Search this site

One of REEL's Summer 2022 interns, Nora, focused on developing an advocacy playbook to help REEL learn more about navigating legislative systems. Check out the playbook she created and her reflection on her internship experience. REEL had three interns from a local private school working on projects to help educators, parents, and policymakers better understand these unique, twice-exceptional learners. We were lucky to have Christine, Aaron, and Nora on our team—thank you for your fabulous contributions to our mission! Christine and Aaron created videos for our new 'Ever Had a Kid Like Me?' video series. Watch what they created on REEL's YouTube channel - 2e Perspective: Dyslexia and 2e Perspective: ADHD . During my summer internship with REEL, I focused on discovering what advocacy is and how REEL can push twice-exceptional advocacy forward. At its most basic, advocacy means asking people in power to help reach an outcome. This can take the form of meeting with those people, sharing resources, and more. Building relationships is one of the key tenets of advocacy. Whether it’s meeting with a legislator or school administrator, getting in touch is the first step. An email is a great way to introduce yourself and organize a meeting. The email you write should be fairly concise, but should explain who you are and what you care about. Keep in mind that the objective of the email is not to do the advocacy, but to get a meeting where you can do that advocacy. It will be easier to establish a personal connection through a meeting. When advocating with government officials, meetings typically are short. Usually around 15 minutes. Your goal is to establish a connection with the person you’re speaking with. Oftentimes, you’ll meet with a legislator’s staffer rather than the legislator themselves. That’s okay, the staffers often lead on more specific issues, so your time might be even more impactful this way. Afterwards, make sure to send a thank you note to show appreciation and outline potential next steps. If you want to continue advocating, ask to schedule regular meetings around a month or two apart. This will make sure the people you’re talking with remember you, and will enable you to continue to develop strong relationships. When it comes to petitions, they tend not to be too helpful because lawmakers see them as just one instance of advocacy, rather than thinking of each person who signed as individual instances. Because of this, it’s more effective for individuals to send an email, letter, or make a phone call. For example, if a politician notices they’ve received a lot of mail about 2e kids, they are more incentivized to learn about the issue compared to the interest level just one petition generates . However, if you consider a petition as part of your advocacy work, focus on local issues. It’s more likely that change will be made on these smaller scales. I also focused more specifically on one aspect of advocacy—information sharing. There is a bill by the name of SB1113 which outlines more inclusive teaching frameworks for students. It focuses specifically on a framework called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which allows students to engage with and show their knowledge of material through multiple pathways. For example, rather than only showing mastery through an essay, UDL would give students the opportunity to show what they know through a presentation, video, diagram, or other methods. This allows 2e students (as well as all students) to more fully engage in the classroom. I found this bill through watching the California Advisory Commission on Special Education, and tracked it through leginfo.legislature.ca.gov . I got most of my information from a SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area, the school offices that provide special education services) brief on the bill, as well as the text of the bill itself. I also worked with the REEL team to put together a brief for REEL that they later sent out to their community, which was really cool! The bill passed through both the State House and Assembly, but unfortunately Governor Newsom vetoed it. Currently, it is back in the Senate as they consider the Governor’s veto. From this experience, I learned about the minutiae of the state legislation process—what all the little steps in between votes and governor approval are. I also learned about the UDL framework and the importance of increasing inclusivity in the classroom, especially in California. I interned with REEL over the whole summer, and I learned a lot of new things. What surprised me most was the meta-studies I found that analyzed common modes of advocacy and their efficacy. I didn’t expect that there would be such exhaustive research, but it was really informative. One key study I found outlined five advocacy strategies, spelling out what specific activities needed to be focused on to achieve the advocacy goal, linked here . I also gained experience with interviewing experts in the field, which was a new experience for me. I found it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be, and it was quite cool to hear experts’ opinions. I also spent some time learning about California’s education system, particularly as it pertains to students who need accommodations. I was surprised at how much legislation and infrastructure is already in place. But, at the same time, I was saddened by the lack of awareness and inequitable access to some of these resources. I hope REEL will help combat these issues, and I’m so proud to have played a role in their work! About the Author: Nora is a current high school junior with a passion for advocacy and learning.

Yesterday, I sat down to look at my calendar. As a new nonprofit, we at REEL have been planning for Giving Tuesday for over a month. But for the first time, I noticed that Giving Tuesday falls on November 29th this year. And, while that may not mean anything to anyone else, it’s steeped in meaning for me. You see, in some ways, I think of November 29, 2018, as the first time that we at REEL truly went “public” with our mission to support twice-exceptional students. REEL actually started with a small group of parents at a local elementary school looking for ways for all students, including those who were curiously quirky and sometimes even a bit bored, to build resilience and be engaged more actively in their learning. We’d talked to leaders in our district about its defunct gifted and talented program, a dead end. But as a few of us realized our children were both bright AND diagnosed with learning differences, we learned about twice-exceptionality (2e). However, a big question loomed: Were we alone? Were we the only ones with these unusually complex kiddos? So it was that in mid-2018, I sat with my REEL Co-Founder, Yael. We looked at each other and decided we’d never know if we were the only ones if we didn’t at least make a concerted effort to meet other parents. Coming from entrepreneurial backgrounds, we decided to experiment—try things, iterate, fail forward. We committed to doing at least four events in the 2018-19 school year. The first was to screen the documentary 2e2: Teaching the Twice Exceptional , which focuses on how the Bridges Academy in Los Angeles weaves its magic to support twice-exceptional students. We scheduled two showings for November 29—the first for teachers, the second for parents—plus, we partnered with our local Community Advocacy Committee for Special Education in Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Educators’ Association. And, what did we discover? Were we alone? No. We were and are not alone. Almost 30 educators and 80 parents showed up. In other words, November 29, 2018, propelled us down the path we are on today. Four years and one pandemic later, our email list is approaching 2k. We serve 400+ parents through our private Google group. We’ve hosted dozens of speaker events and support groups with thousands of RSVPs. Our event recordings have been watched over 10,000 times. And, we’ve had 13,000 site sessions on our website this year alone. Plus, we’re back in action with educators, hosting panels and workshops for learning specialists, local schools, and San Jose State University pre-service teachers. This is all the more poignant for me, personally, because November 29, 2018, is also the day my dear dad passed away after a long battle with cancer. I’d said my goodbyes just after Thanksgiving. He’d sent me back from Kentucky to California knowing he wouldn’t see me again, but with encouragement and his blessing for me to follow this journey to support twice-exceptional kids. As a lifelong educator and a loving grandfather of neurodivergent grandchildren, he knew the work was important. I feel his presence in all that I do, but most especially everytime November 29 rolls around. And because of this, I am sure that REEL’s work is as important as ever. We’re proud of our accomplishments and grateful to everyone who has joined us in creating this community of parents and educators gathering together in support of the 2e. It’s amazing and every day we hear a story that touches our hearts. But, there is so much more to do. We believe there are at least 9,000 2e children in Silicon Valley, and we know there are 35,000 educators in our schools. We’ve only scratched the surface to build our connections, ensuring no one is alone. This Giving Tuesday is additionally special because it’s our first Giving Tuesday as an official nonprofit, with a goal to raise $100k by year end. To take the next steps and reach everyone who yearns to connect and learn more about these so often misunderstood children, we ask you, our community, to pitch in and contribute what you can, when you can. Because Giving Tuesday means so much more to us than just the financial gifts. For me, it means honoring my father, celebrating all we’ve accomplished, and dreaming of all we can do, together.

During the school year, you may find your 2e child saying, “I don’t like school.” You may ask them, “How was your day?” and they reply, “Bad!” but are unable to elaborate. Since parents and educators are better able to address challenges when we understand the specifics, we need a tool to help us get to the root of the problem. Enter the rating scale*—it has helped my family narrow down the scope of school challenges year after year, and enabled us to problem solve, address issues, and track results. This should be done even when a child isn't having an issue so that it builds the foundation for communication. How to use a rating scale: Grab a piece of paper and write down all parts of the school day, including all subjects, recess, lunch, homeroom, morning circle, and classes that only happen periodically. Include all parts of the day -- don't just focus on the trouble spots. Have your child choose one animal they love and one they don’t like (My kid loves bears and despises snakes, so those are the key points on our rating scale—you could also do this with Pokemon or any other item your child loves. Get creative! This strategy still works for us with our middle schooler; perhaps use a number scale for older kids). Go through each part of the school day and ask “Is that part of your day a bear or a snake or somewhere in between?” (My kids sometimes say “Oh, that activity is a bear head with a snake body” or figure out other ways to use the animals to show in-between ratings; my younger child came up with a 9 animal system!) Ask “why?” for each animal rating and write down the reason. This tool helps kids unlock things that are difficult to convey and helps parents track patterns or target problematic parts of the day. Example uses of this tool: 1) In early elementary school, my child came home repeatedly and said “School is boring.” But, I was left wondering,“What does that mean?” If I’m going to reach out to his teacher to collaborate on solutions, I prefer to have actionable requests. We used the above rating method for a few days and found most parts of his day were “bears” (so pretty good), but math and writing were snakes (not so good). After asking why math is a snake, we determined the level of math in the class wasn’t interesting or engaging enough for my child. We partnered with the teacher to come up with an alternative plan for my child. I brought in some math puzzle books and math games for him and the entire class, which he used when the class was working on math for which he had already shown mastery. Plus, he ended up teaching a fun math card game to the entire class and math became a “bear” for him again! For my child, writing is a “snake” because it’s too hard. We worked with the teacher on helping him generate ideas for his stories and to get more writing support. Writing may still be a “bear with a snake tail”, but it’s moving in the right direction. We can’t expect 100% “bears” every day! 2) My child went through a rough stretch of time in mid-elementary school and started to say he hated school. We used the rating scale and determined that almost his entire day was “snakes.” Even recess and lunch. Those are typically times that are restorative for children between more traditional learning parts of the day. However, for my son, who was having social difficulty on the playground, they were one more source of stress. He was going through day after day with only stress and nothing to look forward to. As a result, we called an urgent meeting with my son’s team at school and shared the data with them. We partnered with the school to help my son find friends on the playground, made playdates with potential friends, encouraged him to participate in structured lunch activities such as noon art or the lunch bunch program, or chat with the teachers on duty. We realized that small changes on the teacher’s part could make a huge difference for my child. For example, he had created an imaginary land full of rich detail in his mind, but his teacher wouldn’t allow him to use it in an assignment to create a drawing to show the difference between a rule and a law. We met with the teacher, explained how to support 2e students , and asked if she could provide flexibility when it didn’t interfere with her intended learning targets. The teacher separated the learning target from the method of showing mastery and things started to improve. In a different lesson focused on measuring things, the class was creating and measuring giant flowers; my child wanted to color his flower like a rainbow, rather than just plain green. While the teacher’s inclination was to say, “Leaves are supposed to be green,” she realized that the lesson was about measuring and not about botany, so she allowed all the students to color their flowers however they wanted; my son was much more engaged and got to express his individuality. The entire class loved the idea of creatively coloring their flowers. Slowly, “bears” started to reappear in the ratings. 3) My child arrived at his 1,000+ student middle school for the first time, with seven class changes per day: teachers, classrooms, expectations, and classmates. After a couple of weeks, he was deeply unhappy. We used the rating scale and, strangely, the classes themselves were mostly “bears.” We started to rate other aspects of the day and learned that his issues actually were with the many unpredictable interactions that occur each day at a large school, overall noise levels, and the executive functioning required to manage so much change. We realized that these issues, unlike the previous ones we had faced, were an immutable part of a large school and that my child would do better in a smaller environment with fewer changes throughout the day and more predictability in his interactions and expectations. The “rating scales” tool has helped us in both large and small ways over elementary school and into middle school. Educators and parents can use this simple and effective tool to find out what parts of the school day are causing stress for their students, work together to understand why, try solutions, and track progress over time. Next time you find yourself wanting more specificity about your 2e student’s day, try this tool and look out for the “snakes.” Please share with us if this tool has been helpful for you. What other tools have you found helpful in supporting your 2e student at school? *Thanks to Dr. Kari Berquist for teaching us how to use this method!

Last updated May 11, 2022 Every twice-exceptional (2e) journey looks different, and the resources you need may shift depending on where your child or student is in their educational path. REEL’s Stage-Based Resources are designed to meet families and educators right where they are—from just beginning to explore what 2e means, to navigating assessments and school support, to preparing for college and adulthood. Whether you’re seeking guidance on IEPs, private school options, homeschooling, self-advocacy, or strength-based strategies, this collection provides practical tools and insights for every stage. Just Starting to Explore 2e Is Your Child Twice-Exceptional? Intro to 2e One-Pager Intro to 2e: Understanding Your Smart & Struggling Student Anxiety Strategies for the Twice Exceptional Child Need Assessment or other Resources REEL/Parent Resource Advisors: Now What? The Road to Resources Help with School How Public Schools can Support 2e Learners 2e IEP/504 Support with Lamborn Advocacy 3 part Series about Private schools for 2e kids - Including this chart of schools: https://tinyurl.com/REELPrivateSchoolsList Homeschooling/Non Traditional Education Paths Student Self Advocacy Skills Strength Based Education Creating Your Student Intro One-Sheet K-12 Student Experience Panel ​ Strategies to Ignite the Reluctant Writer College / Young Adult College Supports for 2e Kids Rethinking Adulthood - A Neurodiverse Trajectory

Creative thinking sparks innovation and problem-solving. When coupled with perseverance, creativity becomes an unstoppable force. For 2e children, whose minds are brimming with potential, fostering creative thinking, engagement, and perseverance is paramount. Especially when their school days often push against their deficits. The Significance of Creative Thinking, Engagement, and Perseverance Creative Thinking ignites innovation. It enables children to approach problems from unconventional angles, generate new ideas, and connect seemingly unrelated concepts. Creative thinking is the bridge between knowledge and innovation, and it is vital for solving complex, real-world problems. Engagement in learning is the driving force behind sustained interest and motivation. When children are engaged in their learning, they are more likely to invest time and effort, leading to deeper understanding and higher achievement. It fosters a love for learning that extends beyond the classroom. Perseverance  is the ability to persist in the face of challenges and setbacks. It is the fuel that keeps the creative engine running. For 2e children, who often encounter complex problems and high expectations, perseverance is a critical trait that leads to long-term success. Puzzles are an applicative tool for nurturing creative thinking, engagement, and perseverance in 2e children. Here's why: Cognitive Stimulation:  Logic puzzles challenge the mind and promote creative problem-solving. They require solvers to use their critical thinking skills to deduce patterns and solutions , enhancing their cognitive abilities. Versatility:  Puzzles come in various levels of difficulty, allowing parents and educators to tailor the puzzles to a child's abilities. This adaptability ensures that the puzzles remain engaging and challenging. Enjoyment and Engagement:  Puzzles are specifically designed to be interesting and engaging for various types of thinkers. When children find learning fun, they are more likely to be motivated and deeply engaged in the problem-solving process. Perseverance Building:  Logic and wordplay puzzles inherently require perseverance. They present challenges that may not have immediate solutions, teaching solvers the value of persistence and the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles; a lesson that generalizes to many different situations. Incorporating Logic Puzzles into the Classroom To effectively harness the benefits of logic puzzles in your class and to promote perseverance, consider the following strategies: Identify Interests:  Recognize the areas of interest and strengths of the child. Select puzzles that align with their passions to foster engagement and perseverance. Gradual Progression:  Begin with puzzles of moderate difficulty and gradually increase complexity as the child's skills improve. This progression ensures that the child remains challenged and engaged, promoting perseverance. Encourage Reflection:  Encourage 2e children to reflect on their problem-solving strategies and creative thinking processes. This self-awareness promotes metacognition, which is valuable for lifelong learning and perseverance. Celebrate Achievements and Effort:  Celebrate both small and significant achievements. Praise the child's effort and perseverance in tackling challenging puzzles. Positive reinforcement encourages continued engagement and perseverance. Creative thinking, engagement, and perseverance are the cornerstones of nurturing the potential of 2e children. Puzzles provide an exciting and effective means to enhance creative thinking skills, promote engagement, and build perseverance in these young minds. By fostering creative, engaged, and persistent learners, we empower 2e children to tackle future challenges, make meaningful contributions to society, and continue to push the boundaries of human knowledge and innovation. **We couldn’t write a post without adding a puzzle! Use the highlighted words to solve the puzzle below and email us the answer for a bonus surprise. community@solvingfun.com About Solving Fun Solving Fun, a Bay Area company focused on creative thinking through puzzles and games, has been a trailblazer in this field since its foundation in 2020. The company has worked with communities across the country to foster creative thinking while getting people engaged with each other and off-screens. Whether through Classroom  Solving Kits , City-Wide Puzzle Hunts , or Team-Building Activities, Solving Fun has spent time working to strengthen creative thinking and engagement, encouraging communities to shift away from screens and think more creatively and collaboratively. Recently, Solving Fun has expanded its focus to work with teams of adults, leveraging their expertise to build creative thinking through team-building activities. One notable activity, called "Team Building Takeout," involves teams navigating through a model lunchbox made entirely of puzzles. These puzzles, like many that Solving Fun creates do not have many directions. The key is to productively struggle and think creatively to persevere through the challenge, build resilience - and celebrate success! Regardless of the product or age group, these types of puzzles and games are enriching   for both children and adults alike, fostering a culture of creative problem-solving and collaboration . For more information about creative thinking through puzzles and games visit: www.solvingfun.com  or read more creative ideas from Solving Fun co-founders at www.solvingfun.com/blog .

Parent question: My 2e son loves reading but struggles with analytical writing, particularly in his high school English and history classes. Maybe because of his Autism and ADHD, he has a hard time thinking and analyzing the deep meaning and connections underlying the plots. It takes forever for him to start an essay. And even if he starts it at the last minute, it’s very rushed with low quality. Do you have any suggestions on how we can help him to improve his analytical thinking skills? Answer: It sounds like there are two issues at play here: difficulty with analytical thinking and writing procrastination. These are separate but related issues, so let’s think through them one at a time. 1) Analytical skills I’ve worked with many 2e teenagers who struggle with analytical thinking. Sometimes, this difficulty stems from a concrete cognitive style. People who tend to focus on concrete details often have trouble with abstraction. In addition, the teaching methods used to develop these skills are sometimes not clear or explicit enough for 2e learners. In either case, it seems your son needs more scaffolding–that is, clear structure and guidance–to develop his analytical skills. And that’s where the Internet comes in! Here are some great resources that might be helpful: Many universities have writing centers that publish free resources for all genres of writing. Purdue OWL  is probably the best-known. I’m also fond of UNC Chapel Hill’s Tips & Tools. Sites like SparkNotes , LitCharts , and CliffNotes  provide excellent examples of in-depth analysis, covering a wide range of books, both classics and modern. Your son can review the analysis of works he is reading to help build his own analytical skills. He could also pick a book he's not currently studying in class and see how these sites would approach analyzing it. If your son prefers video, he could check out Crash Course literature , which covers several high school classics. Khan Academy is excellent, too. You can go to YouTube and search “Khan Academy literature” to find videos on theme, character, summarizing, and other foundational literary analysis skills. And while I haven’t watched any of these, a YouTube search for “how to analyze literature” also yields lots of videos. My last suggestion is less academic and perhaps more appealing. Reading critical reviews and TV episode recaps is a fantastic way to see analysis in action. Outlets like Vulture, The Review Geek, The A.V. Club, and Entertainment Weekly regularly recap episodes of popular TV shows. As a bonus, I’ve found that reading episode recaps has thoroughly enriched my understanding of social interactions. And it’s fun! 2) Procrastination You mentioned that your son takes forever to start writing an essay–i.e., he procrastinates. This is a common issue that can arise for a number of reasons, each of which can be targeted individually: Impulse control: Teens with ADHD–and teens in general–often struggle to delay gratification. They tend to choose the immediately rewarding option, even if it leads to negative consequences later on. Solutions: Encourage your son to find a low-distraction, low-temptation environment. Libraries are a great choice. He can also use this aspect of his personality by rewarding himself for completing assignments–see this video  to learn more. Short-sightedness: People sometimes say that there are only two times for those with ADHD–now and not now. ADHD can make the future seem so distant and abstract that it might as well not exist. The long-term consequences of procrastination can feel just as abstract, so they may not discourage someone from delaying work. Solutions: I sometimes guide students through a visualization exercise where they imagine two worlds: one in which they procrastinated and one in which they didn’t. I have them think about exactly how they’ll feel in each scenario, and then I ask them, “What can you do right now to help future you?” This strategy makes the future feel more real and immediate. Task characteristics: We’re also more likely to procrastinate on open-ended tasks with no clear first step, and essay assignments often fall into this category. Solutions: Break large, intimidating assignments into specific steps. You can do this manually or use AI. The website Goblin Tools  has an amazing magic to-do feature that turns items into steps. Environment: I’d be remiss not to mention technology. Social media, video games, and screens in general facilitate procrastination. Solutions: This is tricky because most teenagers resist parental efforts to control screen time. That said, app blockers are still a great option. Check out this post  for more ideas on managing technology. For a deeper dive into this topic, I highly recommend solvingprocrastination.com . It’s a fantastic, in-depth, science-based resource with lots of invaluable information. They even have pages specifically on ADHD and writing procrastination. Do you have a question you’d like the column to answer? Email asklucy@reel2.org . About Lucy: I graduated from Stanford in 2024 with a degree in psychology and Slavic Studies. I currently live in Boston and work as a writing tutor with a focus on supporting 2e/neurodivergent students. I've been involved in the neurodiversity world since I was diagnosed with autism at age 18. I hope to pursue a PhD in psychology and develop evidence-based interventions to help neurodivergent students write. For tutoring inquiries, please check out my website !

In the spring, I did a talk for REEL called “Reduce Power Struggles with Your 2e Kid.” When parents shared their most common power struggles, homework was high on the list. In this blog post, I’ll talk about how to use some of the principles from the talk to reduce power struggles around homework specifically. I hope some of the ideas in this blog post feel relevant for your family or inspire your own creative ideas to reduce stress around homework. If you’d like to watch the whole talk about reducing power struggles, you can   see it on YouTube here . If you’d like more help with power struggles, you may also be interested in my free email mini course,   Reduce Power Struggles with Your Gifted/2e Kid . Big idea 1: Make tasks easier If homework is a constant source of power struggles, there’s likely something about homework that’s hard for your kid. You may already know what’s hard, or you may have to observe, experiment, or talk with your kid to understand what feels hard. Some common challenges with homework include: The homework is too boring or easy, so it’s hard to engage or focus The homework feels meaningless, so it’s hard to engage The kid is too fatigued or out of capacity to do homework after school Handwriting is effortful, and the homework requires handwriting It’s hard to get started on homework It’s hard to organize homework and break it down into manageable tasks, so it feels overwhelming Here are some ways you can make homework feel easier: Remove homework entirely, or significantly reduce the amount If homework is tough for your kid or teen, for any reason, I highly encourage you to see if you can remove homework altogether or significantly reduce their homework load. If your kid already has an IEP or 504 plan, you may be able to advocate for a “no homework” accommodation. Other common accommodations allow kids to complete shortened assignments (e.g., only the odd-numbered problems), get excused from some assignments, or work on homework for a set amount of time each night (e.g., do 15 minutes of homework then stop, no matter how much progress they’ve made). Even if your kid doesn’t have an IEP or 504 plan, or if they attend a private school, you can ask their teacher(s) if their homework load can be reduced using one of the accommodations above or any adjustment the teachers are open to. For example, perhaps your kid could be excused from homework that covers a concept or skill they’ve already mastered. If the teachers won’t make changes, and homework is a significant source of stress, you may want to request an initial evaluation for special education (make sure you request it in writing) to see if your kid qualifies for accommodations and adjustments in work load. Use accommodations related to your kid’s disability or neurodivergence Appropriate accommodations and supports can reduce stress during homework time. For example, kids who are dyslexic can use audiobooks for reading assignments and speech-to-text or dictation for assignments that require writing. Kids who have dysgraphia often prefer to type instead of handwrite, to dictate their answers, or to use speech-to-text software. If the teacher is open to it, your kid could record voice memos or short videos that demonstrate their understanding, for assignments that are focused on content instead of writing skills. At home, ADHDers often benefit from help organizing tasks, getting started on tasks, and re-focusing on tasks when they’re distracted. ADHDers may find it helpful to use body doubling - for example, doing homework with friends (either in person or online), or doing homework near a parent who is also working on a task, such as making dinner or doing their own work. Some ADHDers find homework stressful because they forget what assignments to do and they forget materials at school. It can be helpful to set up systems that make it easier to access homework information at home. For example, many schools offer online assignment management software that teachers can use to share handouts, instructions, and necessary materials. Kids with ADHD can also receive extra copies of workbooks or textbooks to refer to at home, so they don’t need to remember to transport materials each day. Other ways to make homework easier Outside of disability-specific accommodations, you can also get creative about anything that might make homework feel easier. Here are some strategies that parents of 2e kids often find helpful: Provide a snack or treat at the start of homework to ease the transition. Offer hands-on help getting started, without putting too much stress or pressure on the process. Play or cuddle with kids before homework to offer a big dose of regulation after a long school day. Create a special spot for homework - with string lights, a clean working area, or a spot for the family pet to snuggle with your kid while they work. Hire a homework helper, tutor, academic coach, or executive functioning coach to provide hands-on help with homework. Sometimes a twice-exceptional high schooler or college student makes a great mentor and homework helper for a younger 2e student. Big idea 2: Enhance autonomy Sometimes a power struggle can be avoided - even when a task is difficult - if a kid feels a sense of autonomy about how they approach, manage, or define the task. If you want to enhance your kid’s perception of autonomy around homework, here are some questions you can ask yourself - What’s my main goal around homework? What else could be flexible about the homework process? What is my kid telling me (or showing me) about how they want to approach homework? Are they asking me for anything in regards to how they do homework? Could I follow their lead or give them what they’re asking for? Based on your answers to these questions, you could consider different ways to offer your child a greater sense of autonomy around homework. You may need to experiment to see what works best for your kid or teen. Here are a few ideas to enhance a kid’s autonomy around homework and thereby reduce power struggles: Give your kid some say over when and where they do homework For example, would they like a break when they get home before they start? Would they prefer to do homework before or after dinner? Would they prefer to work in the living room or the kitchen table?) Avoid correcting or reviewing your kid’s homework Many parents feel pressured to monitor their kid’s approach to homework or review the work itself to make sure their kid is doing their best work, but this often leads to power struggles, arguments, and tears. Parents can often reduce power struggles around homework by letting the teacher provide any corrective feedback that’s needed. This can be especially effective in elementary and middle school, when grades are usually of little lifelong importance. Understand your kid’s preferred working style and let them experiment to see what works For example, many ADHDers find it easier to do simple tasks like a math worksheet if they’re also allowed to re-watch a favorite TV show or listen to music at the same time. Many 2e kids may also find it difficult to focus on bigger projects when there isn’t a sense of urgency about getting them done. Kids and teens are often shamed about “procrastinating,” but waiting for a sense of urgency can actually be a very effective strategy! Many neurodivergent adults use strategic delay to help them focus on their work when it truly needs to get done. Many 2e kids and teens can still ace assignments when they do them at the last minute. Not all assignments can be completed effectively this way, but in my experience parents and teachers often have an overly negative view of procrastination that creates unnecessary power struggles and conflict with 2e kids. De-emphasize homework When your reflect on your goals around homework, you may also realize that you don’t care much about your kid’s homework itself - or that your real goal is to have peace again at home. Many parents notice that homework doesn’t serve much of a learning purpose for their 2e kid, or that the costs outweigh potential benefits. If you decide that your main goal around homework is for it to stop ruining your afternoons, evenings, and weekends, you may decide to drop the issue of homework altogether (and give your kid complete autonomy)…to give your kid explicit permission to stop doing homework…or to focus on advocating with the school to reduce or remove the homework load. Big idea 3: Wait to teach What does it mean to “wait to teach”? When your kid is stressed, upset, annoyed, agitated, or annoyed by homework (or anything), try to resist the urge to “teach” them anything or say something instructional or helpful in that agitated moment. When kids are avoiding homework, complaining about homework, or mad about homework, parents often feel pulled to offer helpful ideas, resolve the problem, or point out how their child has contributed to their own difficult situation. In my experience, though, any statements that sound like “teaching” tend to upset 2e kids further and often contribute to an argument and a power struggle. A kid or teen who’s upset about homework is often craving validation - they want their parent to believe them and to see how stressful homework is. Validating comments about homework might sound like: You’re right, homework is no fun. I always hated homework too. You’ve already had a long day and you just want to relax. This assignment doesn’t make sense. 10 pages is too many! You must be exhausted. It can be helpful to remember that homework is often stressful and tough for 2e kids - so there’s often a valid reason they’re upset or resisting their homework. Put it all together Depending on your kid’s homework situation, you might find it helpful to use any or all of the three big ideas above to help you reduce power struggles around homework. For some kids, validation instead of “teaching” is all that’s needed. For other kids, removing the pressure around homework is best. You might already have a gut sense of what your kid needs, or you may need to experiment with different supports and strategies to see what helps. If you want to try some of these ideas but you’d like help and encouragement along the way, you might be interested in my highly-supportive 8-week coaching program,   Support Your Intense Gifted/2e Kid . Best of luck with the start of the school year - I hope it’s one with fewer homework-related power struggles!

Disclosure: If you don’t enjoy reading intricate plots in your blog posts and prefer that authors get to the point, I encourage you to keep scrolling. Image source: https://www.adhddd.com/comics/ Welcome to the confessions of a doctoral student blog post where you can expect a non-linear tale and potentially too much oversharing. I hope that if you stick with my meandering mind, you may learn a little bit more about how your brain works My name is Katie Coder, and I am a third-year doctoral student at the Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity. I am a cisgender female and have many roles that I play in my life, including learner, wife, mom, sister, and educator, to name just a few. My path to entering Bridges Graduate school was full of chance encounters with Dr. Susan Baum, professor, author, and advocate of twice-exceptional learners. I still remember buying her book from an NAGC exhibitor stand, talking with her in person, and learning about the doctoral program at Bridges. It wouldn’t be until two and half years later that the seed Dr.Baum planted fully bloomed. I had just given birth, my husband had recently returned from a deployment (did I mention he’s in the military?), and we were in the middle of a pandemic. It seemed like the right time to enroll in a doctoral program! Some might look at my context and say “Wow, you are crazy!” Others may better understand the passion for learning that feeds my soul and my long-term goal of receiving my doctoral degree. Fast forward to the current moment…my capstone proposal has been approved! While at the same time, I am frantically finishing an assignment from my Social and Emotional Diversity course, which requires that I write an intervention plan to support a twice-exceptional learner. In typical fashion, I have procrastinated horribly on completing this final piece to the course; shocker, it is due today. Gasp! How can you be a doctoral student and function in this manner? I am glad you asked because I have been trying to unravel how my brain works for almost 33 years. If I look back at myself as a learner throughout the K-12 grades, I see a pattern emerge of executive function challenges, high achievement, and anxiety. To begin with, I honestly don’t know if the school district I attended as a child even had gifted education services or identified students. At the start of middle school, one of my teachers saw something in me, and at the beginning of 6th grade, I was enrolled in all honors courses. In high school, I was the typical overachiever who enrolled in any honors, AP, or college level courses I could get my hands on, all while working part-time to save for college. I also participated in varsity sports and band. (Spoiler: I am what my therapist calls a “recovering overachiever.”) I noticed that everyone in these courses seemed to know the secret to managing their time, breaking down large projects, and turning in work when it was due. It seemed effortless to everyone else, but a huge struggle for me. I would typically wait until a few nights before a large paper or project was due to start it and then stay up all night to complete it just in time. This pattern continued through my undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies. I just didn’t understand how other learners could figure out what seemed like an impossible process: how to break things down into steps and manage my time. The story I kept telling myself over the years goes something like this: “I work better under pressure and I need to feel motivated to work on large projects.” While writing my dissertation proposal, I quickly realized that I would need firm boundaries and a clear project path to finish my degree, so I sought out help. I checked in with an educational therapist to see if working with them would be a good fit. When the educational therapist asked me the best times to meet, I quickly responded at 5:00 am or 9:00 pm. I am thankful for the sage advice that this educational therapist shared with me during our consultation: “If those are the times you can meet, then maybe your plate is too full to take on another commitment.” At first, I armored up, and my initial response (in my head) was that, of course, I could take on one more thing, but in reality, our time is finite, and I was not managing it well. In the end, I didn’t work with an educational therapist due to my current time constraints, but I did develop an intervention to build my own time awareness as part of a class assignment. Ok, if you have stuck with me so far, thank you! We probably tell stories in a similar way, and I promise I am getting to the point. So here I am, scrambling to finish yet another assignment on the cusp of the due date. I have got to get this social/emotional intervention plan for a 2e student pulled together. And I am struggling with making a decision on who to target for the intervention. A lightbulb goes off. Instead of designing an intervention for a hypothetical 2e learner or a previous student, I thought, why not for myself? I self-identify as a twice-exceptional learner; however, I have never been identified in school as gifted or formally with ADHD (I do have anxiety and depression; overshare or transparency? You decide). I started thinking about 2e adults and the generations of people who may be 2e but are just learning that the term exists and finally discovering that their feelings of “other” or “different” are just how their magnificent brains work. So with all that being said, and now that we are clearly starting to become close friends through this blog post, here is the executive function intervention I designed and will implement for myself. After spending way too much time going down the Google rabbit hole to find the best planner for individuals struggling with time management and breaking down projects, I purchased The Work-Smart Academic Planner, created by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare. I liked that this planner included research on executive functioning and an executive skills questionnaire. To help scaffold the tasks of taking the questionnaire, identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and selecting tips to implement, the authors created a structured checklist to follow and even have a coach or classmate sign off once completed. Based on the executive skills questionnaire, my top three executive skill strengths are metacognition, flexibility, and goal-directed persistence. My top three executive skill weaknesses are…drum roll please… planning/prioritization, time management, and task initiation. I shared my results with my husband to get his thoughts on these being my strengths and weaknesses, and he agreed wholeheartedly with the results. The next step guided by the planner was to identify areas that significantly interfere with accomplishing tasks, then review the list and select the top three interferences to learn more about implementing strategies (aka an intervention). My top area of interference was under the time management category, specifically that I struggle to accurately estimate how long a task will take (I am a notorious underestimater of time, which adds to my last-minute scrambling). Based on this information, I created a four-week intervention cycle to help me create a better awareness of time. The intervention strategy was one of the executive functioning tips included in Dawson & Guare's text; they recommended, “Estimate how long a task will take and check to see if you are right” (p. 15). It sounds simple enough; however, the challenge with this intervention will be to hold myself accountable for completing time estimation, specifically while I work on homework assignments for my doctoral program. To keep the time tracking simple (I tend to overcomplicate tasks), I write the time estimate next to the reading or writing assignment listed in my syllabus. Then I start my watch timer (I always wear a watch, so this is easy for me to remember) when I begin a task, stop the timer, and record the actual time it took to complete a task. To hold myself accountable, I check in after my homework sessions with my husband because he has strong executive functioning skills. I am tracking my progress over the next four weeks against my estimates, with the goal of being able to make time estimations more realistically. This intervention is one small step towards improving the executive function areas I struggle with, enabling me to have a more balanced approach to completing my doctoral coursework, including my dissertation. Stay tuned to see how my time estimation intervention turns out and for more confessions of a doctoral student. Source: Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2017). The work-smart academic planner revised edition: Write it down, get it done. The Guilford Press. About the Author: Katie Coder received a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from Gustavus Adolphus College, a Master of Arts in Literacy Education, and a Certificate in Gifted Education from Hamline University. She has seven years of classroom teaching experience and served as the Advanced Learning Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) at Oak Harbor Public Schools in Washington State for the past five years. In this role, she found a need for better communication and services provided between the Gifted and Special Education programs. Katie Coder is pursuing an education doctorate in Cognitive Diversity in Education through Bridges Graduate School with a focus on leadership for innovation. Ms. Coder’s primary research interest is providing strengths-based approaches to educating and identifying twice-exceptional (2e) learners in a public school setting. She is passionate about facilitating educators’ professional development to ensure that all students find a love of learning through creating positive classroom experiences, including assisting educators with using research-based instructional strategies and honoring individual learner variability.

Cognitive flexibility is “the ability to shift attention from a previously learned representation to select context-specific, behaviorally relevant stimuli” (Vatansever, et. al., 2016). In other words, it is the ability for a person to re-evaluate a previously held belief or understanding, and modify it after gathering more information. It can be understood in contrast to cognitive rigidity , which is when a person will not revise or modify their belief or understanding regardless of additional information or evidence which is available to them. Cognitive flexibility… is “key to creativity” is “associated with higher resilience” can improve our quality of life improves empathy (Sahakian et. al., 2021) It helps us make better decisions & improve our understanding of what’s around us. Everyone can benefit from learning to be more cognitively flexible. However, cognitive rigidity can be especially challenging for gifted and 2e students. Gifted individuals can often jump quickly through several mental steps and arrive at a conclusion before others (Rimm et al., 2018). Impulsivity is a common trait for an individual diagnosed with ADHD (Armstrong, 2010). Cognitive rigidity has been associated with autism, dysgraphia (Zakreski, 2022), and anecdotally can be a common co-occurrence with dyslexia. One way to approach cognitive flexibility is with a growth mindset. We often have an initial reaction to a situation (our ‘first thought’ ), but when we take time to pause, we are able to see the situation in a different light (our ‘second thought’ ). In order to improve their cognitive flexibility, students need practice with how to get to their second thought before taking an action. Below are four tips to practice getting from your first thought to your second thought. Try these out for yourself, or make it into a game with your kids. Ask them the questions for each image and see what they say. Have a discussion about your first thought vs. your second. Tip #1: Get the full picture Sometimes we make assumptions before we have a chance to zoom out. For example: What are we looking at here? You might look at this picture and assume we’re looking at the legs of a woman about to go out to a dinner party, or at a fancy event. But when we zoom out for the full picture, we see: (image source: https://www.newyorker.com) The full picture tells a very different story. This is a highly successful professional woman photographed in her work environment. Here’s another - what are we looking at here? Perhaps a framed photograph? But zooming out we get a different perspective: (image source: https://betterfundraising.com) Tip #2: Pay attention to detail It pays to look closely. Is this a cave painting? Or a photograph? Are we looking at gray horses… or something a bit more striped? (image source: flicker.com user reiternick) And how many monkeys do you see in this photo? (The answer is zero! These are orchids.) (image source: NatureVibes) Tip #3: Take another look Things are not always what they seem at first glance: Are these legs? Or food? (image source: https://www.reddit.com user tender_minx) How many bagels? How many dogs? (image source: https://www.boredpanda.com) Tip #4: Shift your perspective Sometimes you will see something entirely differently if you just change the way you’re looking at it. Consider this number: Six, or nine? It depends on your perspective. (image source: https://www.briansolis.com) What animal do you see here? What if we rotate it just a bit - now what animal do you see? (image source: https://www.illusionsindex.org) It’s always a good idea to get the full picture, pay attention to detail, take another look, and shift your perspective. Practice getting to your second thought before taking action. I hope these lighthearted examples help get you and your family talking and thinking about the importance of cognitive flexibility! References Armstrong, T. (2010). The power of neurodiversity. Unleashing the advantages of your differently wired brain. De Capo Press. Rimm, S. B., Siegle, D., & Davis, G. A. (2018). Education of the gifted and talented (7th ed). Pearson. Sahakian, B. J., Langley, C., & Leong, V. (2021). What is cognitive flexibility and how does it help us think? World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/cognitive-flexibility-thinking-iq-intelligence/ Vatansever, D., Manktelow, A. E., Sahakian, B. J., Menon, D. K., & Stamatakis, E. A. (2016). Cognitive flexibility: A default network and basal ganglia connectivity perspective. Brain Connectivity, 6(3), 201–207. https://doi.org/10.1089/brain.2015.0388 Zakreski, M. (2022). Cognitive Flexibility and Emotional Intensity: Communication and Intervention [Google slides]. Bridges Graduate School.

Twice-exceptional students have few forums to express their lived educational experiences. REEL is pleased to launch “Living and Learning 2e,” a new blog series dedicated to giving twice exceptional children, teens, and young adults a place to share their voices. Lucy Kross Wallace is our sixth guest blogger. She is currently a sophomore at Stanford University majoring in comparative literature and psychology. Her contribution to this blog series reflects her experiences as a student at The Nueva School, where she attended from fourth grade through graduation. Lucy loves writing, Russian, coffee, indie rock, and acts of kindness (random or otherwise). If you like her post, check out Lucy’s blog , lucidity. Mission: Leave my biology classroom, walk across one hall and three flights of stairs to the cafeteria, grab a plate of food, refill my coffee cup, then climb two flights of stairs and walk a quarter of the way across the building to an empty classroom, where I would be able to eat with one hand and copy French verb conjugations with the other. Time allotted: Five minutes. 11:35. Our bio teacher ends class about 40 seconds behind schedule. I pack my bag as quickly as possible and rush out of the room. The halls are already swarming with shrieking freshmen, juniors bemoaning the upcoming PSAT, and the robotics team’s latest creation rolling around with alarming speed. 11:37. I elbow my way toward the staircase, dart down two steps at a time, and arrive at the cafeteria panting. I fill two cups with beets and cherry tomatoes, wincing at the moist residue on the tongs – hummus? Mayonnaise? Either way, it is one of my least favorite textures in the world. I’m making good time, though. 3:27 elapsed, leaving 1:33 for coffee + staircase + classroom. 11:38. Leah waves to me as I approach the coffee machine, but the thought of a conversation makes my stomach lurch. It only takes 20 or 30 seconds to derail the entire routine. I smile in her direction as I rush past – “Sorry, gotta go” – before pouring my coffee, jamming a lid on the paper cup, and darting back through the crowd and toward the staircase. 11:39. Up the stairs, two at a time, down the hall, then into the classroom. 11:40. The door slams behind me. Mission accomplished. I collapse into a chair and hold my head in my hands for a moment, feeling my pulse throb in my throat. I wish I could close my eyes and breathe and just be still, but the clock is ticking – 11:40:28, 11:40:29 – so I straighten up and keep going. *** This was an average sliver of my life in high school. Upon first glance, I appeared to be thriving. I earned straight As, never handed in homework late, studied twice as much as necessary, and even convinced myself that taking three science classes for the entirety of my sophomore year might be a good idea (it wasn’t). Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Despite all my academic accomplishments, I struggled with the skills that seemed to come naturally to everyone else. I dreaded the nine-minute walk between school and the train station because if a classmate came up beside me and tried to strike up a conversation, I would ask the wrong question or give the wrong answer and have to endure their looks of puzzlement, as well as the sinking feeling that I had just failed yet another social interaction. My anxiety disorders were out of control. Even on hefty doses of medication, I was always minutes away from another freak-out. The smallest asymmetry could make me feel like the world was ending. The chairs at the kitchen table had to be lined up perfectly, the napkins crisply folded, the drawers closed tightly, the microwave door never left open. I planned my time with absurd precision, scheduling activities in 15-minute intervals, and panicking whenever the train ran late or swim practice ended early. These obsessions and compulsions rendered developmentally normal activities such as hanging out with a friend after school or going to a birthday party impossible. There were too many unknowns, too many factors outside of my control. No amount of cajoling on the part of my parents or therapists could convince me to branch out or try something new. Instead, I clung to my spreadsheets and tended to the napkins and the microwave door, hoping that if I gained control over all the stimuli that made my mind spin and my skin crawl, my crippling anxiety might someday fade away. At the time, I had yet to be diagnosed with autism. Although I certainly considered anxiety and obsessiveness parts of my temperament, it never occurred to me that there might be a deeper issue underlying these problems. Even though my level of perfectionism was intensely debilitating, I was terrified of letting it go because it was also one of my greatest strengths. Without my discipline and determination, I wouldn’t have learned Spanish or discovered my love of Latin American literature or written novels or memorized Welsh train routes or read Greek plays, or continued to find ways to try to satiate my endless curiosity. In other words, I wouldn’t be me. For all the pain and difficulty anxiety conferred, it was still a defining aspect of my identity, and I wasn’t ready to give it up. I continued in this way throughout my freshman and sophomore years of high school, anxious and diligent and committed and enthusiastic and miserable. But in the spring of eleventh grade, my doctors deemed me no longer healthy enough to stay in school. They sent me to a residential treatment center, where I would spend nearly five months. This was the first in a long succession of hospitals and treatment facilities where my symptoms continued to baffle therapists, doctors, and nurses alike. Despite all this chaos, I was still able to graduate on time. My school was so accommodating that I didn’t realize I was being accommodated. My teachers understood that the goal of school is to learn, so if a particular rule or expectation prevents students from learning, it might need to be changed. Thus, I was allowed to leave the classroom when it got too bright or too loud because teachers trusted me to finish whatever work I needed to on time (and I had already demonstrated my commitment to doing so). I got extensions on assignments when I was sick. My English teacher even sent me a hard copy of my graded paper when I was in the hospital. (Ironically, my essay was titled, “On the Soul-Crushing Power of Modern Psychiatry.”) On the days when I was unable to speak, I would turn in a written reflection after class. None of these modifications impacted my transcript because Nueva uses standards-based grading, wherein grades reflect mastery of learning objectives rather than a cumulative average of all assignments. On certain occasions, teachers even waived entire projects because I had already demonstrated the skills in question earlier on in the semester. While I was too depressed to enjoy prom, decorating graduation caps, or the end-of-year party that my classmates were so excited about, there was one spring semester treat that I thoroughly enjoyed: the opportunity to write and perform adaptations of Shakespeare plays. Being the geek that I am, I signed up for two English classes. My proposal to set Romeo and Juliet in the early 1950s (“Polio, polio, wherefore art thou polio?”) was vetoed in favor of a version set on Lake Tahoe, with the protagonists belonging to two equally rich and ostentatious families. As per our teacher’s request, we included the line, “A curse on both your vacation houses!” My other class developed a largely incoherent but still amusing adaptation of Twelfth Night that involved a nineties sitcom, time travel, Grease , and an overbearing PTA mom. Midway through the writing process, I was hospitalized, going off the grid for five days. I returned to school in a bit of a panic; graduation was just three weeks away, and if I failed those classes, I had no idea what would happen. Fortunately, my teachers understood. I was assigned the role of Juliet’s life coach in Romeo and Juliet , and I knew all the lines because I had written them myself. I decided to sit back and watch Twelfth Night, comforted by my English teacher’s joking reassurance that as long as I didn’t set the stage on fire, I would be earning an A. Among all the memories from that year that I’d rather forget, these moments stand out as testaments to the impact supportive teachers can have. I’m exceedingly lucky to have gone to a school that, instead of adding stress and anxiety to my life, helped me do the things I love, even as I struggled with severe illness. As I stood on the stage with my yoga mat and Kombucha, lecturing Juliet about the relationship between moral and dietary fiber, I was reminded of what I value most: humor; creativity; community; and, to a lesser degree, yoga. At my lowest points, school didn’t intensify my misery. It gave me a reason to keep going. After I finished high school and spent another long year in hospitals, I finally received an autism diagnosis, which helped me and my doctors contextualize the challenges I faced. I now had a framework to understand the atypical, sometimes pathological, but still pretty cool workings of my mind. I gained a greater awareness of my abilities and limitations. With the help of my family, friends, and quite a few medical professionals, I learned to channel my anxiety toward positive ends and recognize when my perfectionism wasn’t serving me. I highly doubt that I’ll ever live in a way that anyone would describe as “spontaneous.” However, I’ve still developed the skills and taken the medications necessary to move past my obsessions and compulsions. Over the summer, I became healthier, more stable, and more comfortable with myself. I was allowed to leave the hospital just in time to begin my freshman year at Stanford. As I got my bearings, I realized that the modifications to my schoolwork in high school were essentially prototypes for college accommodations. I developed a robust array of strategies to manage my impairments, from earplugs to audio recorders to text-to-speech apps. I also became more comfortable advocating for myself and communicating my needs to professors, administrators, and dorm staff. Knowing that I was autistic gave me the confidence to make decisions based on what was best for me, rather than what seemed normal. I opted out of dorm activities, parties, football games, homecoming, and virtually every other Stanford student tradition – and I was happy. My version of an amazing Friday night looked like attending Shabbat services at Hillel, eating dinner alone in my room, and going to bed around nine. This routine is weird and abnormal and probably unappealing to at least 90% of college students, but it works for me. That magical day I used to dream about, when my anxiety would disappear for good, never came. What I have now is actually better. I’ve learned to leverage my strengths, remain aware of my weaknesses, set realistic expectations, and find the middle ground between soul-crushing rigidity and chaotic spontaneity. I’ve made peace with everyday imperfections, channeling the energy I used to expend on microwave doors and five-minute intervals into writing and learning. Though I have no intention of pursuing a career as a life coach, the joy of standing on that stage with my Kombucha and yoga mat is no longer a rarity but a given.

Parents of twice exceptional kids – the ones that are both gifted and with learning differences – are well aware of how hard it is to raise them. It’s confusing enough when you only have one child, but what if you have more than one? You’d think that the overall difficulty of raising multiple kids would, speaking in mathematical terms, be upper bounded by the difficulty coefficient for raising one child multiplied by the number of kids you have, since, presumably, the experience you’ve gained with the first would apply to the next, thus lowering the amount of effort required. However, in my experience this is not the case. In fact, the effect might be the opposite: my kids are two very different people, and what I’ve learned with one rarely works with the other. Furthermore, sibling rivalry becomes a thing in both conventional and unconventional sense. When I confided my dilemma to one of the professionals we were working with, I was met with “clearly, you are meant to write a book about it”. The book is still in the works. For now, I am starting small – with blogging. So, back to the kids. Though my kids have different personalities, needs, and ways of processing the world, this post is not about that. The focus of this post is on the unexpected side-effect of what I call unconventional rivalry: how to handle one sibling being in the shadow of another, when the abilities of one are juxtaposed with those of the other. This shadow could represent different things for different kids or even different periods of time for the same kid. And though often this overshadowing is done by the older child onto the younger, just because they are older and develop sooner, the reverse happens too. And so it becomes critical to cultivate the sense of their identity in each child and help them accept themselves for who they are – individuals with unique passions and strengths. When my husband and I found out that our older child was profoundly gifted and on the spectrum, we, understandably, put all our efforts into, on the one hand, finding him the right therapies, and on the other – finding ways to satisfy his appetite for knowledge. His younger sister was left on the sidelines. To some extent, I think it was inevitable, but I wish I was more in tune with my daughter then. I was guilty of thinking she was just a more neurotypical kid who did not need as much attention and was not as gifted. I think I was trying very hard not to be that mom who always brags about her kids and treats them as special, and to an extent I subconsciously diminished my daughter’s intelligence. Until we tested her and found out that she is just as profoundly gifted as our son, but her stealth dyslexia and overall personality make her intelligence manifest itself in non-obvious, non-academic ways. Furthermore, even though “ recent research indicated that in many cases siblings are within ten IQ points of each other ”, giftedness in girls is often overlooked because they face a range of social pressures at school, and “ the desire for friends, a disinclination to stand out, fear of ridicule, along with the need for acceptance, often impel gifted girls to make their abilities appear ordinary or even nonexistent ”. In hindsight, I probably contributed to my daughter’s lack of self-confidence in areas that my son excels at – for example, science. He knows so much about science – it’s one of his strengths – that in her view she knows nothing about it because she compares herself to him. We are still working on trying to convince her that she is good at science too, because she is. Ultimately, the message we are trying to send to our kids now is that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and that's ok. And it’s even ok not to be the best in your area of strength. It’s not about what everybody else is and has – it’s about figuring out what you need and learning to be comfortable with and accepting of who you are. Just like it is fruitless to compare apples and oranges (pun absolutely intended), though extremely tempting, it is unproductive to compare one individual to another – after all, we call ourselves individuals for a reason. The trick is to compare yourself only to yourself and take pride in your own growth. And that’s why it is imperative for the other sibling to find their niche: something that differentiates them from others, something they are good at, something they enjoy, their passion. This will allow them to be seen as their own person, build their confidence and self-efficacy, and ultimately flourish. We are lucky because we managed to discover our daughter’s strength relatively quickly and effortlessly – it’s art. All we had to do is expose her to diverse activities and notice things she gravitated towards on her own. She has always been creative: from picking out her own clothes and combining different pieces into a unique outfit from a very young age to having a vivid imagination and telling stories as if they happened in real life. She has also always loved doodling, and to my untrained eye seemed to be good at it. Our suspicions turned out to be true when she started taking official art classes. Our daughter is an amazing artist and likes crafts too. Art is where she can express herself and feel good about herself. She experiments with different media, including acrylic, ink, and markers. She also enjoys pottery and felting. And recently got into digital art and animation and is becoming a pro at Procreate (another pun, ha!). Art also happens to be something our son is not into at all. Amusingly, our daughter is doing so well right now, having found her niche, that one might say that she switched places with our son and is getting her share of sunlight, leaving him in the shadows to wither with the struggles that come with puberty. But I know that this phase in his life will pass as well, and there will be plenty of sunshine for both of them. About the Author: Guest blogger Yekaterina (Katrina) O’Neil is a homeschooling mom by day, a doctoral student by night, and a software security researcher by trade. The mom to two 2e kids in middle and high school, she began homeschooling them after public school turned out not to be a fit. To understand and support her kids better, Katrina is pursuing a Doctoral Degree at Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education, while attempting to juggle a career in cybersecurity at the same time. She is passionate about neurodiversity and hopes to spread awareness and acceptance of neurodivergent individuals at home, at school, and in the workplace.She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science & Engineering from UC San Diego.

The Stanford Neurodiversity Summit , held earlier this month, brought together practitioners, caregivers, parents, employers, self-advocates, and educators from around the world to advance the conversation around neurodiversity. Each year, the Summit centers around a unifying theme; this year’s focus was on building systems of support that enable neurodivergent individuals to thrive in education, the workplace, and the community . Over the course of several days, participants engaged in keynote talks, workshops, and panel discussions spanning a wide range of topics—from K–12 and higher education, to mental health, employment, research, and public policy. The Summit continues to grow as a global gathering place for sharing ideas and building bridges between neurodivergent people and the communities around them. It was inspiring to be in a space filled with so much passion, knowledge, and commitment to creating more inclusive systems. We were grateful to meet so many of you in person—thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth to connect. REEL exists because of your continued support. This year, REEL was honored to play an active role in the Summit. Our team served on the organizing committee, moderated conversations, and participated in a K–12 education panel with Stanford Online High School. Together, we highlighted how our collaboration with their educators is shaping more inclusive classrooms and how REEL’s strength-based approach is becoming part of their everyday teaching culture. The Summit’s K–12 track was especially rich this year. Panels such as “Neurodiversity in K–12 Education: Parent and Teacher Perspectives”  and “Creating Inclusive Classrooms”  gave voice to the experiences of families, educators, and students themselves. These sessions underscored the pressing need for practices that move beyond accommodations alone, toward fostering environments where neurodivergent learners are recognized for their strengths and supported in their challenges—work that is at the heart of REEL’s mission. We were also proud to host a screening of Left Behind , the powerful documentary telling the story of mothers who came together to open New York City’s first public school for dyslexic students. Following the screening, we moderated a Summit panel with the filmmakers, keeping this important conversation moving forward. For those who couldn’t attend live, session recordings will be made available to the public in the coming months—we’ll be sure to share them with our community once they’re released. The Summit reinforced what we at REEL deeply believe: when families, educators, researchers, and advocates come together, meaningful change for neurodivergent learners is not only possible—it’s already happening.