beauty of a well-organized Google Doc. Last but not least, we have Eli. Applying Strategies to Eli: Managing Avoidance Eli's our 11th grader, he's been procrastinating on history assignments, he's procrastinating on this one, and procrastination is not going to work well for him. And let's say for the sake of the example that he's agreed to a tutoring session. So he's in a session with me, but he's not super motivated. We don't really need to calm him down, because he is cool as a cucumber. If anything, I might need to calm down, because I'm getting a little stressed about this assignment on his behalf. Changing thoughts might not work out too well. Remember, he's on the debate team, so if this becomes a debate, he will almost certainly win. And also, debating the necessity of writing can easily become yet another way to avoid writing. Lightening the load, so I'm a big fan of checklists, as you heard. Breaking the assignment down into specific steps is almost always a good idea. So, we might say, let's start by talking through the essay, and then start writing. The talking part is great, he's very good at talking, but when it comes time to start writing, that's when it becomes harder. And it really takes coaxing and encouragement on my behalf to get him to write. And he might draft a sentence or two, and then stop, and off in distraction land, talking and talking about something unrelated. So, what do you do in that situation? Forceful vs. Gentle Encouragement I have a few different approaches. I'm gonna name the avoidance by saying something like, right now you're talking, you're very good at talking, you don't need my help with that, but you do need my help with writing, so please let's do some writing. I'm not always this forceful with students. For some students, this would be disastrous, but when they are really, really determined to avoid, and they're doing it very cheerfully and energetically. I sometimes have to be this forceful to get through, so I would only do this if we have a good rapport and they know that I care about them, etc.. Another thing that catches people off guard and is effective is to say really calmly and neutrally, do you want this to take a long time?. I'm not being snarky, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely just asking, do you want this to take a long time?. And they'll say, No? And then I'll answer, okay, so what can you do to get it done efficiently, and how can I help?. And that sort of turns the tables and invites them to problem-solve, and also gently points out that they're maybe not acting in their own best interest by dallying. Another version of this is to… Again, calmly and non-judgmentally describe consequences. So say something like, if you buckle down and we can get this done, I think we could finish in the next 20 minutes, and you'll have the rest of the weekend free. The Impact of Extensions and Scaffolding If we keep dallying, this could take hours. So, let me know how I can help and what you want to do. So those are 3 ways that we can really encourage writing in the moment and cut through that avoidance. Here's the thing, though. At the end of the day, we're fighting an uphill battle, because avoidance and procrastination are a pattern for Eli, and they have been heavily reinforced in the past. He's had these extensions, he's able to turn things in late without an effect on his grades. So not only has he learned that it's fine to procrastinate, he's also learned that when a teacher or tutor says, you need to do this, it doesn't really mean anything. So, the real lasting solution is actually going to be to get rid of those extensions and have real deadlines. In many cases, extensions are the opposite of an accommodation. They're almost an anti-accommodation, because they can just extend the procrastination. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, so please don't interpret this as a blanket stance on extensions, but I've seen enough cases where extensions get in the way that I felt this was worth including. If anything, students with ADHD would often benefit from more deadlines and more scaffolding to get that assignment done. Final thoughts, the dog again, so cute. Practice. Practice is very important. Practice and Virtuous Cycles Students will sometimes tell me, I tried using a timer, I tried a checklist, and it didn't work. That's a little bit like saying, I went to one violin lesson, and I still can't play a Beethoven symphony. That's just not how that works, right? These are skills, they take practice. I wish I had an overnight solution to make writing magically easy. If I had found that, I probably would have monetized it by now. In the meantime, while I search for that. All of these strategies take practice, so if at first you don't succeed, circle back. Second point, success increases motivation. There's a whole side note here with some recent research on achievement and motivation, but if we can set students up for success with writing, that's going to create a virtuous cycle and be motivating. And finally, I mentioned that I've struggled with perfectionism. Part of my trying to manage that perfectionism is pushing myself to share my writing with the world, even when I feel that it is not perfect. And it probably isn't, because few things are. So, on my blog, I have a written version of this presentation, all for strategies, specific tactics, and case studies, and on that blog, I'll also be posting additional pieces of writing. Final Thoughts and Audience Q&A About the biggest questions that come up with supporting 2E writers. So we can maybe drop that in the chat, feel free to check that out. And I would love to take questions. Yael Valek, REEL: Great, thank you so much, Lucy. Those were, great strategies that I'd like to try with my own kids. So one question that came up is, where should a first grader be in terms of writing?. Dyslexia has been ruled out, although she writes some numbers backwards. She doesn't prefer writing, but she will do it. In her school evaluation, she needed to write a paragraph and wrote only a sentence. Then, refusing to do the rest. And the psych said she was really worried about it. I'm not sure I need to be, or what the standards for grade 1 are. So how do you feel about the expectations of different ages of, you know, especially very young writers?. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, it's really hard because… So, I haven't worked in a classroom, I'm not a classroom teacher, so I don't have a great sense of what's normative. I also, with norms, are those representing where kids should be, where most kids actually are?. Navigating School Standards and Scaffolding It's just hard to say. so I don't… I feel like I don't have a great answer to this, unfortunately. I guess I would wonder, how they're doing in school, like, is a kid keeping up with what's expected of them in the classroom?. Because if they're not, then that might affect their ability to learn. I also, like, in this case, writing a sentence versus a paragraph, is that ability, or is that not wanting to, or resisting the task, but maybe still being able to write a paragraph?. I wish I had a clearer answer for this, but I don't think there's a simple answer to where a kid should be in learning. But I think talking to teachers and getting that perspective is probably valuable, so that might be the best thing I can recommend here. Yael Valek, REEL: Makes sense. Related to the Google Doc that you showed, someone says, I may have missed this earlier, is the student supposed to be able to redo the Google Doc like this?. Versus the person helping with the scaffolding. I'm thinking of a high schooler in 10th or 11th grade. Lucy Wallace: supposed to is a funny term. If they can, it's great. Often, they can't, and so doing it with them is awesome, and giving them that scaffolding, and with practice, students start learning to do this for themselves. Embracing the Student "In Front of Us" Yeah, if they can, it's great, but if they can't, that's just where they are, and we work with that. I think a lot of working with 2E students is letting go of the shoulds, because we can get really caught up in what should work, where they should be, etc, and that gets in the way of teaching the student in front of us. Yael Valek, REEL: Okay, oop. Thank you. I like the declutter strategy. What are your thoughts on an assignment that is interpreted as… by a student as having an infinite amount of steps?. Lucy Wallace: Sometimes I interpret assignments that way, too. Some of the college and high school assignments can be really, really complicated. I think in that case, I think we can acknowledge that we might not be able to identify every single step, but there can be at least a few good starting points. I also think this strategy works best when practiced repeatedly, and if we can find a reliable first step for any assignment. Like, with one student I worked with, we had this writing process. That we laid out with this color-coded graphic, and it was always, like, we talk through the prompt, we write down bullet points, we expand the bullet points into sentences, we organize the sentences. Writing Process Consistency no matter what they're writing about, we always follow those steps. And later that got expanded and adapted for different assignments, but just having that consistency and knowing that no matter the situation, I know what my first three steps are, that can really help. And that's the tricky thing about writing, too. You can't map out the entire process in advance, so I would say start somewhere. Where you start is less important than just having a starting point. Yael Valek, REEL: That makes sense. Often that first hump is the hardest. Lucy Wallace: Yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: Someone was asking, too, I noticed, what about using speech-to-text?. Do you use that as a starting point just to get something on the paper, and then they can reorganize it and edit it, move it around?. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, speech-to-text… okay, this one is complicated, because… It can be a super helpful tool. It definitely is for a lot of students I work with, and sometimes I use it as well, but over-reliance on speech-to-text can get in the way of writing learning. I've worked with kids who use speech-to-text exclusively, and haven't really developed writing skills. Thoughtful Use of Dictation And because they don't have much experience with writing, when they… speech-to-text, they're really just talking. If you were to write down everything that I'm saying right now, maybe an AI is doing that, it wouldn't really be prose, right?. Writing isn't just talking on paper. And so I do worry when kids are using speech-to-text exclusively. That said, I think when deployed thoughtfully, it can be a really good strategy. And I've also worked with students who have significant dysgraphia. Spelling is just kind of a nightmare. And I've seen kids develop really creative strategies to combine typing and predictive spelling technology with dictating. So maybe typing a few words, but if there's a really hard word to spell, they'll switch to dictation, or just deciding, like, in this moment, is it worth getting the typing practice, or does dictation make more sense?. So that's my little speech, just be thoughtful about dictation, but yeah, it can be super helpful. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Our son tends to resist strongly or even throw a tantrum when others, like a teacher, tutor, or parents, offers to help on any struggles or on writing. Any suggestions? Lucy Wallace: That's a tough one. I might approach him in a calm moment, and just say something like, I've got a dilemma, because… when I try to help with writing, it seems like it's not really helpful. Problem Solving and Special Interests Maybe, like, what would you do if you were me? What do you think would work?. I think asking kids to solve problems is a very underrated strategy in general. Sometimes it doesn't occur to me, and then I ask them, and I'm like, oh wow, they have really good ideas when I take those ideas seriously. So I think that could be good, and I might also think about, is there any source of motivation?. Maybe he's not motivated to do the writing assignments themselves, but maybe getting them done efficiently and not having them take up a ton of time. would be good. Or maybe just… I find that if I ask students, do you want writing to be easier?. The answer is rarely no. People generally want writing to be easier if it's painful, so that could also be a starting point. Yael Valek, REEL: And I heard you earlier talk about special interests, and I wanted to circle back to that, because one thing we didn't get to talk about, and I know not all schools and not all assignments at all grade levels have flexibility, but I've noticed from my own kids that whenever there's any choice of something you can write about, if they choose their special interest, it helps so much. Lucy Wallace: Yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: So I don't know if you've had luck, having students advocate for that, or sort of twist the assignment a little to be a little bit about, you know, that kind of thing. Lucy Wallace: I can think of some really good examples. I actually worked with a college student who was reading, I think, Tolstoy? Yeah, I think Tolstoy. Interest-Driven Writing and Messy Drafting And the student told me this story really lines up with this video game that has a profound commentary on life and death. And fortunately, this was a cool professor who heard that and was like, yeah, that's awesome, write about it. And so the student got to do a whole essay about that. Definitely increased the motivation. It was so insightful and brilliant, I loved that. Yael Valek, REEL: That's amazing. I'm so glad the professor took a chance on that. I've had mixed, findings with that. We're getting some heart… Any tips for writers who get very distracted by technical details, like spelling and grammar, so that they stop too often to correct the details and make little progress on the actual writing?. Lucy Wallace: Yes. So, I would practice messy drafting with them. I demonstrate this for students when they're really struggling, so I'll show them, I'm gonna write a messy draft here, I'm not gonna stop to correct spelling and grammar. Look at that typo. Look, that sentence doesn't even make any sense, and I didn't delete it. Look at how I abandoned that thought mid-phrase. I think I have to energetically model it. I've even created first draft bingo, where each square is, like, spelling error, typo, space instead of word, abandoned a sentence, something like that. Gamification and Classroom Writing Challenges So if you gamify it, and if you treat it as almost an… Sorry, my dog is being so weird, that's very distracting. If you gamify it and treat it as almost an endurance sport, like, let's try to write for 2 minutes, next time 3, and then 4, I think that's a great way to develop that skill. And I say that as someone who is usually reluctant to just leave typos uncorrected. Yael Valek, REEL: I love the idea of first draft bingo. That's great. Okay, so we have some… you probably know that because of AI, more and more assign… writing assignments are happening inside the classroom, so there's a couple questions about that. Middle and high school assignments are starting to be only in the classroom where there aren't you can't meet with your writing tutor. And then there's also a question about timed writing assignments, because the time boundaries may exacerbate anxiety. So I don't know if you have any Things to say about those. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, so with the timed writing, this is an interesting one because there… so, the research on writing anxiety is disappointingly meeker. It's… it's just kind of a mess. I looked into that scientific body of literature, hoping to get some insights, and the main insight was people define things very inconsistently. Timed Tests and Student Support But math anxiety is much better researched, and there's significant work on timing and that effect on math anxiety. And I don't have a super deep knowledge of it, but from what I understand. There's a perception that time tests exacerbate anxiety, but really it's more that, like, poor performance and a lack of knowledge generally create anxiety, and there's sometimes a conflation of causation and correlation there. So with timed tests for writing, I… I'm not sure that the solution would be to avoid timing, I think getting more exposure to that would be helpful in building the skills. That's just my first instinct. And with AI, is the question, like, what to do if you can't have a writing tutor in the moment?. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah. Lucy Wallace: Practice… I think the best you can do is practice similar tasks with support, or maybe if teachers are open to having, like, a graphic organizer, sentence scaffolds, a clear checklist, something like that, so you don't need a person, but there is some form of support. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah, makes sense. Do you find you have success where others have not in helping reluctant writers?. The Role of Non-Parents and Success Cycles My kids won't let me or his dad help him. Last night, he was up till 1 staring at a blank screen. The assignment was to write two paragraphs, and he'd been working on it all day. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, I have had success where others are not. I wish I were 100% successful. Some students I work with, we don't quite click, it doesn't work for whatever reason, so I don't want to be grandiose here. I also… I wish I knew exactly what every kid needed and what helped them, and had that down to a science, like an exact prescription for what's going to fix the problem. And I think there's a lot of random variation, so sometimes you just have to keep trying until you find something. So yes, I've had success with students who seemed like nothing helped them write. I'm not sure that's anything specific to me, but just the benefit of keeping trying. Yael Valek, REEL: I do also find that in the teen years, having it not be your own parents, they don't want to hear it from their… they don't want to hear anything from their parents, right?. Lucy Wallace: I could say the exact same thing as a parent, and it would be so much better received, so that's really one of my big selling points, I'm not a parent. Dyslexia Resources and Closing Yael Valek, REEL: Are there any particular reading and writing programs that you use or recommend for students who are diagnosed with dyslexia in middle or high school?. Lucy Wallace: Reading or writing program. So, I've been looking into what's called the Hawkman Method. The book is The Writing Revolution. I'll put that name in the chat. It's like this, and you can Google it. I'm thinking of getting formally trained in this. I really like it because it involves sentence-level support, practicing constructing sentences. Which is… that just doesn't… that doesn't happen magically. Like, we don't learn to write sentences often without some sort of formal support, and this is the first program I've seen that actually provides that. Has a lot of scaffolding and explicit instruction. So, yeah, that's exactly, that's the link. I know people do Orton Gillingham, and some really like that. I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but those two do come to mind. Yael Valek, REEL: And someone else is also saying, Per your previous response about it being you and not the parent, that when kids have rejection-sensitive dysphoria, having. Feedback from parents is even more personal and distressing. Lucy Wallace: I could totally see that, yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: And so another… another person says, their daughter tends to have rigid thinking about independence. If she's given an assignment, she assumes she should be able to do it by herself. Therefore, if someone offers help, she internalizes that as failure. We've talked a lot about the steps of learning, and how even adults ask for help regularly. Lucy Wallace: I mean, absolutely. I also sometimes, students who think rigidly will sometimes worry that getting help is cheating, so that's another one that we talk through, but I think, giving examples of asking for help is a really good one, and trying to think of other ones… I think… I mean, I don't know that anyone is truly independent, in that we all rely on other people or learn from other people in some way. Shifting Rigid Beliefs and Wrapping Up So it sounds like you're approaching that very reasonably, and it just might take a long time to… not erode, but to shift those rigid beliefs. Yael Valek, REEL: And then, Just so you know, someone recommended a book called How to Read Literature Like a Professor, and said it was very demystifying for his 2E son. Lucy Wallace: Oh, awesome. I've heard of that, but haven't read it, so it sounds good. Oh. Oh, I guess another thing, a parent just mentioned this to me, there are chapter books specifically for kids with dyslexia, slash ADHD that are, like, faster-paced, smaller blocks of text, easier to read, and this parent mentioned that her son, who is a reluctant reader, blazed through a whole series and felt much more confident after that. So I can just search that up really quickly. That's another good option, I think, for reading. Yael Valek, REEL: And you said you have a blog post you wanted us to share about some of. shared today, I'll put that in the chat as well. This is a, blog that Lucy wrote about all the tips that she shared today. Lucy Wallace: And these are the dyslexia, ADHD-friendly kids chapter books. That got rave reviews. So, yay. Yael Valek, REEL: Just so you know, you're getting a lot of, we're so impressed with you, Lucy, thanks for all the great ideas, and I still… There was one up higher that was also… now I'm gonna lose it, but, that was also praising. how helpful this was. You are incredible, Lucy. Thank you for all the wisdom, resources, and information. Thank you for everything you do to support the children you work with. Lucy Wallace: Thank you, so nice of you, I appreciate it. Yael Valek, REEL: Lots of love in the chat. And Lucy has written a lot of articles that have been super helpful, on REEL, and so I'm also going to just put the link to all of her articles that she's written on our website in the chat, and Callie has put, our, link to, providing feedback on this talk. And, this is the third in our writing series this year, so if you missed the first two events, we have other parts. I love how it's been an arc of, kind of, diagnosing what's wrong with writing, essay writing, at the high school level, silly characters, and now the emotions behind getting going on writing, so… We really appreciate, your wisdom. Both from your experience, your research, and your own life. So thank you so much, Lucy. And we'll stop the recording, and we can chat, and you can read all the love in the… chat. Lucy Wallace: Awesome. More of the transcript here - Lucy Wallace's Presentation: Meeting the Writers She works one-on-one with students of all ages, helping them strengthen their writing and thinking skills. She has extensive experience supporting neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners. Outside of work, Lucy loves reading, rollerblading, and studying Russian, usually not all at once. And we will put a link to Lucy's Learning Lab in the chat, and I will let Lucy now share her slides. So welcome, we're so excited to have you. Lucy Wallace: Thank you for the introduction. Am I talking loud enough? Is this good? Okay, great. I'm told I have a quiet voice. Let me share my screen. Alright, is that working? Awesome. Let's meet some young writers. This is Henry. Henry is a walking encyclopedia. He's a third grader, absolutely loves history, particularly enjoys evaluating historical fiction based on the historical accuracy. He could go on for hours with that. Henry is autistic and easily overwhelmed. He struggles with flexibility, and writing can be really hit or miss. Case Studies: Henry, Ava, and Eli When he likes what he's writing about, it's easy, and the words flow, but when he doesn't like the topic, it's like pulling teeth. So right now, he has an assignment that seems simple to his parents. He has to write a paragraph about a book that he understood really well. But Henry is screaming and crying and refusing to write, and his parents don't know what to do. This is Ava. She's in 8th grade. She's especially strong in math and art. She has great visual skills and spatial reasoning, and she's outdoorsy and really appreciates natural beauty and small details that many people might overlook. She was recently diagnosed with dyslexia and slow processing speed. And although in the past Ava enjoyed writing, she has really been struggling this year. Her assignments are more challenging and complex. They're taking up a lot of her time, she really struggles to get started, she gets stuck and feels like she doesn't know what to write, and sometimes it takes her hours or days to begin. She's recently started calling herself stupid and saying she's terrible at writing. And right now, she has to write an essay about Frankenstein, and has been at her computer for hours, just writing and deleting. And her parents don't know what to do. This is Eli. He's a junior in high school, very bright, hyper-verbal, super outgoing, star of the debate team, loves it. And he has ADHD, so his mind moves really quickly, he gets bored easily, he's always jumping on to the next thing. He's currently taking a challenging history class that he really likes in general, but he's developed this pattern of procrastinating on writing assignments. He usually starts the assignment the night before it's due, and often gets it done late, but because of his IEP, he is able to turn the assignments in late and not get penalized for it. Now it's close to the end of the year. And he has a big essay that his parents know can't be started the night before, like, this is something you really do need to begin in advance. The Toolkit: Understanding Emotion and Writing And they're trying to tell him he's gotta get started, but he really doesn't want to. They don't know what to do. If any of these struggles sound familiar, you are in the right place. My name is Lucy, I'm a writing tutor. This is now repetitive because y'all already established this, but I've been working with kids like Ava and Henry and Eli for years. And through this work, I've learned and developed lots of strategies, to work with these writing challenges and the tricky emotions that come with writing. So today, I want to share those with you. I'm going to provide a comprehensive toolkit to help 2E kids overcome writing difficulties. And I'll show you how to implement these strategies, so we're going to revisit these three writers and think about how to help them. But before I get into that, let me just say a little bit more about myself. So… Who are you again? It's… I get this question a lot, it's a good one. As established, I am Lucy. I'm 2E, so at age 7 or so, I was fascinated by Shakespeare and performed, Juliet's Balcony speech for my confused classmates, but I didn't really understand the concept of taking turns in conversations. So that kind of sums up my childhood. Here I am, having won some small writing prize at the library. I don't know why I'm wearing a beanie. Connecting Science and Strategy California's not that cold. And then here I am at this big football game, and all I want to do is read Harry Potter. In high school, I discovered that I love teaching writing, and teaching in general. So I volunteered with various nonprofits, ran an academic program at my school, and started a tutoring business. In college, I majored in psychology, I did undergrad at Stanford, and I was really fortunate to join a lab focused on emotion research. So I've gotten to work with and be mentored by amazing scientists who are spending their careers trying to understand emotion and how people manage emotions. And I've gotten to learn in depth about this whole scientific field that provides really valuable insights. I started drawing on those insights in my tutoring work, as I encountered more and more students who struggled with writing. And the observations from tutoring have informed my research. I graduated from college a couple of years ago, moved to Boston, where I currently live, so I tutor full-time now, and this fall, I'll apply to PhD programs, so I'm still hoping to study these writing interventions formally. In today's talk, I'll be drawing on these two experiences as a tutor and as a budding researcher to give you some really practical tools to help 2E writers. And this is the new site for Lucy's Learning Lab. There'll be a link at some point, or maybe already, so feel free to check that out. Before, actually, before we get into those strategies, let's talk for a minute about emotion. When I started in the lab, I think my first day, I asked, what are emotions, and I expected, if people are studying this for their whole careers, surely they have a simple, straightforward definition that everyone agrees on. The Four Core Strategies Nope. Scientists debate the definition of emotion endlessly, but for our purposes, emotions consist of thoughts. Physical sensations in the body, and behaviors. And if we can change those components, then we can change the emotion. So each of these strategies aims to shift emotions from a different perspective, a different understanding of emotion. We've got Calm Your Body, which focuses on the physiology. Change your thoughts, so those are the cognitive aspects. Lighten the load, this has to do with cognitive load. And finally, rethink rewards, and that's with more of a behaviorist understanding of writing behavior. We'll go through each of these in more detail, and then apply them to the writers. Strategy 1: Calm Your Body Strategy 1, calm your body. So you may have heard of the sympathetic nervous system. This is the division of the autonomic nervous system that controls involuntary functions, and specifically the fight-or-flight response. So this is what helped our ancestors fight woolly mammoths or other big scary creatures. It increases the heart rate, makes us breathe faster, tenses our muscles, releases adrenaline, and slows down non-essential functions in the body. Its counterpart is the parasympathetic nervous system. Which is responsible for rest and digest. It promotes relaxation and recovery, helps us feel calm and safe, slows down our heart rate and breathing, all of that good stuff. In general, when a kid is freaking out about writing, or really anything, the sympathetic nervous system is more active, and we want to calm that down so that they can get into writing mode and tackle the task at hand. The first strategy to do this, I think of this as tip the scales. TIP is an acronym, represents four effective ways to calm intense emotions. And this comes from dialectical behavior therapy, which was originally developed for borderline personality disorder, but I think is really applicable to a wide range of experiences. So T is for temperature. This is an example of putting your face in ice water that triggers what's called the dive reflex, so it lowers the heart rate and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Intense exercise matches intense emotions, so you could do jumping japs, run up and down the stairs, sprint, even push-ups. Physiological and Cognitive Shifts Paced breathing. I think this is very fast-paced breathing. I think you're supposed to do it a little slower than in this image. But in general, breathing slowly activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And finally, progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing and relaxing one muscle group at a time. I really like this one, and have been doing it regularly for quite a while, actually. It helps in the moment, and it also helps me be more aware of when I'm physically stressed, so I'm a huge fan of PMR. So that's Tip the Scales. A couple of others. I know we just talked about breathing, so maybe it's cheating to list this as a different strategy, but Tip is specifically for really intense emotions, and taking a breath is good pretty much all the time. I have a little GIF that shows you how to breathe and times it on my desktop, and I often have my students do that during sessions when I see that they're really tense. Finally, I strongly recommend getting a dog. This is my dog, as we have seen. She is great, she's very fluffy. If you don't have a dog, and you're not getting one for some reason, you could also substitute other animals, soft, furry things, but really, dogs are the best. Okay, so that is our first strategy, calm your body. Next up is change your thoughts. Strategy 2: Change Your Thoughts So, appraisal theory is, scientists speak for, our emotions depend on beliefs about a situation. So when a kid gets a writing assignment, and they start to freak out, it's not just the writing assignment that's causing the freaking out, it's the thoughts about that assignment. Like, this is gonna be so painful, I can't do it, I hate it, I don't want to, etc. So, in theory, if we can change those thoughts, we can change the emotional response. Now, thoughts are generally built on past experiences, and usually when kids have these thoughts about writing, it's because they have very real struggles and skill gaps, so it's a lot more complicated than just saying, think something different, and all will be well. I think of shifting thoughts as a long-term process that we keep circling back to. It doesn't happen overnight, but it is worth thinking about and revisiting these beliefs to gradually change them over time. So here are some ways you can do that. Checking the facts, means taking a belief that might be distorted and trying to match it against reality. So one example, I worked with a high schooler who really, really struggled with procrastination. Actually, most of my high schoolers struggle with procrastination. But this particular student, just really struggled to get started on assignments. And when we started working together, first time, I asked him, scale of 1 to 10, how painful do you think this essay will be?. And he said, I think a 7. And then we got started, and I said, okay, how bad was it actually? Scale of 1 to 10? 5. So still pretty bad, but that's a difference, right?. Reframing Rigid Beliefs 5 versus 7? And we repeated that, and over time, he came to see that writing wasn't always fun, but it also wasn't quite as terrible as he anticipated, and that made it easier to get started. So that's one example of how you could check the facts. Also, when you hang out with psychologists enough, you find yourself just asking people survey questions in everyday life, getting them to rate things on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a whole thing. Next, loosen your grip. Thoughts can be distorted, but sometimes trying to change thoughts gets really exhausting and doesn't necessarily work. So instead of changing our thoughts, we can also change how we relate to those thoughts. I've done this in my own writing. I tend toward perfectionism. I may have redone these slides way too many times. And so I've learned that when I start writing. And I stop and hear the thought, that sentence is awful, you have to delete it, it's no good. It's not gonna help me to try to play tug-of-war with those thoughts. Instead, I tell myself, that's just the noise that my mind makes. There's that thought again, same old. I'm thinking it, but I don't have to act on it. I can just keep writing. This is hard, it takes practice, but it's been really effective for me. Third option is planting seeds, and this is in particular for the rigid thinkers out there, including a lot of my students on the spectrum, who have very strong beliefs about all sorts of things. There's not always an obvious reason behind that belief, but it is very firmly held. For example, I worked with a student who refused to outline. A middle schooler, she was just very opposed to outlines. I was never fully sure why, but she… I don't like outlines, I hate outlines, and you can't make me outline. Strategy 3: Lighten the Load Not the mistake of getting into a debate about outlines. It lasted 20 minutes, and I lost. Because arguing with rigid thinkers rarely ends well. So, I've learned to plant seeds instead. And I really like starting with maybe or I wonder. So if someone tells me outlines are useless, I might say, I wonder if there's a version of outlining that could work for you. Maybe. Maybe not. I just wonder. Another funny example of this, when I was working with a high schooler who was reading Hamlet and was outraged by this. Hamlet is stupid, I hate this, why do I have to do this?. And I think I said, maybe you'll find some meaning in the play, and he goes. From Shakespeare, as though I just asked him to find the meaning of life in a cereal box, and I couldn't help but laugh, that was pretty funny. So planting seeds, a good strategy, much more effective than arguing about outlines. Next up is Lighten the Load. This comes from what's called cognitive load theory, which has to do with how much information our brains can process at once. And the answer to that is not a lot. Our working memory has pretty limited capacity, and if we overwhelm that capacity, it gets hard to learn or really do anything. And this is especially relevant for our 2E kids, many of whom have slower processing speed, working memory limitations, etc. In my experience, overload from writing comes from two sources. So one issue is too much information. That's when we've got two pages of requirements, a rubric, a binder, 5 tabs open, a really long book, maybe a paper that was left in a backpack somewhere, etc. Strategy 4: Rethink Rewards It's a lot, and in a couple minutes, when we revisit Ava, I'll show you exactly how to declutter a messy Google Doc. So that's the first source of overload. The second source, paradoxically, is too little information. Leave a really open-ended prompt, like, write about whatever you want. Which sounds simple, but actually, that's so broad. How are you supposed to decide?. A student showed me this meme a couple years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. How to draw an owl, to draw the oval, and then do the rest. And they said, this is what writing assignments feel like. And I thought that was so spot on, because really, a lot of writing assignments are like this. It's like, just write the thing, figure it out. That's really overwhelming. So, in this case, we want to add structure. I think most important is to find a first step, and it actually doesn't matter a lot, in my opinion, where you start, you just have to start somewhere. So maybe you spend 2 minutes writing down bad ideas only. This is a fun one, it gets kids relaxed, and we can joke around a little. Maybe you spend 2 minutes gathering your materials, or making a mind map, or talking it through, or even doing the tip skill. If someone's really stressed, that would be a great starting point. Notice that all of those are under 2 minutes. That's really important. Keeping it brief makes it so much more manageable. And finally, we've got rethinking rewards. This strategy reflects a behaviorist understanding of psychology, of human behavior. Immediate vs. Long-term Rewards Basically, to simplify a little, if a behavior is rewarding, leads to something positive, we are more likely to repeat that behavior. I take a bite of a delicious cookie, it tastes good, I'll take another bite. If a behavior leads to something bad, we're less likely to repeat it, like drinking spoiled milk. So, what about writing? Well, here's the challenge with writing. In the short term, when kids are struggling with writing, or when anyone is struggling with writing, writing is the opposite of rewarding. It's painful and difficult and unpleasant, and avoiding writing feels great, because then you don't have to deal with that. In the long term, though, writing is beneficial, as seen by these happy minions. You build skills, you get better, you don't have to deal with the assignment you procrastinated on. And avoiding writing creates more stress and pain. So, if we can find some way to make writing more immediately rewarding. Then we can start to tip the balance here. So here are a couple strategies for accomplishing that. One is cheerleading, being like this penguin. I keep this really simple, I will just say things like, you've got this, great, nice work. I know a lot of my students are giving themselves the opposite of this, lots of negative self-talk going on internally, so I want to counteract that. And that's where cheerleading comes in. Doesn't have to be super complicated, but it's helpful. Second option is to picture the payoff. And I'll do this with kids by asking them to visualize. So I might say. Visualization and Practical Application (Henry) I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself two days from now. And let's say you really buckle down, you finish the essay. You're done, you don't have to worry about it. How does that feel? If we're worried about procrastination, I might also ask them to imagine what it will be like if they've put it off and they have to do the whole thing the night before. That's not comfortable, but I would much rather they think about it now and take a different course of action than have to actually experience that in 2 days. I find this particularly helpful for those with ADHD. People sometimes say there are two times in ADHD, now and not now, so time can be really slippery, and two days in the future might as well be two decades, so the visualization makes it much more concrete. And then after we've… we have visualized, the question is, how can you make your future self happier?. Finally, treat yourself. After I finish insert concrete task here, I get to insert enjoyable thing. So here are just some examples. Cupcakes, obviously, there's a limitation to some of these. I also find that when I ask kids to identify treats, it's almost always chocolate. I'm like, okay, but you can't eat a chocolate bar for every… no, your parents are not going to be on board with that. So there are other ones too, right?. Anything that's fun that someone looks forward to can be a good reward. I've got this talking person here because some of my students just love to talk about their interests, and so I'll say, I would love to hear all about, I don't know, manatees. But we need to finish this writing task, so let's do 8 minutes of writing, and then you can tell me about manatees. So they get writing done, and I learn a lot about very random topics. Video games, you do have to be careful with those, but in theory, they could help. Applying Strategies to Henry Those are our four strategies, high level, with some specific tactics for each. So now, let's go back to our writers and see how we might apply them. This is Henry. Remember, he's our 3rd grade history buff, he's on the spectrum, he's overwhelmed by a ridiculously open-ended writing assignment. We're gonna start with the calm your body skill tip. So, having him run up and down the stairs. He is really, really panicking, and we need him to just get in a calmer state. Otherwise, this is gonna be challenging. So, we might gamify this by saying, let's set a timer, we want them to run up and down the stairs, see how many times you can do it in one minute. If he's competitive, this might bring out that competitive urge, and help him calm down a little. Change in thoughts. So, Henry is a rigid thinker. I'm not really banking on this strategy being all that effective. Because his mind probably isn't going to change that quickly, but I might plant a seed or two, by suggesting that maybe writing won't always be this hard, or that this feeling will pass. And he may or may not agree with me in the moment. Lightening the Load and Special Interests Lightening the load, this is especially important because he's got this super, super open-ended assignment that's just add a paragraph, or write a paragraph about whatever you want. So I've got a little demo of what we might do. I really like the five W's of journalism. Those are the who, what, when, where, why. And they're surprisingly easy to adapt to different assignments. So here, I might tell him to write down who are the characters, name a couple, what are the main events. He might get hung up on the definition of main, but we could just say name any three events, the first that come to mind. When does the story take place? where is it set?. Why would you recommend it to your classmates, or not?. So we've taken this wildly open-ended task and turned it into a really specific list of things to do. So that definitely lightens the cognitive load of writing. And finally, oh, I jumped ahead. We're going to use his special interest as a reward, because he definitely wants to talk about medieval catapults, or knights, or something medieval. And that will be a great reward as soon as he is done with this writing task. Applying Strategies to Ava: Decluttering We will learn a lot about the medieval era. Awesome. Okay, that is Henry. Let's move on to Ava. So with the Calm Your Body, she's not freaking out on the same level that Henry was, but she's still pretty physically tense, visibly tense. And so taking deep breaths is definitely going to be helpful. I often ask students to take deep breaths while I figure out what the assignment is about, and we might do it together. Ava also has a very nice mouse named Fred, so we will grab Fred and have him on hand for this whole experience. Fred is a supportive presence. We like Fred. Second, lightening the load, we are going to declutter a Google Doc. And I just need to stop this screen share and start another one. But if the Zoom gods favor me, then this should go okay. Let's give it a try. Okay. Can people see this, this Google Doc? Yes, okay. Practical Demo: Organizing a Google Doc So this is the original Google Doc. And you can see it is pretty long, it's very long. And all of the text looks the same, so it's really hard to just tell what's what here. So, in order to declutter this, I'm gonna take a few steps. First thing, I'm gonna add headings. So I'll go… this is our little style thing, I'll select Heading 1. These look like assignment instructions, so I'm gonna say… Assignment instructions… Super creative. These are key dates and deadlines, so I'll also make this a heading. These look like a rubric of some sort, so I'm gonna do that too. Let's go rubric… And I'll leave out the rest, but adding headings would be the first step. Step 2. I'm gonna go to File, Page Setup, down here. And currently, we're on Pages. I'm going to select Page Lists. I think this looks slightly nicer, but really the big bonus is now we've got these little arrows, and we can actually collapse this. So it's all still there, but we're gonna hide it, and so we don't have to look at it. Formatting Tools for Scannability This is just helpful in general, in my opinion, but especially for my students with dyslexia, slow processing speed, it feels so much better not to have a massive wall of text in front of you. So, we've already made a lot of progress with this. We can go further, though. We're gonna do some subheadings, yay. So this seems like… general instructions… I know that should be capitalized, but we're gonna leave it for now. Paragraph, something… This looks like additional. Oh, and I forgot, another bonus. Click tabs over here, and you get all of these. You can easily jump around and navigate. Okay, a couple more handy things. I really like to put things in boxes. My students make fun of me for this, but I stand by the boxes anyway. So we'll go insert… table. And I'm gonna select just a 1x1 table, like this, and now we have a handy box. And if we put this in here, it looks visually contained, and it just becomes easier to move our attention around the document. I also adore checklists. The Psychology of Checklists and Color Making checklists makes me feel powerful. That's also helpful. So we could do step one, step two, step three, and then we can actually check those off. Very exciting. A couple of my younger kids enjoy just checking these off the moment they appear on the screen, and then we have to talk about how checkboxes are significantly less useful if you check them off before they're completed. So it's a good opportunity to practice self-control, but otherwise, these are great. All right. And finally, I really like changing the colors, and I'm actually just gonna show you the final version, so you're not sitting here watching me do this for 10 minutes. This actually, this screen reader thing came from yet another student who's so sensitive to light that just a screen like this bothers their eyes. Meanwhile, I have another student on the spectrum whose favorite colors are neon pink and neon green together. So it's just a fascinating variety. Here is our final version, so I've colored these, and you can see this looks so much nicer, so much easier to see what is where. And we can also see that Ava actually has a number of ideas that are reasonably well finished. reasonably well-developed, so that's great. Okay, so we've done all of this, and I'm going to stay on the Google Doc for just one more minute. Breaking the Perfectionist Spiral So let's say now Ava is starting to write. I think that the biggest monster in Frankenstein and then she pauses, and selects all of this, and deletes it. And maybe she does that again a couple times. I see this a lot, I do this a lot. It's this perfectionist spiral of, I write something, I don't like the way it sounds, let me get rid of it and make it better, and that can just go on forever. And it's really hard to write something and just leave it there when you hate it. So here is the strategy that I really like to use in this situation. So let's say… I'm Ava, I'm writing this, I really want to delete it, but I also need to break this spiral. Instead, I'm going to highlight, I'm gonna go to this little highlight thing, and color it black. So I can't see it anymore, it can't bother me as much, but it's still there, and so I'm still building up a tolerance for that imperfection, and if it turns out this wasn't a terrible idea, it's right there on the document. This also stops us from spending half an hour writing and deleting and having nothing on the page, which can be incredibly discouraging. So, I'm gonna go back to the slides. That was our little Google Doc adventure. And… Here we are. Applying Strategies to Ava (Recap) Awesome. And changing thoughts-wise, we might be practicing this whole letting go of the inner editor, trying to disregard that voice that says what you're writing is terrible, change it at once. I definitely have that voice. It's loud. Okay, and finally, Ava is pretty motivated to work on this project, so she doesn't need a ton of rewards, but I'm definitely gonna be saying, you got this, great job, it doesn't have to be perfect, because I know that in her head, she's hearing the exact opposite, and I want to counteract that. So, awesome. We've gotten her through the first draft, she gets to go hang out with Fred the Mouse and be done for now. Yay. And yeah, this is the before and after, so you can just appreciate the beauty of a well-organized Google Doc. Last but not least, we have Eli. Applying Strategies to Eli: Managing Avoidance Eli's our 11th grader, he's been procrastinating on history assignments, he's procrastinating on this one, and procrastination is not going to work well for him. And let's say for the sake of the example that he's agreed to a tutoring session. So he's in a session with me, but he's not super motivated. We don't really need to calm him down, because he is cool as a cucumber. If anything, I might need to calm down, because I'm getting a little stressed about this assignment on his behalf. Changing thoughts might not work out too well. Remember, he's on the debate team, so if this becomes a debate, he will almost certainly win. And also, debating the necessity of writing can easily become yet another way to avoid writing. Lightening the load, so I'm a big fan of checklists, as you heard. Breaking the assignment down into specific steps is almost always a good idea. So, we might say, let's start by talking through the essay, and then start writing. The talking part is great, he's very good at talking, but when it comes time to start writing, that's when it becomes harder. And it really takes coaxing and encouragement on my behalf to get him to write. And he might draft a sentence or two, and then stop, and off in distraction land, talking and talking about something unrelated. So, what do you do in that situation? Forceful vs. Gentle Encouragement I have a few different approaches. I'm gonna name the avoidance by saying something like, right now you're talking, you're very good at talking, you don't need my help with that, but you do need my help with writing, so please let's do some writing. I'm not always this forceful with students. For some students, this would be disastrous, but when they are really, really determined to avoid, and they're doing it very cheerfully and energetically. I sometimes have to be this forceful to get through, so I would only do this if we have a good rapport and they know that I care about them, etc.. Another thing that catches people off guard and is effective is to say really calmly and neutrally, do you want this to take a long time?. I'm not being snarky, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely just asking, do you want this to take a long time?. And they'll say, No? And then I'll answer, okay, so what can you do to get it done efficiently, and how can I help?. And that sort of turns the tables and invites them to problem-solve, and also gently points out that they're maybe not acting in their own best interest by dallying. Another version of this is to… Again, calmly and non-judgmentally describe consequences. So say something like, if you buckle down and we can get this done, I think we could finish in the next 20 minutes, and you'll have the rest of the weekend free. The Impact of Extensions and Scaffolding If we keep dallying, this could take hours. So, let me know how I can help and what you want to do. So those are 3 ways that we can really encourage writing in the moment and cut through that avoidance. Here's the thing, though. At the end of the day, we're fighting an uphill battle, because avoidance and procrastination are a pattern for Eli, and they have been heavily reinforced in the past. He's had these extensions, he's able to turn things in late without an effect on his grades. So not only has he learned that it's fine to procrastinate, he's also learned that when a teacher or tutor says, you need to do this, it doesn't really mean anything. So, the real lasting solution is actually going to be to get rid of those extensions and have real deadlines. In many cases, extensions are the opposite of an accommodation. They're almost an anti-accommodation, because they can just extend the procrastination. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, so please don't interpret this as a blanket stance on extensions, but I've seen enough cases where extensions get in the way that I felt this was worth including. If anything, students with ADHD would often benefit from more deadlines and more scaffolding to get that assignment done. Final thoughts, the dog again, so cute. Practice. Practice is very important. Practice and Virtuous Cycles Students will sometimes tell me, I tried using a timer, I tried a checklist, and it didn't work. That's a little bit like saying, I went to one violin lesson, and I still can't play a Beethoven symphony. That's just not how that works, right? These are skills, they take practice. I wish I had an overnight solution to make writing magically easy. If I had found that, I probably would have monetized it by now. In the meantime, while I search for that. All of these strategies take practice, so if at first you don't succeed, circle back. Second point, success increases motivation. There's a whole side note here with some recent research on achievement and motivation, but if we can set students up for success with writing, that's going to create a virtuous cycle and be motivating. And finally, I mentioned that I've struggled with perfectionism. Part of my trying to manage that perfectionism is pushing myself to share my writing with the world, even when I feel that it is not perfect. And it probably isn't, because few things are. So, on my blog, I have a written version of this presentation, all for strategies, specific tactics, and case studies, and on that blog, I'll also be posting additional pieces of writing. Final Thoughts and Audience Q&A About the biggest questions that come up with supporting 2E writers. So we can maybe drop that in the chat, feel free to check that out. And I would love to take questions. Yael Valek, REEL: Great, thank you so much, Lucy. Those were, great strategies that I'd like to try with my own kids. So one question that came up is, where should a first grader be in terms of writing?. Dyslexia has been ruled out, although she writes some numbers backwards. She doesn't prefer writing, but she will do it. In her school evaluation, she needed to write a paragraph and wrote only a sentence. Then, refusing to do the rest. And the psych said she was really worried about it. I'm not sure I need to be, or what the standards for grade 1 are. So how do you feel about the expectations of different ages of, you know, especially very young writers?. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, it's really hard because… So, I haven't worked in a classroom, I'm not a classroom teacher, so I don't have a great sense of what's normative. I also, with norms, are those representing where kids should be, where most kids actually are?. Navigating School Standards and Scaffolding It's just hard to say. so I don't… I feel like I don't have a great answer to this, unfortunately. I guess I would wonder, how they're doing in school, like, is a kid keeping up with what's expected of them in the classroom?. Because if they're not, then that might affect their ability to learn. I also, like, in this case, writing a sentence versus a paragraph, is that ability, or is that not wanting to, or resisting the task, but maybe still being able to write a paragraph?. I wish I had a clearer answer for this, but I don't think there's a simple answer to where a kid should be in learning. But I think talking to teachers and getting that perspective is probably valuable, so that might be the best thing I can recommend here. Yael Valek, REEL: Makes sense. Related to the Google Doc that you showed, someone says, I may have missed this earlier, is the student supposed to be able to redo the Google Doc like this?. Versus the person helping with the scaffolding. I'm thinking of a high schooler in 10th or 11th grade. Lucy Wallace: supposed to is a funny term. If they can, it's great. Often, they can't, and so doing it with them is awesome, and giving them that scaffolding, and with practice, students start learning to do this for themselves. Embracing the Student "In Front of Us" Yeah, if they can, it's great, but if they can't, that's just where they are, and we work with that. I think a lot of working with 2E students is letting go of the shoulds, because we can get really caught up in what should work, where they should be, etc, and that gets in the way of teaching the student in front of us. Yael Valek, REEL: Okay, oop. Thank you. I like the declutter strategy. What are your thoughts on an assignment that is interpreted as… by a student as having an infinite amount of steps?. Lucy Wallace: Sometimes I interpret assignments that way, too. Some of the college and high school assignments can be really, really complicated. I think in that case, I think we can acknowledge that we might not be able to identify every single step, but there can be at least a few good starting points. I also think this strategy works best when practiced repeatedly, and if we can find a reliable first step for any assignment. Like, with one student I worked with, we had this writing process. That we laid out with this color-coded graphic, and it was always, like, we talk through the prompt, we write down bullet points, we expand the bullet points into sentences, we organize the sentences. Writing Process Consistency no matter what they're writing about, we always follow those steps. And later that got expanded and adapted for different assignments, but just having that consistency and knowing that no matter the situation, I know what my first three steps are, that can really help. And that's the tricky thing about writing, too. You can't map out the entire process in advance, so I would say start somewhere. Where you start is less important than just having a starting point. Yael Valek, REEL: That makes sense. Often that first hump is the hardest. Lucy Wallace: Yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: Someone was asking, too, I noticed, what about using speech-to-text?. Do you use that as a starting point just to get something on the paper, and then they can reorganize it and edit it, move it around?. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, speech-to-text… okay, this one is complicated, because… It can be a super helpful tool. It definitely is for a lot of students I work with, and sometimes I use it as well, but over-reliance on speech-to-text can get in the way of writing learning. I've worked with kids who use speech-to-text exclusively, and haven't really developed writing skills. Thoughtful Use of Dictation And because they don't have much experience with writing, when they… speech-to-text, they're really just talking. If you were to write down everything that I'm saying right now, maybe an AI is doing that, it wouldn't really be prose, right?. Writing isn't just talking on paper. And so I do worry when kids are using speech-to-text exclusively. That said, I think when deployed thoughtfully, it can be a really good strategy. And I've also worked with students who have significant dysgraphia. Spelling is just kind of a nightmare. And I've seen kids develop really creative strategies to combine typing and predictive spelling technology with dictating. So maybe typing a few words, but if there's a really hard word to spell, they'll switch to dictation, or just deciding, like, in this moment, is it worth getting the typing practice, or does dictation make more sense?. So that's my little speech, just be thoughtful about dictation, but yeah, it can be super helpful. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Our son tends to resist strongly or even throw a tantrum when others, like a teacher, tutor, or parents, offers to help on any struggles or on writing. Any suggestions? Lucy Wallace: That's a tough one. I might approach him in a calm moment, and just say something like, I've got a dilemma, because… when I try to help with writing, it seems like it's not really helpful. Problem Solving and Special Interests Maybe, like, what would you do if you were me? What do you think would work?. I think asking kids to solve problems is a very underrated strategy in general. Sometimes it doesn't occur to me, and then I ask them, and I'm like, oh wow, they have really good ideas when I take those ideas seriously. So I think that could be good, and I might also think about, is there any source of motivation?. Maybe he's not motivated to do the writing assignments themselves, but maybe getting them done efficiently and not having them take up a ton of time. would be good. Or maybe just… I find that if I ask students, do you want writing to be easier?. The answer is rarely no. People generally want writing to be easier if it's painful, so that could also be a starting point. Yael Valek, REEL: And I heard you earlier talk about special interests, and I wanted to circle back to that, because one thing we didn't get to talk about, and I know not all schools and not all assignments at all grade levels have flexibility, but I've noticed from my own kids that whenever there's any choice of something you can write about, if they choose their special interest, it helps so much. Lucy Wallace: Yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: So I don't know if you've had luck, having students advocate for that, or sort of twist the assignment a little to be a little bit about, you know, that kind of thing. Lucy Wallace: I can think of some really good examples. I actually worked with a college student who was reading, I think, Tolstoy? Yeah, I think Tolstoy. Interest-Driven Writing and Messy Drafting And the student told me this story really lines up with this video game that has a profound commentary on life and death. And fortunately, this was a cool professor who heard that and was like, yeah, that's awesome, write about it. And so the student got to do a whole essay about that. Definitely increased the motivation. It was so insightful and brilliant, I loved that. Yael Valek, REEL: That's amazing. I'm so glad the professor took a chance on that. I've had mixed, findings with that. We're getting some heart… Any tips for writers who get very distracted by technical details, like spelling and grammar, so that they stop too often to correct the details and make little progress on the actual writing?. Lucy Wallace: Yes. So, I would practice messy drafting with them. I demonstrate this for students when they're really struggling, so I'll show them, I'm gonna write a messy draft here, I'm not gonna stop to correct spelling and grammar. Look at that typo. Look, that sentence doesn't even make any sense, and I didn't delete it. Look at how I abandoned that thought mid-phrase. I think I have to energetically model it. I've even created first draft bingo, where each square is, like, spelling error, typo, space instead of word, abandoned a sentence, something like that. Gamification and Classroom Writing Challenges So if you gamify it, and if you treat it as almost an… Sorry, my dog is being so weird, that's very distracting. If you gamify it and treat it as almost an endurance sport, like, let's try to write for 2 minutes, next time 3, and then 4, I think that's a great way to develop that skill. And I say that as someone who is usually reluctant to just leave typos uncorrected. Yael Valek, REEL: I love the idea of first draft bingo. That's great. Okay, so we have some… you probably know that because of AI, more and more assign… writing assignments are happening inside the classroom, so there's a couple questions about that. Middle and high school assignments are starting to be only in the classroom where there aren't you can't meet with your writing tutor. And then there's also a question about timed writing assignments, because the time boundaries may exacerbate anxiety. So I don't know if you have any Things to say about those. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, so with the timed writing, this is an interesting one because there… so, the research on writing anxiety is disappointingly meeker. It's… it's just kind of a mess. I looked into that scientific body of literature, hoping to get some insights, and the main insight was people define things very inconsistently. Timed Tests and Student Support But math anxiety is much better researched, and there's significant work on timing and that effect on math anxiety. And I don't have a super deep knowledge of it, but from what I understand. There's a perception that time tests exacerbate anxiety, but really it's more that, like, poor performance and a lack of knowledge generally create anxiety, and there's sometimes a conflation of causation and correlation there. So with timed tests for writing, I… I'm not sure that the solution would be to avoid timing, I think getting more exposure to that would be helpful in building the skills. That's just my first instinct. And with AI, is the question, like, what to do if you can't have a writing tutor in the moment?. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah. Lucy Wallace: Practice… I think the best you can do is practice similar tasks with support, or maybe if teachers are open to having, like, a graphic organizer, sentence scaffolds, a clear checklist, something like that, so you don't need a person, but there is some form of support. Yael Valek, REEL: Yeah, makes sense. Do you find you have success where others have not in helping reluctant writers?. The Role of Non-Parents and Success Cycles My kids won't let me or his dad help him. Last night, he was up till 1 staring at a blank screen. The assignment was to write two paragraphs, and he'd been working on it all day. Lucy Wallace: Yeah, I have had success where others are not. I wish I were 100% successful. Some students I work with, we don't quite click, it doesn't work for whatever reason, so I don't want to be grandiose here. I also… I wish I knew exactly what every kid needed and what helped them, and had that down to a science, like an exact prescription for what's going to fix the problem. And I think there's a lot of random variation, so sometimes you just have to keep trying until you find something. So yes, I've had success with students who seemed like nothing helped them write. I'm not sure that's anything specific to me, but just the benefit of keeping trying. Yael Valek, REEL: I do also find that in the teen years, having it not be your own parents, they don't want to hear it from their… they don't want to hear anything from their parents, right?. Lucy Wallace: I could say the exact same thing as a parent, and it would be so much better received, so that's really one of my big selling points, I'm not a parent. Dyslexia Resources and Closing Yael Valek, REEL: Are there any particular reading and writing programs that you use or recommend for students who are diagnosed with dyslexia in middle or high school?. Lucy Wallace: Reading or writing program. So, I've been looking into what's called the Hawkman Method. The book is The Writing Revolution. I'll put that name in the chat. It's like this, and you can Google it. I'm thinking of getting formally trained in this. I really like it because it involves sentence-level support, practicing constructing sentences. Which is… that just doesn't… that doesn't happen magically. Like, we don't learn to write sentences often without some sort of formal support, and this is the first program I've seen that actually provides that. Has a lot of scaffolding and explicit instruction. So, yeah, that's exactly, that's the link. I know people do Orton Gillingham, and some really like that. I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but those two do come to mind. Yael Valek, REEL: And someone else is also saying, Per your previous response about it being you and not the parent, that when kids have rejection-sensitive dysphoria, having. Feedback from parents is even more personal and distressing. Lucy Wallace: I could totally see that, yeah. Yael Valek, REEL: And so another… another person says, their daughter tends to have rigid thinking about independence. If she's given an assignment, she assumes she should be able to do it by herself. Therefore, if someone offers help, she internalizes that as failure. We've talked a lot about the steps of learning, and how even adults ask for help regularly. Lucy Wallace: I mean, absolutely. I also sometimes, students who think rigidly will sometimes worry that getting help is cheating, so that's another one that we talk through, but I think, giving examples of asking for help is a really good one, and trying to think of other ones… I think… I mean, I don't know that anyone is truly independent, in that we all rely on other people or learn from other people in some way. Shifting Rigid Beliefs and Wrapping Up So it sounds like you're approaching that very reasonably, and it just might take a long time to… not erode, but to shift those rigid beliefs. Yael Valek, REEL: And then, Just so you know, someone recommended a book called How to Read Literature Like a Professor, and said it was very demystifying for his 2E son. Lucy Wallace: Oh, awesome. I've heard of that, but haven't read it, so it sounds good. Oh. Oh, I guess another thing, a parent just mentioned this to me, there are chapter books specifically for kids with dyslexia, slash ADHD that are, like, faster-paced, smaller blocks of text, easier to read, and this parent mentioned that her son, who is a reluctant reader, blazed through a whole series and felt much more confident after that. So I can just search that up really quickly. That's another good option, I think, for reading. Yael Valek, REEL: And you said you have a blog post you wanted us to share about some of. shared today, I'll put that in the chat as well. This is a, blog that Lucy wrote about all the tips that she shared today. Lucy Wallace: And these are the dyslexia, ADHD-friendly kids chapter books. That got rave reviews. So, yay. Yael Valek, REEL: Just so you know, you're getting a lot of, we're so impressed with you, Lucy, thanks for all the great ideas, and I still… There was one up higher that was also… now I'm gonna lose it, but, that was also praising. how helpful this was. You are incredible, Lucy. Thank you for all the wisdom, resources, and information. Thank you for everything you do to support the children you work with. Lucy Wallace: Thank you, so nice of you, I appreciate it. Yael Valek, REEL: Lots of love in the chat. And Lucy has written a lot of articles that have been super helpful, on REEL, and so I'm also going to just put the link to all of her articles that she's written on our website in the chat, and Callie has put, our, link to, providing feedback on this talk. And, this is the third in our writing series this year, so if you missed the first two events, we have other parts. I love how it's been an arc of, kind of, diagnosing what's wrong with writing, essay writing, at the high school level, silly characters, and now the emotions behind getting going on writing, so… We really appreciate, your wisdom. Both from your experience, your research, and your own life. So thank you so much, Lucy. And we'll stop the recording, and we can chat, and you can read all the love in the… chat. Lucy Wallace: Awesome.

Neurodivergent students (those with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, etc., including the twice-exceptional) experience many aspects of their lives differently than expected. This increases the need for them to understand themselves, what they need to thrive, and how to advocate for their own learning needs in spaces that may not always be open to supporting them. However, parents don't always know how to best help their children. Some become over involved, managing every aspect of their student's experience. Others are under-responsive, due to overwhelm, fear, or misunderstanding. Each of these impact student agency because kids don’t develop the skills they need or don’t understand themselves well enough to self-advocate. School leaders, educators, and site-based mental health professionals such as school counselors and school psychologists often are at the center of these situations, thinking about ways to support families in their journey to releasing control and agency to their children. But, what works? REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative hosted a panel focused on supporting families in the complex and emotionally-laden process of building their students’ self-advocacy skills. Tiffany Nielsen, Dean of Students at Helios School, and educational consultant Heather Johanson of The Actias School, shared the strategies they’ve used and what they have seen for schools working to help families develop students’ self-advocacy skills. What the Research Says: A Quick Dip REEL launched the Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for school counselors and school psychologists because our annual educator survey results indicated that about 70% of public school teachers turn to these skilled colleagues to support their work with neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students. This is reflected deeply in the academic literature surrounding school counselors and school psychologists, which highlights the critical role they play in collaborating with educators, parents, and the students themselves (Carpenter, 2021; Cormier, 2022; Foley-Nicpon & Assouline, 2020; Renzulli & Austermann, 2025; Townend et al., 2024). Still, parents of neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students bear a greater advocacy burden than others as they face structural barriers to ensuring their children’s needs are addressed (Bechard, 2019; Ronksley-Pavia & Clark, 2025). In fact, a study of autistic students highlighted that challenges with self-advocacy lie not in each student’s individual actions or skills but rather in the ways schools are structured, creating unintentional barriers to self-advocacy (Nadwodny, 2026). A study of over 400 disabled adults in the United States noted that having an invisible difference such as autism, ADHD, or dyslexia, created more challenges in self-advocacy than having more visible differences (Christ et al., 2026). All of this points to the need for everyone on the child’s team - their educators, their school staff and specialists, their parents, and the child themself - to be deeply aware of the opportunities and challenges of self-advocacy, and to work together with intentionality to scaffold these skills that are critical to the student’s short-term well-being and long-term ability to thrive. 10 Tips Towards Self-Advocacy Combining Tiffany’s experience developing an intentionally scaffolded program of parent education, teacher supports, and student-led conferences with Heather’s 30+ year career working within and helping families navigate school systems, ten key tips emerged for school counselors, school psychologists, school leaders, and educators to help families gradually shift autonomy for advocacy to their students. 1. Build a “Scaffold Ladder” for Parents Parents need scaffolding just as much as students do. Schools should provide a clear roadmap that shows the steps the team will take to build students’ independence. Heather shared, “When parents feel in the dark, there’s more fear.” And then they tend to over-manage. She went on to say, “Let’s shine a light on it, create a plan based on the child’s neurodivergence.” Transparency and a clear plan for small shifts in agency over time from parent to child (e.g., “This week I’ll check your planner; next week, you check it and I’ll just sign it”) can help parents feel calm enough to step back and share advocacy responsibilities. 2. Reframe Fear as Opportunity - And Stepping to the Side Fear is a universal theme for parents of neurodivergent learners. As Tiffany noted, “We need to focus on switching this mindset to opportunity.” Schools can help by working to shift the narrative. Instead of viewing a challenge a child faces as a potential “failure,” frame it as a “Magical Mystery Tour,” a journey of discovery where every obstacle is an opportunity to learn what the student actually needs to thrive. Fear may also lead parents to be over-involved in that journey. It’s important schools don’t try to sideline parents on the journey; for younger, elementary aged students, the focus should be on building students ability to talk about their experiences with other adults and joint problem solving. But especially as students move through middle and high school, the school team can encourage parents to see their role in advocacy as an important guide on the side.. 3. Center the Child in the Process Self-advocacy is not something that happens to the child. It is something that happens with the child. Even a 2nd grader can participate in an IEP/504 meeting for a few minutes to share one thing they are proud of and one thing that is hard, demystifying the process and starting the self-advocacy habit. Transitioning from teacher-parent meetings to student-led conferences has been a key aspect of the Helios School’s approach, shifting the power dynamic from adults talking about students to talking with one another as a team. 4. Implement the “Trial Run” Approach To lower the stakes and reduce parental anxiety, encourage a “trial-based” mindset. This can be particularly important when kids enter middle school, and parents’ anxiety spikes about what the future will hold. Framing strategies and accommodations as experiments in a lab can help lower the pressure. This “let’s give it a try” attitude makes experimentation feel safe and allows for adjustments without the pressure of a mistake being perceived as a permanent “miss.” Just because a child forgot their binder one day, it’s not a catastrophe, but rather data that informs the next trial. 5. Prioritize Rather Than Maximize Accommodations More is not always better when it comes to accommodations - and can overwhelm parents and distract them from prioritizing what will be the most impactful accommodations. Helping parents prioritize also prevents students from feeling overwhelmed or “different” and helps everyone focus on the specific tools that actually move the needle for the student’s unique profile (e.g., “Should I focus more on ensuring my sensory needs are met? Do I benefit more from executive functioning supports?”). 6. Create Communication Templates We don’t expect elementary school students to start in the driver’s seat, but by high school, we need to help parents understand that they should rarely be the first point of contact with a teacher. That’s not to say parents should never be involved, but rather school staff can directly support students in making the transition using the “I do. We do. You do.” model. For instance, providing email templates for common issues that help students contact their teachers, working towards a senior year goal of a student being able to articulate “When X happens, it affects me in Y ways. Can I try Z instead?”, or going with students to meet with teachers to model advocacy. Helping students with scripts that articulate their needs clearly and professionally provides those needed training wheels so that their parents can scaffold release of control. 7. Focus on Self-Awareness and Self-Reflection - For Parents and Students Self-advocacy is impossible without self-awareness. Tiffany shared that her work to coach families to help their children is built on the students’ ability to identify their strengths, needs, and learning preferences. And then extend this to parents as well, so that they also understand their own executive function and sensory profiles and how that has influenced their paths through life. Sometimes parental “over-involvement” stems from the parent's own executive functioning (EF) style. When parents understand their own triggers, they can better distinguish between their own anxiety and their child’s actual needs. 8. Celebrate “Tiny Steps” and Progress Parents often miss the gradual progress their children are making because they are focused on an envisioned “end goal”. Tiffany emphasized the importance of “pointing out progress” to parents, highlighting even small wins, such as a student asking a single question in class or sending one email. Seeing those tiny steps towards growth helps parents to trust the process of releasing control, even when there are misses along the way. 9. Normalize Accommodations via Universal Design Schools can help families and students by removing barriers to learning and creating environments more conducive for everyone, meaning that there is less self-advocacy required. By moving toward Universal Design for Learning (UDL), where tools like extra time or speech-to-text are available to everyone, schools reduce the “social cost” of self-advocating for neurodivergent students, address the stigma that often prevents students (especially those in middle and high school) from using support, and allow students to focus their self-advocacy efforts on higher value accommodations - and learning. 10. Protect the Parent-Child Relationship Above All The single most important advice is to remind parents that their relationship with their child is the #1 priority. If advocacy is breaking the relationship, it’s time to take a break. The school can help by stepping in as a buffer. Heather pointed out that it’s the school counselor and school psychologist who are often “holding everyone - parents, students, teachers. You can see it from all angles” and can step in to take some of the navigational burden off their shoulders so they can go back to being a supportive parent. With these 10 lessons in mind, more neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners can build the self-advocacy skills they need to chart their own path to thriving. Looking for more resources on self-advocacy? Talking with parents about a students’ struggles can be uncomfortable. Our article Effective Strategies for Educators: Talking to Parents About Student Challenges offers tips from Heather and our team. Helping students learn to self-advocate varies by age - and scripting is a great way to scaffold development of self-advocacy skills. Our Parent Community Program Manager Teresa Nair held a small group discussion about The Importance of Self-Advocacy Video and Script Downloadable. Heather spoke to our parent support group in September 2025 about Building Collaborative Communication with Teachers and create other Back to School Resources for Parents of Neurodivergent Kids We hosted a panel on 2e Self Advocacy Panel—Help Your Student Understand Their Brain, and Their Teachers, Too! Understanding how our brain works is helpful for kids to know what to advocate for. This panel was hosted as part of REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for School Psychologists and School Counselors made possible by generous funding from the Jockers Family Foundation and the Mary A. Crocker Trust. References Bechard, A. (2019). Teacher preparation for twice-exceptional students: Learning from the educational experiences of teachers, parents, and twice-exceptional students. AILACTE Journal, 16, 25–43. Carpenter, A. Y. (2021). Twice-exceptional students. In T. L. Cross & J. R. Cross (Eds.), Handbook for counselors serving students with gifts and talents (2nd ed., pp. 305–323). Routledge. Christ, B. R., Malhotra, B., Chapman, O., Ertman, B., & Perrin, P. B. (2026). Disability level and visibility: Associations with unmet academic accommodation needs and attitudes toward requesting accommodations. PLOS ONE, 21(2), e0342243. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342243 Cormier, C. J. (2022). How did you get here? You’re not supposed to be here: Supporting the social-emotional and mental health needs of Minoritized twice exceptional students. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 57(6), 424-429. https://doi.org/10.1177/00400599211073073 Foley-Nicpon, M., & Assouline, S. G. (2020). High ability students with coexisting disabilities: Implications for school psychological practice. Psychology in the Schools, 57(10), 1615–1626. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22342 Nadwodny, N., VanHook, B., Esham, B., Larsen, L. N., Levinson, S., & Eisenhower, A. (2026). Good intentions are not enough: Autistic perspectives on structural ableism within the walls of our classrooms. Autism, 30(5), 1176-1190. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613261426691