Born in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, Yong Zhao recollects that he had no talent as a farmer, so his father sent him to school where he had the opportunity to develop self-confidence. His educational journey took him from the Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages to the United States and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Zhao is an elected fellow of the International Academy for Education, a professor at the University of Kansas and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He has written over thirty books, including the recent Learners Without Borders: New Learning Pathways for All Students and An Education Crises Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How Radical Changes Can Spark Student Excitement and Success. A highly sought-after voice in education, Dr. Zhao’s vision aligns with the key drivers of success for twice-exceptional students, including “personalizable learning.” In his view, the entire school system should be flexible enough for each child to discover their greatness. In this interview, Dr. Zhao dove deeply into his insights, how they apply to neurodiversity, and what it will take to create the change all learners need to thrive. How has your experience of parenting shaped your views about how we should be “doing school?” As parents, we don’t own our children, so that’s the first big thing. The second thing is we need to create space for them. For example, I never looked at their grades all these years. I never even asked them about that. I wanted them to develop an opportunity for self-determination, to say, “What would you like to do?” Children have their own life. That is the key. If a child decides to say, “I have to be responsible for my own life,” then... Read the article on 2e News

To my special boy on your 13th birthday - you told me a while ago that you have a hard time in this world that isn’t made for you. I said “But you’re amazing, I learn so much from you!” In disbelief, you asked me for examples. I promised I would write a letter to you. So here are just a few of the beautiful things I have learned from being lucky enough to be your mom: Follow Your Passions Someone recently pointed out to me that I spent my life doing all the things I was expected to do, rather than knowing what I wanted to do, which doesn’t make life feel very fulfilling. She suggested that I look at you and how you follow your passions. You know what you like and what you don’t like, and no one can change that. That is something I admire about you - you find such interesting topics that hardly anyone else notices- like city streets and local wonders - and you dream up such creative ways to showcase them. And you do it with all of your heart. I remember when you saw a euphonium at school and decided that was the instrument for you because no one else had heard of it - and then you saw it in a store window and took off playing and learning and composing - all from your passion! I know that your beautiful passions will take you far and let you soar as you share them with anyone lucky enough to be in your orbit. Surround Yourself With People Who Deserve You There are so many social conventions that cause people to spend time together - commitments, requirements, expectations - that I ended up spending time with people who weren’t lifting me up. You told me “You have to be special to be my friend because I am special. Not just anyone gets to be my friend.” I took that to heart because you are right. How many of us spend time with people who don’t make us feel good or who drain our energy? But you don’t do that - you know who you want around you and you attract people with big hearts. I am learning to do the same. Don’t Let People Shut Down Your Ideas So many times you have ideas that I don’t think are possible - like when you wanted to 3D print a model of Earth for your class and I told you that it wouldn’t work and that there wasn’t enough time. Well guess what - you made a model of Earth and it was amazing! Most people have a thought process about what can’t happen, why things aren’t possible - instead, you see a world of possibilities. You can sew a stuffed animal, compose a musical piece, design new trading cards, 3D print from your imagination - things I would have told you are not possible! But you do them! You are someone who makes dreams into reality. Find Validation From Within Yourself Related to not having people tell you your ideas can’t work - you have a strength to try things that are unconventional, to question why things are the way they are and why we have to do them, to not follow the trends just because everyone else is doing them. You look within yourself to decide if your idea is worth your time, rather than to others. This is something that I am only learning now, decades older than you. I spent my life looking for external validation which can lead to a sense of unhappiness, as you always want to please others. Seeing your way of handling this has freed me to try new things that I couldn’t picture doing before. Instead of expending so much energy trying to blend in, I’m learning it’s ok to be yourself and stand out. And if people don’t like it, they don’t deserve my time. I am learning that from you. This includes parenting decisions - that kids should do certain activities or behave a certain way. I have learned to stop comparing and instead focus on what makes you happy. Seek the Joy in Small Wonders As you know, I love to travel to faraway places and seek out large wonders. I appreciate that you have adventured alongside me, even when it wasn’t your first choice. But you don’t require a large wonder to find awe, you find it in the smallest wonders - a statue someone has placed in their garden, an interesting street name, a peculiar plant, a plane flying overhead, a bike ride to your favorite neighborhood. During the pandemic when I was forced to fulfill my wonder-seeking locally, I learned from you that there is wonder everywhere, if you know how to look for it. Be Brave You told me you don’t think you’re brave, because brave people aren’t scared. But I think the very definition of brave is facing something you are afraid of, and doing it anyway. I watch your bravery as you go to school, with all of the overwhelm that it can bring you, and you do it anyway. You find your own methods to overcome the difficulty. You face it on a daily basis. And when we go to new places or try new things, and there are legitimate reasons for you to be anxious, you still try. I think about your bravery when I have to do something I’m scared of - like giving a talk in front of a big group of people. I think to myself “He faces things bravely every day, so I can do this!” I hope you feel proud of yourself. You have taught me, and everyone around you, so much about what it means to be your true self. You are you, you are not what people or society say you should be. It is not an easy thing to be oneself. This is a superpower - even if it feels hard now - it will make special things happen in your life. I can’t wait to see what they are as you become an official teenager and beyond. I’m so lucky I get to be on your journey with you. So is everyone who gets to share a small piece of your journey. I hope you never forget that. All my love, Mom (Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/94697672@N00)

Welcome to the second in our “Teaching 2e: Supporting 2e Distance Learners” blog series with tips and perspectives on how to successfully work with 2e learners during the Covid-19 pandemic. Are you a teacher? Then this series is chock full of practical ideas. Are you a parent? Review the series for yourself, since you’re likely to be more involved in your child’s education than ever; then, send the link to your child’s teachers! And, check out our downloadable flyer with even more tips and tools. Critical Success Factor: The Daily Schedule Remote learning completely upended regular routines for every teacher, parent and student. When we gathered a dozen parents of twice-exceptional learners and asked them to reflect on distance learning for their 2e children, one theme came up more than any other - the importance of setting a clear, daily schedule. Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, you’ve got an important role to play in helping your 2e learners create a structure that works best for them. It sets the outline for the day, including breaks, so kids know what they should be doing and when - and to reinforce the importance of downtime and fun. Setting a daily schedule looks different depending on the age of the child. Here are tips from the parents of 2e children, by grade level: Early Elementary Parents of early elementary aged children had the most success when they created and followed a consistent daily schedule. This involved checking in with their child’s assignments to review daily tasks each morning. Parents observed that printing out assignments that could be accomplished without a screen as part of the daily check in was helpful to their children. They, and parents of older children as well, also noted that it was useful to write the daily schedule on a whiteboard so the child could reference it throughout the day. Parents also found that having daily or weekly traditions, such as selecting books and then picking up the student’s weekly book bag, provided an anchor to the schedule and something to look forward to. Upper Elementary Upper elementary school parents, particularly those with students in 4th and 5th grades, found ways to begin teaching their children self-management and time management skills. First, they recommended reviewing the teacher-provided slide deck or other assignment tool together at the start of the day to make a checklist or plan; parents also created and printed out a weekly schedule with assignments due that week as well as ongoing assignments. During their check-ins, parents noted it’s important to let students choose the order in which to complete work, if that’s possible, as it provides the opportunity to practice prioritization and also gives 2e kids a sense of control over their time. In addition, parents used Google Calendar to help their children manage classes and other appointments, including scheduling lunch time and other personal activities on the calendar. Parents noted that some teachers would text parents if a child forgot to log onto an online meeting - it’s an extra step that went a long way to keeping the child on track. One also mentioned the usefulness of a visual analog timer so the student could have a sense of the time spent completing asynchronous work. Middle/High School As learners move through middle and high school, they’re expected to take on more responsibility for their own workload. However, due to asynchronous development, 2e children are sometimes two to three years behind their peers in developing executive function skills. Plus, everyone was adapting to new routines “on the fly” - a difficult challenge for anyone. Parents of 2e learners found that teaching their children to use Google Calendar was a great approach; the parent and child both put meetings with reminders on the calendar and included Zoom or other meeting links. High schoolers were given more leeway to create their own "to-do" list and schedule, with a parent checking in at the beginning of the day to be sure the child was on the right track and then again at the end of the day to reflect on the list and suggest schedule refinements. This is especially important to 2e learners who often become overwhelmed by the quantity of assignments in secondary school - it’s important to have a dedicated forum for the parent and child as well as student and teacher to touch base about the amount of time assignments take and adjust assignments as needed. (Our recent blog posts from 2e students Chris and Ava offer insights into how 2e learners experience overwhelm and their suggestions for making it better.) The Schedule Vis a Vis Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning The daily schedule is important regardless of whether the distance learning method is synchronous or asynchronous. Parents of 2e learners expressed the benefits of both approaches, although among 2e parents, the benefits of asynchronous work and their child’s schedule was clear: “Asynchronous learning allowed us to set our schedule to learn when my child was most able to focus.” “Asynchronous learning is better for students who want to work at their own pace.” “My 9th grader seemed to enjoy not being in the classroom and learning at his own asynchronous pace.” “Video lessons allowed us to create our own schedule where we could do the lessons at the time that works best for when my first grader has attention.” That’s not to say that asynchronous is always preferred by 2e learners. In fact, parents also note that synchronous classes and check-ins provide structure to the daily schedule; in particular, synchronous meetings are a great way to launch the day and close it out, with opportunities for check-in’s in between. Just keep in mind that there are benefits to allowing 2e children and their parents to set a daily and weekly schedule with some flexibility that works for them, rather than expecting 2e students to participate in synchronous meetings all day, every day. The Importance of the Home/School Connection Lastly, setting the daily schedule offers a wonderful opportunity for parents and teachers to support one another during remote learning. When teachers provide clear, daily and weekly assignments and meeting schedules, it’s much easier for parents to support their children and for older children to support themselves; this is especially important for families where parents have limited time to help their children with at-home learning, due to work schedules, illness, or caregiving needs of other family members. When parents take the time to understand their children’s teachers’ objectives and plans, the children experience more success and stay on track. Being clear about expectations and using those to set daily and weekly schedules is a win-win-win. P.S. Special thanks to the REEL parents who contributed their time and insights to help create bridges between themselves and teachers in support of 2e learners everywhere. And to the teachers who give so much of themselves in service of their students. See also: Benefits of Distance Learning for 2e Learners What to Do? Twice-Exceptional Students and Distance Learning Get email updates, join the discussion, find more distance learning resources

Welcome to the third in our “Teaching 2e: Supporting 2e Distance Learners” blog series with tips and perspectives on how to successfully work with 2e learners during the Covid-19 pandemic. Are you a teacher? Then this series is chock full of practical ideas. Are you a parent? Review the series for yourself, since you’re likely to be more involved in your child’s education than ever; then, send the link to your child’s teachers! And, check out our downloadable flyer with even more tips and tools. Benefits of Distance Learning for 2e Learners By now, most parents and teachers are aware of the challenges of distance learning. But, it might surprise teachers to know that distance learning actually delivered key benefits to 2e students. When we conducted a focus group of the parents of 2e learners, they pointed out several benefits of distance learning. Whether your school is continuing distance learning or returning to the classroom, understanding these benefits can help teachers, parents and students continue to shape learning environments to better fit the needs of 2e students. Better alignment of learning times to kids’ body clocks. Parents could shift schoolwork to times when their kids naturally had more energy. Students, especially teens and their parents, savored the ability to sleep in. Plus, without traditional school routines, kids could take more frequent breaks and move around more freely and frequently. As one parent noted, “Video lessons allowed us to create our own schedule where we could do the lessons at the time that works best for when we have attention.” Flexibility and choice in organizing work. With distance learning, in particular asynchronous assignments, kids could work at their own pace. 2e learners could craft a schedule that addressed their challenges, such as anxiety, executive function, and difficulty with transitions. For instance, one family noted that, with asynchronous learning, they chose to focus on one course/subject per day, giving them the opportunity to minimize transitions. Kids could also determine the order in which they completed assignments. For instance, some kids prefer to get everything done early in the day when they have energy, while others like to do their challenge area first and have the reward of their favorite subject waiting for them. And, without the need to follow a traditional school schedule, parents and students could work together to address any struggles as they arose. Ability to tailor learning to kids’ interests, abilities, and pace. Without the need to conform strictly to classroom norms and pacing, parents and students felt more empowered to work with teachers to tweak assignments to align to student’s interests and abilities. Many teachers gave more permission than is typical to adjust projects. One parent appreciated that her child’s teacher allowed her child to skip Zoom meetings for corrections and review sessions when the child had already shown mastery of the content. Another parent said, “When I found where my son needed help, I could go to find material in that area that appealed to his interests. For example, he struggles with writing so I found some Pokemon writing sheets that were appealing to him and allowed him to practice his writing.” These are important strategies to continue for 2e children. Also, some children found they could complete their schoolwork in much less time without the structures of school. One parent observed, “My child had a lot more free time and yet I think learned just as much.” This gave kids extra time to play, create projects, spend time with their families, work on learning life skills (such as biking, cooking, home care), and, for many, read their favorite books. Teachers may consider offering suggestions for projects or resources to extend students’ learning in their areas of interest. Schools can also offer optional extracurricular activities or extension projects such as “Genius Hour.” Or, for 2e students who don’t have strong home support systems, it’s important for school districts to consider relationships with local community organizations to help keep kids engaged in learning and growing. Opportunities to deepen parent/teacher relationships. With their children suddenly learning from home, parents were unexpectedly forced into new roles. They experienced children’s educational struggles and successes firsthand, gaining a deeper understanding of their children’s learning styles and preferences. Moving into the new school year, parents are a huge source of deep information about their children and will continue to be so as they provide the scaffolding for learning at home. Understanding the benefits of distance learning that many 2e learners experienced can help teachers and parents shape effective learning environments regardless of what the future may hold. P.S. Special thanks to the REEL parents who contributed their time and insights to help create bridges between themselves and teachers in support of 2e learners everywhere. And to the teachers who give so much of themselves in service of their students. See also: What to Do? Twice-Exceptional Students and Distance Learning Critical Success Factor: The Daily Schedule Get email updates, join the discussion, find more distance learning resources

Listen to this podcast with Children's Health Council. (35 mins) Parenting is never easy, but raising a child with exceptional talents who also struggles with learning differences (such as autism, ADHD or dyslexia) is even more complex. This combination of giftedness and challenges — known as twice exceptional (2e) — creates a confusing picture for parents and educators. It can be difficult to see the signs of 2e because it looks different in every child. Their strengths can mask their challenges and their challenges can mask their strengths. This podcast features REEL Co-Founder Callie Turk, a parent of a 2e child, and Dr. Vivien Keil, neuropsychologist, about the journey of understanding and parenting these unique and extraordinary kids.

Do you have a bright child who struggles to show it in an academic setting?• Does your child love to think about numbers or discuss advanced math concepts but resists doing a simple math assignment? • Have they memorized elaborate sequences of historical events but can’t remember to turn in their homework? • Does your child conduct deep, well-reasoned debates with you but struggle with reading or writing? You may have a twice-exceptional (2e) child!

Do you have a neurodivergent student or child who is underperforming in school? Let’s help them get their light back! A happy and engaged student is one who will take on challenges. In this positivity-focused workshop, REEL Partner and Bridges Graduate School doctoral student Abby Kirigin emphasized the many reasons neurodiverse students have to celebrate their unique brain wiring. She identified strategies for building confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy by providing opportunities for individuals to show and grow their strengths, learning ways to tease apart the conceptual content goals from the challenges in expression, and integrating strength-based strategies into everyday life. Abby Kirigin is a mom to three gifted, creative, and neurodiverse children. She is currently a Doctoral student of Cognitive Diversity in Education at the Bridges Graduate School, as well as the Administrative and Advancement Director for Touchstone Learning, an elementary school in the Bay Area for dyslexic and 2E students, and a partner at REEL Palo Alto, a Bay Area teacher and parent advocacy group for twice exceptionality. Additionally, Abby serves on the Board of Trustees at Woodland School, a Pre-K through 8th grade private school. She holds a Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon and an undergraduate degree from NYU in Computer Science & Philosophy. Abby previously co-founded a venture backed startup, and has worked as an Interaction Designer for startups, large companies, and the US government. See the transcript here: Callie Turk: Welcome to our REEL event tonight on parenting your neurodiverse child: strength-based strategies at home and in the classroom. Before I formally introduce our presenter, Abby Kerrigan, I'm going to just give you a little bit of background information on REEL for those of you who might be new to our organization. Welcome, thank you for coming. We really appreciate you taking the time out to be here tonight. Abby's going to click for me, and maybe there we go . So just in case you're not familiar with REEL, uh, we're a non-profit organization that is working to help twice-exceptional students thrive in school. We do that by raising parent and educator awareness around the twice-exceptional and what their needs are, and we do that through providing resources and tools and events. So that's—this is one of those—wait a second, I—yeah. So if you go to our website, you will be able to access a lot of the tools that we have. We have a fact sheet that makes it easy to explain what twice-exceptionality is to other people in your life. We have a checklist of things you might look for to see if you think your child might be twice-exceptional. We also have blog posts—for instance, Yael wrote a really great one about how to use rating skills with your child to troubleshoot things that are going on at school. You can access all of our past events and recordings on our website. So we have things like a TUI self-advocacy panel that we ran last year, a session with a neuropsych around anxiety strategies for the TUI child, and then we hosted Dr. Susan Baum of Bridges Academy to talk about how you can ignite the struggling writer. You can also access all of our videos in one place if you want—if it's easier—at our new YouTube channel. Um, so if you just want to use tinyurl.com/realyoutube , that is an easy way to find all of our videos. And I—please just ask—if you guys don't mind, check your that you're muted um for the moment just so that we don't get too much background noise. All right, we have lots of things coming up. In fact, at the beginning of this uh before the session started, we were talking about the email we're going to send out tomorrow with this recording. We have so many events listed, but three main ones that you might want to keep in mind. Um, on March 29th, we will have uh an advocate and a PA doctoral student who just completed her dissertation on uh twice-exceptional parents, and they're going to be talking about when, how, and why to tap into public schools for assessment and support. Because this is a big issue, a lot of TUI families do not really understand how they can use the system to their advantage. Then we will host on April 7th our quarterly parent support group with Parents Helping Parents. This is a pretty open-ended conversation. We have this feature called "Ask a Question, Get an Answer" that everyone really loves, where we just brainstorm together, you know, around challenges people are facing. And then in May, on May 4th, we're going to be doing—I think what's going to be a very special session—with Marcy Dan, who is an educational therapist and also the social-emotional go-to person at Bridges Academy in LA, around slow processing speed and the two-week child. Because this is something that comes up a lot. We have a lot of other events that are going to be coming up. We have a whole series of events with Parents Place that that we'll have more details on in the coming days. Um, and you can RSVP for everything at www.reel2e.org . And then this is a little action item for everyone: if you're interested, we are supporting uh Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which is coming up in March. This is an effort that was started by Siena Castellon, who is a neurodivergent young lady who is really doing a lot of heavy lifting to get the word out about what it is like to be neurodivergent and how we can not just accept but also celebrate people for their strengths. And we have quite a few things—we're having the works for this—that we'll be talking about in the coming days. But um, one of the things that you can do is tell your school leaders about this event. The event is primarily aimed at getting schools involved, so if you go to the link that I have on this page—which I think Yael is also going to put into the chat—and let your school leaders know that this is something the school can participate in to really spread awareness of neurodiversity. And we are actually going to be partnering with local bookstores and libraries to help get the word out. And just stay tuned, and hopefully, you can be part of that celebration. So here are all the ways you can stay up to date with us: we have a Google Group—this is a private group where people can post questions and get answers from each other. Things like, "Who are you using for your neuropsych?" to "What summer camps are you thinking about?" It's a very nice, robust but private way to get information from other 2e parents. I've mentioned our website a few times. We are on Facebook and Twitter, and we do have our YouTube account. So now you know who REEL is. Thank you for coming; we really appreciate it. Um, and I just want to take a moment to introduce Abby before I hand it over to her. So I first met Abby myself through a fellow REEL parent that we knew about two years ago. And since that time, we actually joined each other in the same cohort at the Bridges Graduate School for Cognitive Development and Education and have worked together on so many different projects and supported each other in that program. And I'm so honored that we convinced her to come and work with us at real. You know, throughout the journey that we've been on, I'm just so impressed with her devotion and commitment to two e-learners and really tapping into their strengths and interests—always coming back to their strengths and interests. And I first saw this presentation last summer when she presented it for our graduate school cohort, and I knew I really wanted to bring it to our REEL community because I think we can all benefit from this very strength-based lens. So much of our time and energy as two e-parents of two e-children really goes towards the things that are not working. That's what everyone wants to draw us back to, and that's what weighs on our hearts heavily a lot of the times. Um, so you know, I like to think of this presentation as like—just like we fan the embers of, you know, those embers to create a new fire. I think about what is it that we're giving air to in our children's lives. What embers are we fanning? And I think this will show you that if we can give a little more air and oxygen to our children's strengths and interests and passions, it's it's really a worthwhile thing. So I hope you'll enjoy the presentation and leave with a greater sense of wonder at what all of our uniquely wired children can do. Abby, take it away. Abby Kirigin: All right, thank you, Callie. Thank you uh to both of you and Kellyanne for having me this evening. So we're all here today because we care about supporting twice-exceptional children in our lives, and I'm going to tell you a bit about my own experience on this journey and what I've learned about strengths-based strategies. Um, I am—somebody asked in the chat, so I will add here—um, I do use the phrase "twice-exceptional" many times, and for those of you who aren't familiar, um, typically what we're referring to is when your child has both—is both gifted or has other high potential or high ability—but then also has something like um a learning difference or another difference such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, anxiety, um, etc. And so often those things come together in one single individual in a very unique way. They don't express themselves separately, but together they sort of manifest in a whole unique profile. And so I'll be talking about all of those different differences as well as giftedness, but I may also say "twice-exceptional" as well. All of this kind of falls under the header of neurodiversity. And before I move on, this uh photo here is a photo of my twice-exceptional son taken a few years ago on early morning Halloween, fully costumed up and carrying with him some weaponry that he created out of some old vacuums and some other things in our garage that he found and created. So let me begin with a little bit about me. Um, at my core, I'm a designer. I love color and pattern, light, darkness, space, and form, and I absolutely love to organize things. Um, and so before I moved into education, I spent many years in the product and interaction design world in the technology sector and in startups. And I'm a proud independent thinker, and I have several personal experiences and connections to the twice-exceptional community. My younger sister has Williams syndrome. Um, my brother and I spent years in and out of gifted programs throughout our lives. Other family members have ADHD and several other diagnoses, so quite an eclectic bunch. And now I have three children of my own—three wonderful, very colorful, creative children—all of whom are gifted, two of whom are also dyslexic, and one who is dyslexic and also has ADHD. And professionally, I do quite a number of things. As Kelly mentioned, I'm a doctoral student at Bridges Graduate School. I'm also a partner with her and Yael at real, and I also work part-time as an administrator at Touchstone Learning, which is a dyslexic school—elementary school for kids here in the Bay Area—and it's where both of my two dyslexic children attended elementary. And I'm also a trustee at a local private school, Woodland School. So as a result of all of these experiences that I've had, I often have parents that come to me when they first learn that their child has a learning difference. Maybe they're dyslexic, or perhaps they have ADHD, or they've learned that their child is 2e—twice-exceptional. And so this talk has really grown out of all of my experiences of talking with those parents, working through those moments, and the research that I've done and the experiences that I've had with my own family. So before we go further, I'll give you a little overview of what we're going to cover tonight. First, we're going to talk a little bit about understanding and appreciating where you are now. And then I like to talk about three separate strands that you need to keep in mind while you're on this twice-exceptional journey with your child. Then we'll pause and do a brief activity. Then we'll talk about finding your child's strengths, three strength-based strategies for success, and then end with some parting thoughts and further reading and resources. So everyone in this room has a child or knows a child with a diagnosis, and maybe you've been there for a while, or maybe it's something new. But either way, you're often feeling like you're scrambling to fix something. You're trying to figure out what to do next, how you're going to solve all of these problems. But really, I am here to tell you: take a deep breath. It's great news, really. And I believe this for three—three reasons. The first is this—and I think that Jonathan Mooney said it best here in his book Normal Sucks —um, "People who are different are awesome." And um, really, what Jonathan Mooney is saying in this book—which I highly recommend—what he's saying in this book is that there really is no such thing as normal, that we all need to come to understand that we're all different and unique, and "normal" is only a construct. But also, I think it's important to realize—and especially if you're new to the diagnosis your child may have received—there are awesome traits associated with all of these things. Um, so I really encourage you to, after this talk, go online and do some research about this. But just to give you a taste: dyslexics often have enhanced visual-spatial reasoning. So I have this great story of a woman who is a very successful radiologist who's dyslexic, and she actually credits her dyslexia for being able to identify things on images that other people hadn't been able to pick up on. So it's not in spite of her dyslexia but in fact because of her dyslexia that enabled her to be as successful as she was. Uh, Dr. Ned Hallowell, who's a well-known expert on ADHD, calls the ADHD brain a "Ferrari brain." And I think both dyslexics and ADHD individuals are often extremely creative, very charismatic leaders. They often can make very fabulous, successful entrepreneurs. People on the autism spectrum are honest, they're logical thinkers whose passionate interests can really—and their attention to detail—um, can be incredible assets to everything that they—every way that they approach their lives. So a lot of this has to do with the unique brain wiring that we all have—that each of these individuals have. But I also think the reason this is so wonderful—diagnosis can be so wonderful—is attributable to the second and third reasons here. So now that you've got that diagnosis, you are empowered, and the past is illuminated. So if all of you think for a moment about your own life—where you are now, professionally, personally—and think about how you got there. Um, and then: how many of you—were you—do you feel that it was just a straight-line, simple path from your childhood to where you are now? And how many of you feel that it looked more like that image there on the right—lots of twists and turns, unexpected challenges, uh, and changes that really made you who you are today? For most of us, it looks like the line on the right. Because I think here's the thing: for anybody who thinks that success looks like this—oh, let me go back—they're really only down there. They're only really at the beginning of their journey. So now that you know that that's what your path may look like—that there's a path out there for you, and this may be what it is—you're ready to embark on that meaningful and directed partnership with your child and your school and your community. Which really brings me to my third reason: imagine that you'd like to train for a marathon, and you've got two choices of terrain that you want to train on. On the one hand, you can just run up and down the block outside of your house—back and forth, back and forth on the page, straight sidewalk. Or you could choose option B, where you've got a giant terrain full of twists and turns, giant hills and valleys, different rocks, and other uh, muddy areas. You know, which of those would be a better place for you to train for that marathon? It's clearly the terrain on the right, because training there is going to be awesome. I mean, you're going to have tons of road to travel. You're going to have a lot of time to get fit. You're going to get so much exercise. You're going to get so much more training on than if you just had to run up and down your block. Now, of course, it's going to be hard. Training there is going to require grit, determination, perseverance, resilience. But these are the traits that we want for our children and that we recognize will make them into successful adults. So it's really great to have as wiggly a line as possible, because it really means you're going to have a ton of opportunities to flex those muscles of grit and determination and resilience and perseverance. So I believe in this quite strongly. Um, how strongly, you might ask? Well, uh, my license plate is "Ad Astra Aspera," which means—uh, which is Latin and means "to the stars through difficulties." And that phrase is also tattooed on my feet. So I remember quite clearly, um, back in sixth grade when I first—when I first heard that term, "Ad Astra Aspera." I was in the back of the class in our Latin class discussing different common phrases in the Roman times. And um, by sixth grade, I already really felt that this just absolutely resonated with me. I felt that I didn't really belong with anyone, and I was really okay with that. And a lot of that stemmed from many experiences that I had up until then. As I mentioned, um, my younger sister has Williams syndrome, and for those of you who are not familiar with Williams syndrome, um, it was actually—it's often misdiagnosed as an autism spectrum disorder. And what's unique about it is that, uh, the individual—my sister—is very loving. She she's very effusive. She loves—she's very friendly. She hugs people. She's very happy to see people. But what she lacks is the ability to, um, interpret and understand people's reactions to that positivity. And so she can't tell when somebody is being a true friend or perhaps, um, mocking her in some way. And so that led to several experiences—again, by sixth grade—that had already made me realize that perhaps I didn't want to be like all of the other kids. Like the time I met—I came upon some girls trying to feed her broken glass because they told her that's what friends do. Um, or my own personal—or the times that we would ride the bus together, and I would sit and listen while the kids teased her, and she had no idea that that was going on. And then my own personal experiences: in fourth and fifth grade, I was moved from my public school to a different public school in the district that had a gifted program. And while the academics were incredible, and the camaraderie within the classroom and with the teachers was really wonderful and enriching experience, because of that experience, I really lost all the friends that I had at my previous school. And at the school that we were all moved into, um, you know, we endured a lot of teasing and ridicule. So by sixth grade, I really knew that I didn't want to fit in with everybody else, and I was really okay with that. And I knew that, um, that this—to me—was a motto for my own life: that I would achieve and move towards those stars through whatever challenges that I might encounter. So in 2017, I did have that tattooed on my feet so that I can remind myself all the time: one foot in front of the other, "Ad Astra Aspera." And so let's be honest: you're going to need that grit, because for our twice-exceptional children, the path probably won't just look something like this, but probably something more like these. And these are actually, um, I found these on the internet. They are from a doctoral thesis on four-dimensional knots in math, so I think that's very apropos for our 2e children. All right, so now I'd like to talk a little bit about what I consider the three strands—and the three things that you want to be keeping in mind as you move forward in your twice-exceptional journey with your child. So the first is what I call "interventions." So intervention is the services that can help your child. So I want to be really clear: we're not trying to cure anyone of anything, but um, there are situations where things like dyslexia tutoring or occupational therapy or perhaps ADHD medication or another medication—these are services and things that can be provided to your child. It can be very beneficial. This talk is really not about interventions, but I do just want to mention that whenever you're considering an intervention, you need to really be mindful of both that the person providing the services is someone that your child connects to really well and feels really comfortable with, enjoys working with, and then be very mindful about when you provide those services—you know, how they're integrated in the day. Um, just a quick story: when my son was first diagnosed with dyslexia, he was staying after school every day to get extra support from his teacher. And his teacher was very sweet, but he really hated those lessons. He wasn't making any progress. He was exhausted at the end of the day. Uh, he didn't like that he was the only child that had to be held back to do extra work. And so he would hide in the closet on the mornings he had to do that. So those were—that's an example of an unsuccessful intervention. Uh, once we were able to switch schools and went to a dyslexic school where everyone around him was in the same situation, and people were being pulled out during the day for one-on-one tutoring—not after school—it was really integrated into the full program, and he found a teacher that was really helping him make progress. It became a really successful situation. Um, so those are some things to think about with intervention. The next strand that I think is important to consider is your accommodation. So these are ways you're going to modify the environment around your child to help your child be more successful. So these might be things like audiobooks or dictation tools if your child's dyslexic, or fidgets or extended time. Perhaps it's lighting, sound, seating, heat, temperature—any of those kind of environmental considerations. Now, a note about accommodations that I think is important to mention is that it's all of our ultimate goal to have our—our children self-advocate for these things. And so that's where we want to get to. What we start out with is, as parents, we need to be those advocates for them on their behalf for these things. And we work with our teachers and um, other adults in their lives to understand what it is they need, what environmental changes are necessary for them. And we involve them in that process so that as our child grows, there's some scaffolding, and they begin to understand how to take ownership of those things. And then they ultimately are independent self-advocates for themselves. And then the third strand—the third strand, which is absolutely and equally, if not more important than the other two—is to talk and think about strengths. Now, strengths are where your child finds their light and gets their motivation and their passion and their confidence and their happiness. And these are all critical, critical elements, um, that we're going to spend the rest of the talk really focusing on from here on. All right, so right now, we're going to pause for a moment though. We're going to do a quick little activity. So if everyone could grab two pieces of paper and a pencil or pen. And this activity is actually modeled after an exercise in Dr. Susan Baum's book. Kelly mentioned Dr. Baum—she's a leading researcher and expert on twice-exceptional children. She's written several books on the topic, and this exercise is kind of modeled after a more uh, intensive one that she does with teachers. All right, so if everyone's got that pencil and paper, I'm going to walk us through a quick activity. All right, so for this exercise, I'm going to ask you—ask you all to pick one of these three descriptions that you feel most affinity towards—something that you feel describes you the most. Now, of course, there are many more ways of learning and being, but for this exercise, we're gonna keep it to three. Um, so the first is: do you feel that you're most at your core mostly a creative artist? Do you love art, music, acting, visual thinking, movement, performance—that sort of thing? Or do you consider yourself more of a bookworm—someone who loves reading, writing, journaling, note-taking—those sort of things? Okay. Or do you consider yourself mostly an analyst—someone who loves to look at data and analyze statistics and charts and look at numbers and do analyses? Okay, so just think for a moment of those three—which one you feel you're most like. All right, now I want you to just close your eyes for a moment and imagine your perfect day. You know, what if you could have the most perfect day—uh, what would it be? What would you do? Where would you be? Etc. Okay, don't write anything down yet—just think about that. All right, now if you said you were a creative artist, I'd like you to take your first piece of paper, and you need to use numbers and data to explain your day. So charts and numbers and data only. If you're a bookworm, you need to do—um, make me a song or be ready to perform a song. Perhaps get a little skit going to perform—do an artwork or some other piece like that. And if you're an analyst, I'd like you to write a short essay. Okay, I'm going to give everyone one minute. And—begin. Okay, all right—pencils down. Okay. All right, now set that one aside. Get your next piece of paper ready. And now I'd like you—if you're a creative artist, I'd like you to do an artwork—a drawing. Uh, think about some lyrics to a song or be ready to do a little skit to explain that perfect day. If you're a bookworm, please—please write a short essay explaining your perfect day. And if you're an analyst, use numbers, data, and charts to explain your day. And I'm going to give you all another minute. Begin. All right, time's up. All right, now you can place your two creations side by side. All right, now I want you to look at the two of them and think about the quality. Compare the quality of your two pieces. You know, which one did you have more detail? Did you, um, you know, feel—do you feel more proud of? Which one do you feel has better quality? And feel free to add anything—you know, observations that you're making comparing the two—uh, in the chat. You know, there we go. And then the next thing I want you to compare—of the two—is look at the quantity. How much work did you produce when you worked in your area of strength versus working in your area of weakness? Um, you know, was one much shorter and quicker? And did you feel like that minute—boy, that took that was a lot of time, and I had no nothing to do during that whole time? Whereas the one when you were working in your strength—did it just feel like it flew by? You had so much more to add? And finally, I think—think about how those two different minutes—how did you feel during those minutes? A lot of times, people will tell me, um, during the minute when they were asked to work in their area of weakness, that's when they needed to get up and go to the bathroom. That's when they went and got their glass of water. Um, you know, or they suddenly had a stomachache or the chills, or they just—you know, they that's when they didn't weren't feeling good—actually physically feeling different—being asked to work in something that you feel really uncomfortable doing versus that other minute when you know they were asked to be doing something they love and how good they might feel and how they felt like they were in flow and they don't even notice that mint—that minute go by. Um, yeah, that's great—like to say that, you know, when you're in your area of strength, it's a joyful response, and it comes easily. Um, and—and yes, exactly, Erica—like doing in the first way, the way you feel uncomfortable, you just feel completely unmotivated. It's all—yeah, it's a real visceral feeling. And I think, um, unfortunately, for many of our two-week children, um, they are being asked all day to work in that area of weakness. They're focusing over and over and over in those—living in that minute of uh, the frustration and the uncomfortableness of having to do something that they don't feel good about, that doesn't come easily to them. And so this is really why we need to focus on strengths. And so for the rest of the talk, that's where we're gonna—where we're gonna live. And I think, again, just because of those three strands—interventions, accommodations, and strengths—this is one which is so frequently ignored or kind of seen as sort of like the least important of the three. And I really think it's the reverse. I think that strengths are the most important element that you need to be thinking about, um, when you're thinking about how to support your child. So I've got three strategies I'd like to discuss with you today. The first is to always provide opportunities for your child—and for children—to know, show, and grow their strengths. So you want to really see the child for who they are, um, and—and so you really want to make it a priority to understand what makes them light up, you know, and really support it, encourage it, and nurture it. So we always think right away—I think often—about what are the after-school activities, right? So what classes can they be taking? What enrichment? And those are all great options. And I think, um, if those work for your children, that's absolutely a wonderful way to give them those strengths and, you know, nurture their interests and keep them feeling good about themselves and enjoying themselves. But there are many other ways to do this. You could think about entrepreneurship activities, which really might be independent ideas that the child has—like maybe they want to start a dog-walking business or a lemonade stand. Or my son used to bag up little baggies full of an assortment of Legos and take them to the park and try to get parents to buy them for their children. So they're all different ways you can support things like entrepreneurship interests. Or maybe it's creative expression options. And again, there are many classes like art classes or drama or other classes, um, but I've also seen examples where children just on their own have decided to come up with a skit or a play, and they work with the other—the parent might work with other parents at the school or in the community to get kids to take the roles. And this is an entirely independently motivated, uh, project—again, kind of supported by the parents who are helping behind the scenes to get these things organized. Uh, it might also be a deep dive into a science topic or a history topic. Again, you could help your child form this as sort of an independent study with them. So if there's something that they're interested in, encourage them, set time aside for them to work independently on it—either at the library or online or something like that. But it could also be a sport. Um, you know, a physical activity is also a wonderful, uh, you know, way that our children can show their strengths. I also want to mention a note about gaming. A lot of people talk about video gaming, and I think that within reason, even video gaming has its strengths. And I think one thing you can do with your child is talk to them about why they love the gaming, um, and what is interesting that in them about that. So you might find out that they've got an interest in programming and computer graphics, and you can help nurture that. Or you might find that what they love is the story—the storytelling elements—and you might be able to go deeper into that. Um, for instance, my son is very interested in the storytelling aspects of video games, and from there got very interested in Dungeons & Dragons. He's now doing a lot of LARPing—live-action role-playing. Uh, he's very interested in board game design, social design. So you know, there are lots of ways you can build upon their natural interest—even if it's in video games—to find things that they, um, want to go deeper and want to learn more about. And I feel really, uh, strongly that, you know, there needs to be time in their day every day to do something that they love. And I think that we all deserve this. And I think too often we forget it: all of us deserve to do something that we love and that brings us joy every day. And so we deserve this as adults, and our children deserve this as well. So how do we go about finding these things? Well, my first recommendation is to observe. And and you can actually do this—you can really be kind of a scientist at home. You can have a notebook and keep it around easily accessible, and watch what your children are gravitating to at home and in their free time and take notes. So one of the things you can do is provide a variety of materials. And in some circles, I've heard this called the "strewing strategy," and I think that's kind of an interesting way to put it. But the way it manifests in our house is we'll have an area with some clay and some art supplies out. I'll have another area that's got some cardboard and tape and some other tools in the garage for them—they could go by and get. And I leave different books on different topics out. So we've got, um, an area where there's an atlas and some maps. I've got some Usborne books out. Um, at some point, I had some logic puzzle games stacked up. We've got some anime math comic books out—and to kind of rotate them and leave them around the house and sort of just watch where your children are going, what's holding their interest, and what are they doing during their free time. And at school, um, you can ask your teacher to do the same kind of observation as well. So ask your teacher to observe: on the playground, what games are they playing? What are they gravitating towards? Uh, and in the classroom, if there are different interest centers, where are the things that they're—you know, what topics are they spending the most time on? And what are they choosing to do for their work? If there are choices in how they're showing their knowledge—like an art project or a skit or a play or an essay or poetry—you know, what excites your child the most? And um, what do they seem to really get excited and passionate about? What are they doing during those free moments at school? And the second is really to talk. So you know, of course, talk to your teachers, but you can also talk to counselors, talk to any support specialist working with your children, talk to their siblings and their friends. Try to get an idea of, you know, what they see as things that interest your child or excite your child. Um, and the other thing I want to mention that's critically important is to talk to your child. And um, I think you can do that in a—right, I mean, you can do that in a very, uh, open way. You can talk to them about what you've observed, what you've written down and seen, and seen what they think about the notes you're taking and the impressions you're gathering. Um, one of the things I did with my son—who again didn't really love after-school activities that that had like a teacher in a class kind of very formal setting—um, I still talked with him, setting some expectations that he should be spending some amount of time every week doing some sort of enrichment, whether it was with the class or on his own. Um, and once we set that expectation, I asked him to make a list of the different things that he's curious about—just anything that interests him or he's curious about that he's doing at school or that he just thought of off the top of his head. And his list came in all over the place. I mean, he said he was interested in clay, and he's interested in science and math, and he's also interested in why time travel isn't possible and can we make a teleporter. So you know, we made a full list, and then, um, I took that list, I did a little bit of research on my own, and I came up with some options for after-school classes he could possibly enroll in, some online groups that he could maybe just be become a part of, some online classes as well as a few ideas for some independent research that he could do on his own. And then I took that back to him and asked him to look through that and choose one thing that he could commit to for one month to try. And so that's how we've been able to find different things that excite and interest him. Um, and it's always all over the board, and they always change. So it's a great way to communicate and work and give your child buy-in to this process. Another question that I love to recommend to parents to ask their children—I'm sorry—to ask their teachers and to ask at school are: "What are the best three things about my child?" And um, you know, I come from a product design background, and in product design, we are often taking our products out to users and asking them to evaluate them and look at them and help us find how we can make them better. And what's so funny is in those situations, what we're taught is that we must ask, "What are the worst three things?" Because when we give our product to somebody to look at—and the product isn't human, it has no feelings, it has no complex emotions, no need for self-confidence or efficacy—um, these people feel that they want to make us feel good, so they only give you the platitudes about what's great about the product. But that actually gives you no real information about how to make this thing better. So uh, you need to draw out of them what are the worst three things. And yet in education, where we're dealing with real human beings who do have self-confidence, who have all these wonderful things about them, um, and yet those are the situations where we have to draw out what are the best three things—that people are so quick to focus on all of the problems that they forget about all of the wonderful things. And that's what we need to be reinforcing and talking about in our communities with our teachers and parents and our children. The last—the the third thing I'd like to talk about—there it is—is the um, that there are many tools available to help you to help kind of uh, scaffold this process of observation and talking with your children. There are some tools like the suite of tools at Bridges that we use that you need to work with a professional. So the professional gets trained in how to use the tool, and then a family can come and get an assessment with them. But there are also several available online—free or for a nominal fee. Um, Dr. Joe Renzulli, who's a well-known uh, gifted researcher at the University of Connecticut, has something called the "Interest-A-Lyzer," which I believe you can get free online. And Rio has actually put together this excellent strength-based assessment tool list. Um, you know, and so you can go and you can Google a lot of these and find them available for free or, um, again, others you can find out where you can work with a professional. So there are lots of ways to help us out, you know, what it is that your child is interested in and curious about and excited about and what they feel good about and what they feel really confident in—what areas of strengths that they have. My next strategy is to remember to not gate the strength. So what do I mean by this? I think that once you've figured out what your child really enjoys doing, there's a strong temptation to want to use it kind of as a carrot or a stick, right? So a bit as a motivator—like, "Oh, if they have bad behavior, then they can't do this thing they love," or, "They, you know, didn't get their work done, so they can't do that enjoy a thing that brings them in great enjoyment." But I think that we need to change how we think about this. We we need to think about that time where your child uh, is doing that thing that they love—that brings them that joy—as a sacred time in their day that they deserve to have simply because they are an individual who deserves to have things they love to do every day, regardless of how much homework they completed, how much other, you know, how they behaved, etc. This is a sacred time that should not be, um, that they should not feel that's that's could possibly be taken away from them. Um, and on a similar note, we want to really be conscious at school and after school when we're fitting in those important interventions. We need to be very mindful about when we fit them in, because you know, all too often, a kid is asked to come be pulled out of something that they actually really love—that they were looking forward to—as that's their time when they need to complete their extra homework or get their tutoring or other sessions. So you know, all too often, they have to skip recess—even though recess is the time that they are able to, you know, get out all their excitement and emotions and help self-regulate. Those are the times they're being asked to complete homework that they've been finished the night before. Or they're being pulled out of their elective time when they were looking forward to doing their drama class or their engineering session, and that's when they're being asked to complete dyslexia tutoring. So you know, that is only going to serve to make them resentful of the interventions we're trying to provide and and again take away the opportunities that they have to fill their buckets—to really get all the self-confidence, um, and and happiness that they can get from doing the things that they love. Um, and those are so critical. Um, you know, a happy and engaged student is really one who's going to take on challenge. They're going to be able to take on things that they are weaker at—that are their challenges—if they know that they're good at something and they feel confident about their own abilities and their areas of strength. Another thing I just think is worth mentioning here is similarly in a classroom, uh, we'll often have a child—we find their strength as an academic strength. So perhaps they're really excellent at math, um, and yet they're in a classroom where they're not being challenged by the math, and they're just sitting there bored. And you can—I think you can appreciate how frustrating it is when they're finally in a subject in an area that they love and they're really good at, and they're not even really able to do anything with it, but instead are sitting there, um, you know, experiencing things they've already learned and understand—and how frustrating that can be. And those are when the worst behaviors come out because of those frustrations. So you know, I think if those academic strengths are what your child is showing, you need to make sure and advocate for acceleration, proper challenges, compacting out of sessions that aren't appropriate for them, uh, and making sure there's enrichment so that they can really thrive again and shine in those areas of strength. The third strategy is to be always mindful of the separation between content and medium. So when you ask an author what their job is, they'll tell you it's to craft great stories. So it's not to write a series of words onto a big stack of paper. The reason that an author writes is to convey a story through words, and words can be consumed in a variety of ways. So in addition to books, words can be consumed with your ears, and they can be read through audiobooks. And I think that another great example of this in a classroom—I'll give you the example of let's say a teacher is, um, wants to teach a Civil War unit. So the the content—the content of that unit—is the Civil War, right? So there are a variety of ways that they can convey that information about the Civil War to their students. The students can read textbooks. They can look at primary sources. But they can also listen to audiobooks of those things. They can watch documentaries. They can look at art from the time or art reflecting on the time. There are many different ways that they can get that information. Similarly, when it comes time to assess students on whether they've learned about the Civil War, there are a variety of ways that a child can show what they know about that topic. So they can choose to write an essay, but they could also choose to do a dramatic, you know, play that acts out a scene from the war. Or perhaps, uh, they make a 3D reconstruction or a model of a particularly critical battle at the time. Or they do an art piece, or they write poetry, or they make a song about what a soldier might be feeling in a moment. Um, and I want to be clear that I'm not saying that your child never needs to work in their area of weakness—they never need to write an essay if they don't like to write an essay. No, that's not what I'm saying. Uh, there are times when the content of the lesson is essay writing, or perhaps it's reading comprehension, and in those units—in that content—that is what is being taught, and those are what your child will need to work on. It's more that you need to be—and the teacher and you need to be—very mindful of the separation of the two. They are not always one and the same. So this is my son after four years of intense dyslexia tutoring at, uh, dyslexia school. You know, his reading went in first grade from non-existent whatsoever to coming out in fifth grade reading at grade level. Uh, his speed is still below grade level, um, but he's made significant improvements. You 'll see his writing sample up there—that's actually from fifth grade. So you'll see he still struggles with dysgraphia and spelling. But after all of this intense intervention work for his elementary life, we're now moving on to a new phase is we're really looking more at accommodations. Um, we do continue to work on his fluency—which is reading speed—and he does read actual books, and that's how we increase his fluency. So he just read Ender's Game , and he'll be reading the Divergent series now. So we are still doing interventions in terms of working on these things, but that's not as much of the focus. Um, we're really looking more now at advocacy and self-advocacy for him. So uh, understanding when he needs to ask for audiobooks, when he needs to use dictation tools, when he should type rather than write, etc. And what's amazing about my son here is that throughout all of these struggles with dyslexia, he has a verbal comprehension IQ score of 146. And his comprehension has always been extremely high, and in fact, it tests now off the charts of basically adult comprehension levels, um, for books and reading. And you can see on the screen there—his audiobook collection. So um, in first grade, when he started that tutoring, we also gave him a phone and headphones and said, "Listen to anything—any audiobook that interests you on any topic or any story." And so these were actually taken a little over a year ago. He had 375 books in his collection. He has over 450 books now. He listens at 3x speed. Um, the screenshot there is from August of 2020, where he had listened to 365 hours at 3x speed in a single month. So this is a child who consumes an enormous amount of literature and reading, um, and while still being severely dyslexic and dysgraphic. Now, and thanks to all of those experiences, he's got an incredible vocabulary. Uh, when he was seven, he—I was walking through the living room wiggling his tooth, saying, "Mom, I'm having trouble getting purchase on this loose tooth." And this is a poem that he wrote. And she sprayed—he loves wordplay and puns. And I think poetry—again, maybe unexpectedly for dyslexics—um, but it's actually quite common that poetry is one of his favorite units in school—in the wordplay and thinking about, um, unexpected—unexpected uses of words. Um, and in first grade, he actually did win a county-wide poetry contest for the poem: Never eat a pineapple,For if you do,Your lungs will explode,And they will never reform. So—and I really believe strongly that if we hadn't given him those headphones back in first grade, he would have really missed out on all of this richness that he had in his life. And he would have continued to hate books as much as he did back then. So please, find and support your child's strengths. And remember to always separate the content from the medium and don't gate their strength. So this past summer, as Callie and I—uh, Kelly mentioned earlier—she and I completed training for doing suite of tools assessments on on students, which is our strength-based assessment tool at Bridges Graduate School. So I used my son as my case study. And as part of the process, you all sit in a collaborative meeting, and you discuss all of their strengths and interests, and you brainstorm, you know, what are some ideas of things that they might like to do? What are some great activities they could do? Or what are some things they could look at online? Um, and one of the uh, professors in the room came up with this brilliant idea. So you know, my son has a big imagination. He is very interested in entrepreneurship and making his own money. He's got an intense passion for dogs and animals in general. And at the time, he's very interested in cooking—very interest—excited about cooking. So what if, you know, he combined all of those and started a dog treat business? So I thought that was very cool, but I was a little hesitant to bring it up to him because I thought, "He just hates all things I suggest." You know, he doesn't like to do a lot of activities. Um, so I kind of apprehensively brought it up to him, and to my surprise, he absolutely loved it. He ran with it. He went online. He found two different recipes. He combined them into his own unique recipe. He wrote down all of the quantities and the fractions. He looked at prices for all of the different ingredients and made a budget. I took him to Target. We went and purchased all the materials. He made some samples. He tried them out with our dog and had me take photos. And he typed up this recipe packaging and talked about pricing based on his costs. And then we sent this out to a bunch of our friends and family—the "Dogenuts," as he called them. And um, you know, the the order started rolling in. So he would get text messages on his phone when he had an order. And so for several weeks in the summer, he was baking and cooking and packaging and delivering uh, these dog treats to people. And so after a few weeks of it, he he didn't want to do it anymore. He shut down the company. He's like, "Mom, that was a lot of work." And so uh, you know, I was telling my professor, Dr. Baum, about this uh, later on, and she said, "Well, you know, he learned a great lesson. He learned how hard it is to start your own business and how you need to be successful so you can hire people to do all the hard work." And I think this is a great lesson. I think uh, just in general, that you know, our children will have lots of varied interests, and they may not stick with one thing consistently for a long time, um, but there's always something to learn and to get out of what they experience. And and so this was a wonderful experience, even if it didn't turn into a long-term successful business. He learned so many, many things. Um, you know, as your child perhaps gets towards high school, you might want to see them having a consistent interest or strength that they can persist with for a year or two perhaps before moving on. But but even then, I think it's just really important to think about, you know, what is bringing them joy? What is interesting them? And how can you help fulfill that with them in their lives? So now we sort of move on to some other interests to see what else he might want to do—what excites him. And I like to again think about it like a marathon. And together, we can really reach the stars. So I'm really excited to announce that we are going to be doing an all-day strengths-based workshop. There we're going to have four participants who will each have a chance to really dive deep into strengths and interests of their child. And we'll as a group kind of discuss each child and look at all of these things and come up together with some ideas and strategies and next steps for them in their areas of strength and interest. So we're going to have applications for this program. This is the first time we're doing it. We'll have four slots available. The applications are at the URL and will be open until February 19th. So I'm excited to hopefully see some of you there. And hopefully, we'll be doing more of these uh, as we as we move along. So I want to leave you with some further reading and research. We've got—I've got a bunch of really great books here. Uh, these are all books I think that helped me learn more about how to support my child, um, and all the different kinds of differences there are out there. So these are some great resources. There's also some great websites on a variety of topics and support groups. So obviously, REEL—we've got a wonderful local Palo Alto Bay Area support group. There are also, you know, national and international support groups for twice-exceptionality. There's Bright & Quirky. There are several different Facebook groups—I put some here that that I'm a part of that I found really helpful. So a bunch of things that you can go now and take this to the next level on your own. So I just wanted to leave this image here with you. This is by Dr. Shader—her idea that I think is so core to what we're discussing here—that we want to have a partnership, an equal partnership, between the parents, the teachers, and the students—all working together, not at odds, and all looking up towards that same star. It's that same possibility. So just remember: to the stars through difficulties. Thank you. Callie Turk: Thank you so much, Abby. And I just want to open it up to anyone who's here—if you have a question, you can put it in the chat, or if you want, you can—we can actually take the the slides down for a minute, and if you want to unmute and ask your question, you can raise your hand, and we can call on you. Um, we'd love to open it up for any questions. We do have some questions that came in ahead of time that we can we can draw on to get us started. And I thought one of the ones that was interesting—and you kind of touched on—was about high school students and like, how do you get teens to explore things like when they just don't want to cooperate? Um, and I was listening as you were talking and talking about how you went through everything with Finn, and something that came to mind for me was like, you know, putting more of it in their hands. You know, like saying, "Maybe put together a proposal, and I'd be happy to fund you for a hundred dollars," let's say—whatever it is for you. I I don't know what that was. Something I think—like ways that you can put it more in your teens' hands and know that you support them. I thought the "strewing" idea would work really well with teens because they don't want you to hand them something and like say, "Check this out," but if you put just stuff around the house, you know, they might pick things up. So I was kind of thinking about that question about teens as you were talking. I don't know, Abby, if you would would add anything. Abby Kirigin: That's a hard one. Um, I do think I've overall found that my kids appreciate more explanation than I ever think is necessary. So I think—and it probably only increases as they get older, right?—so explaining why you're asking them to do these things. You know, why do you want them to take on some extra interest or explore these things outside of what's strictly required? Um, you know, why do you think this will help them in their lives or as they move forward? Or why is it important to do something that you love every day? And I think that often, I found that, you know, I give them maybe even more information than I might think that is necessary, but they seem to really appreciate that. I think it's similar to the buy-in—saying, you know, you come up with some choices, and then I'll maybe, you know, do a little work on my own, and then we'll come to something together. But really respecting their uh, autonomy and their interests and trying to build that into what you're doing is helpful. Callie Turk: And then across the board, I think this kind of came up from a few questions, but I think it's also something that that we we've heard about in our coursework. And I'm not remembering the answer, so I'm hoping you do—which is really about like, you can go too far in trying to leverage a kid's interests. And sometimes, like, these kids are really bright—like, they can sniff out if you are trying to use one of their interests for something you want them to do. You know, like, I remember hearing a story about a kid who people knew he liked photography, so they were like, "Why don't you just do a photography project instead of the essay?" And then he didn't want to do the photography anymore. And I'm I'm curious, how do you kind of ride that—ride that line? Like, really honoring their interests and strengths and passions but making it clear you're not like manipulating the situation? Abby Kirigin: I guess I think, you know, I think it comes back to that same thing of being very clear what you're trying to do. Saying, you know, "These are the reason I'm asking you to do it this way is because this seems to be something that would interest you," or if that doesn't—why or why not? And I think in that specific example with the child who uh, actually—you know, they call it "weaponizing the gift," right? Where they're, you know, everything—they mentioned once they like photography, and now every single assignment they have to do photography for it. Um, and what I think ended up happening though with that student was they found what they felt was a very meaningful project that they wanted to work on that did involve photography. And then they really did get back into it and produced this wonderful uh, work. I think it was documenting something in their city—you know, something going on the city. And again, I think what possibly clicked for that student—no pun intended—was that the student, um, you know, saw saw an authentic use of their photography interest—that it wasn't being just applied willy-nilly to like everything uh, which felt kind of false to them, but felt like, "Oh, this is something that actually would benefit from a photographic perspective," and so that was something they were willing to do. Yael Valek: I was going to say that resonates with me because we have passion projects at our school, and it seems to take something that the child loves and then they're forced to do it for school, and then they don't love it anymore. Callie Turk: So yeah, our experience with that was like, you get to choose your passion project, but not really, because maybe the teacher is going to try to shape the idea to fit a goal around like learning how to do research and how to interview people. And then all of a sudden, it's not really a passion project anymore—it's really an exercising and learning how to do a research project, which is not like an unuseful thing to do, but it's not a passion project. Um, it's not like that "genius hour" where you really can just explore and and do what you want. Yeah. Um, yeah. Abby Kirigin: And I did see—I don't remember exactly the question—I saw in some of the pre-questions, but it was along the lines of, you know, what if there's nothing your child looks forward to during school? And you know, that that's very sad situation, and I hope that you're able to work on trying to find something at the school, but that also can be provided outside the school as well. I mean, there are the times that you can do both—structured activities after school, but also like we've discussed, just come up with those open-ended activities that your child may want to work on. And so maybe what they look forward to is unfortunately not during the school day but is something that they're going to do after school. Callie Turk: Yeah, I mean, we'd love to get schools to a place where it can it can have something a child can look forward to every day—at least a little bit of time. But um, but while we're in the process of advocating for system-wide change, we have to do some of these workarounds. And I think, you know, another thing I know that y'all you've really touched on a lot is—come to a Montessori school. Y es ! Good public schools to do Montessori school. Um, is not taking away the thing they might really like about school to work on one of those interventions. You know, that's that's such a trap that schools will fall into because, "Oh, the kids already mastered that," or "That's just optional," or that, you know—but it may be the thing that keeps the kid coming to school. And so what they can't see is if they're doing that a lot—you know, let's say with a middle schooler—by the time that kid gets to high school, they may not—they may just really start to tune out. Maybe they start wanting to go to school altogether. And um, yeah, it has long-term consequences. Yael Valek: Um, my um, eight-year-old—we haven't figured out all of his things yet, so I definitely want to try some of these tools. But he's so resistant to trying new things. Have you found—have you had resistance from your kids? And I guess I can talk to him more about why I want him to try new things. Abby Kirigin: Um, yeah, I think that works, but I also—we try to commit for a like a very finite—like, whatever the minimum I have to sign up for if it's a thing to sign up for, right? We'll just try the minimum. Um, or even say, like, "Just go one time and see if you're gonna like this or not," you know. Um, so I think that going slowly, um, or then we'll often talk because we'll say, "Well, remember last time you felt like you didn't want to do this, then you did it, and you actually really enjoyed it." So you know, remembering those past times where you had a positive experience even after reluctance—and again, you know, trying to help your child remember those times—is helpful. Callie Turk: I'm gonna go look at some of the other questions, but I'm curious—anyone who's here who doesn't have their camera on now—we all know how teachers feel: no cameras on, can't see you. Um, I mean, if anything struck you—maybe you don't have a question so much as something just struck you from something you think you might like to try or what success you've had with your child or something—bring their strengths. Yael Valek: And the other funny thing that you're reminding me of too is, um, I think it was Steven Spielberg that when he was a child, he would spend hours writing names of aliens in a notebook. And everybody was like, "What? Why are you doing this?" And so just how you don't know where these passions that they have today will take them in the future. I see someone unmuted—yay! Hi. Question: Um, I have a question um, and is more high-level because um, I think I do get how strength-based strategy is definitely the way to go. Um, in general, I think a struggle I often have is how do you balance that there are a lot of weaknesses that we also try to help them to at least get to not even average but like survivable stage? Um, so the balance of time being spent on um, supporting the strength and keep developing there, whereas there might be some very real weaknesses that would pull someone back, right? Like if there's no patience, if there's no perseverance to do certain things, then you know, um, even though you might be really passionate about it, it could still be trouble down the road. Abby Kirigin: Yeah, you definitely need to, you know, be be doing both. And you know, it's a juggling struggling thing. But I think some of the things I found are again, you know, you want as Callie reiterated—you want to make sure that they're not conflicting with one another. So that there may be some time in the day to do those extra services—like the tutoring or helping with executive functioning, like having an executive functioning coach—but to not have that come at the sacrifice of the sacred strength time, I'll call it. And um, you know, additionally, again, you you're in school—you don't want to have it that your child never has to do, you know, if they don't like writing essays, that they never have to write essays. Of course, they still need to learn the process of writing essays. But they need to be given some opportunities to not write essays and to do other things. So you know, again, depending on what the content and the purpose of the lesson is. And so I think it's just about balance. And of course, you know, this balance is not easy in any any—we're talking about it—but that's the kind of tightrope we have to walk. I think we we really have to make time for both—for really all three elements. Thank you. Callie Turk: Yeah, Iman was saying, you know, um, she's had the mistake of using carrot and stick regarding the strength. We've all been there. Uh, you know, and working on—she's working on switching, but the fear jumps in as a parent when it comes to lack of motivation. For sure, for sure. Um, you know, and I think that's one of those things that we all can relate to is when we're parenting from a place of fear and and not always from that other—that other place, because that's a natural natural parenting reaction. Yael Valek: Um, and of course, right when you get the diagnosis, you jump into as many supports—right, interventions—as possible. And for at least for a while for us, we completely forgot about strengths, which wore, you know, where's the kid out? Callie Turk: So and I think—I think and maybe Abby you'll you'll know more about this me or you'll maybe maybe your brain will be working better than mine on this one—but when I think about what we learned from Dr. Baum too about kind of different ways to like engage with kids' different strengths—like there are different they're like different approaches you can take and different purposes. So there could just be like times where you're just doing exploration—like, and you're like, "I have no other goal. I'm just gonna like expose my kids to things and see what they like." And then there are times when you might say, "I want the child to be able to master this content, and I don't want their weakness to get in the way, so I'm going to find a way to like really bring their strengths in." So and and really be thinking about, you know, how I can manage and get the accommodations right so that the child can really focus on the strength. And then there are times when you're actually trying to bridge—when you're trying to really think about the child's weak areas and their strengths and how you're going to use the strengths to actually address a weakness. And it strikes me that one of the things that, you know, we learned about that is really many gifted kids—I'm not going to say all; there's no one-size-fits-all—many gifted kids really like real-world projects. And so that's a really good bridge to bring in working on some of the weaker areas—if they're especially if they're like executive function-related. Um, you know, or focus-related—because if you really bring something in that's real-world, and they're having to do something like actually solve a problem, create a proposal, do a presentation, you know, advocate for something—that really gives them a chance to really practice a lot of—they might even have to work in a group, which can involve some of the social skills. There's just—there's all that kind of um, aspect too. Is that is that sort of how you remember? Abby Kirigin: I think that's all accurate. I I um, I didn't focus too much on how you use the strength to address the weakness because I i do get worried that it's that's a little bit advanced in the sense that it is it is concerning. I don't want to see people using it like like we've discussed—kind of like to weaponize it—like, you have to you're kind of manipulating the strength in order to secretly sneak in the weaknesses. Um, and so I i try not to to combine the two. But I i think, you know, one of the examples that i kind of glossed over that i think is this beautiful example at my child's school—one of the other girls. So it's a dyslexic uh, youngster, and she absolutely hates writing and really doesn't like school very much at all, but she loves acting. And so she did have this idea that she wanted to put on a play. So just all on her own, um, she's this girl who never wrote anything—like, stayed up all night writing a script. Um, and she was she's and there was like photos that her mom took of her serendipitously like on her computer, typing, typing, typing—wrote this huge script. And then she enlisted all the younger kids in the elementary school to take parts. She gave them all roles, and you know, had them practice their script. And then she invited them over on the weekend, and she had spray-painted her front grass—you know, the blocking, you know, layouts—and had all the kids acting this out, and everyone had a script. She was working through the whole thing. So it was it was an incredible example of that where, you know, she's very passionate about acting and performing, and she was able to produce this thick script that she wrote—this child who never writes anything—um, because this was something that she really was excited about. Um, and so yeah, I think there are times when, you know, and again, executive function—you know, she organized the kids, she had them come over, she kept everyone on task even though this was just a play date for a bunch of six-year-olds, but she really kept them focused on this acting role. So you know, again, I think that you you can—ways you can authentically incorporate some of the things they may struggle with by, you know, using their their interests and what is exciting them to, you know, finding authentic ways to incorporate them. But again, I think the authenticity is key so that, like you said, they're wise when you're just trying to sneak it in, and I don't think that works. Jessica: Abby, I'd love to add a little bit from a Montessori perspective. This has been incredible and makes me feel so validated in my work with children. Um, but I wanted to share how critical observation is in Montessori and how much I advocate for parents to observe, observe, observe their children all the time. And you know, just taking it all in and not just being reactive, but just taking time to notice. And so that's something that I'm doing in the classroom all the time is observing, um, the children and what they're drawn to and what ways is it best to approach a child for a lesson. And I would say that there are many children who do best when—especially in elementary in general, no matter where they are—um, they do better when they don't feel like you're out to say, "Oh, you need to practice math," and that's not even if they love math. I've had a child say to me, "I don't—I don't love math anymore," and but you know, or, "I've already had that math lesson." They love that too. And so I need to say, "Oh, this is some—this is something different. This is actually really cool." And it has to authentically be cool, though. It can't turn out to not be cool, or they've not engaged, they've not learned anything. And another way that, you know, for children who really resist, you know, the adult sort of like in invitation to growth, um, sometimes it's best to, um, in the adolescent world of Montessori, there's parallel learning, and there's a lot of the adult working alongside the child. That's something that I've been pulling into my elementary work where I might say, "You know what? I have this lesson I really want to give, but I don't remember exactly how to do it, so I'm going to get my album out and look through my materials. Can you help me just like sort this out?" And then they pull in because they're like, "Oh, I need to help you with this." And so these are ways that I feel like, you know, in my home too, that sometimes, you know, the purposeful work is so key with the elementary-age child in particular that, um, that will keep them engaged if they, you know—I was sort of unschooling during the period of doing online learning—my own class with my children—and you know, I laugh about it because they did most of their work on their own. And there was—there would be times that, you know, we would come up with some reason why we needed to figure out some sort of math idea, and then at the end, I'd like to use my daughter and say, "Look, we just did math today, so check it off the list," you know.And I think that after the fact, we can laugh about it and acknowledge that that was actually really useful. Um, anyway, I don't want to go on to— Abby Kirigin: No, that's great. I love all those all those stories. That's really wonderful. And I was smiling because I was thinking also about, um, my kids. One of my daughters kind of struggles with anxiety, and so especially test-taking. And the way the teacher presents the test now is to say, "I just want to understand if I did a good job teaching. You know, I really want to evaluate my teaching, so I'm going to give you this thing so that you can tell me how how poorly or how well I explain the material," right? So it's still a test, but it really flips her um, mental model about like what she's doing right now—she's helping the teacher see, you know, how well she taught the lesson. So anyway, those are great excellent examples. Thank you, Jessica. And I do love Montessori. My oldest son did Montessori preschool, and I—yeah, just it's a wonderful, wonderful model. Callie Turk: Abby, I just put in the chat someone who had asked ahead of time about schools that are most supportive of these things, so I put the the list that we've been keeping at REEL in the chat in case that's helpful for for anyone. But I think we know some of these other models of education can work really well for for two-week kids. Abby Kirigin: I think that, you know, and I think this—I saw this this question as well a lot, um, which is why I included that the pyramid in the last slide there—I think that if a teacher can understand and appreciate where the parent—where the parents coming from, but ultimately where the child is coming from—so they can understand TUI, what it means, why a child might be having a certain behavior—you know, really trying to take the time to get to the bottom of these things and work as a team—any model can work if you've got three people and a group of people who are all working together towards that common goal. Callie Turk: And I think that's the key part of that visual too is that it's not the triangle—it's not a flat, static shape. It's the goal. It's the understanding what you're aiming for. It's the having a shared vision for not not, "Are they mastering this certain standard?" or "Did they write a two-page essay?" but like, who who is this person? What are we aiming for for this person? How can they live a full, fulfilling, meaningful, productive life? Like, and and getting, you know, some kind of common vision around the child as a complete person—not little standards, not they, you know, looked someone in the eye three times today—they, you know, or whatever. Other comments or questions or just stories you want to share? I think we've covered a lot of the questions that were submitted. We might not have addressed them, you know, directly, but the themes that are there. Yeah, you can share the recording with anyone. Question: Yeah, yeah. I have a question—um, you know, perfectionism seems to be an issue with a lot of our kids, and can you speak about it, especially in the area of a strength? Because if there was anything that even challenged it, it becomes this fall apart so quickly. And I was wondering, can you talk about that a little bit? Abby Kirigin: Yes, I'm looking here because I'm looking at my notes because I think I remember that question, and I was—oh, okay. The little note that I wrote there. I mean, I do think, you know, perfectionism—when it becomes negative—can can be a very, you know, damaging thing. So you know, I don't want to sound trite here, but what I want to say is that it's important to help your child appreciate why hard things are actually valuable. So even, you know, why um, choosing to do something that they may not do perfectly is actually more valuable than them sticking with something that they know that they can complete perfectly. So um, again, um, to bring it back to some of the first things that we were discussing in this Q&A section—that to explain to your child while it's why the value of failure, the value of mistakes, and all of the wonderful things that you get from experiencing those challenges and the difficulties, um, and why that's actually much preferable to everything being easy and perfect. You know, that you know, and again, I don't want to um, minimize the challenges of perfectionism and when it becomes negative that way, but those are some of the things that I would try to do with my children where they feel really adverse to those kind of mistakes that they might see. Yael Valek: I did tell you—reminding me—my child, you know, would you like to go back to kindergarten math? He's in seventh grade—said, "You'll never make a mistake. You'll get everything right." And he said, "No, that would be boring," right? And so just learning that mistakes are part of learning and stretching your brain—it did help him. But I will say, some schools do a better structure of assessments—like you were saying—to make kids feel less nervous about them—that you know, you can retake it, you can fix your mistakes, um, the teacher can help you during it. So we've had some success with that as well. Abby Kirigin: My high schooler goes to a school where they don't use grades, and um, he was talking to a friend of his who's at a different school where they do use grades, and he was saying that they were just talking about how, you know, at the school that uses grades, they're all kind of incentivized to take the easy math because they need to get A's—they want to have high GPAs and all this. And my son was kind of like, "Why would you take that easy math? That's so boring." And I was like, "See, this is why it's so wonderful you don't have grades—because you take whatever classes you want that excite interest you and don't be afraid, you know, that you might not come out with a perfect score. That's really not the purpose of high school at all." But you know, so many kids missed the point of that. It was so—it was really neat to have the two of them were having that discussion authentically on their own. Heather: One thing that I have a client that I love because they have a son that really gets caught up in this perfectionist cycle, and they have the "mess-up wall," and they like as a family put everything that like just went horribly awry up on the wall. And they they celebrate it, and they talk about what they learn from it, and they've just made a culture of like, "We celebrate our mistakes in the family." And they have definitely noticed that perfectionism slowly starting to ease off for him a little bit. And I thought that was sort of like a wonderful idea. I definitely used it with my own children just because we, I think in this area, we're really about like, "Hit the standard, hit the standard, hit the standard," um, whereas it just gives a little bit more room for like, "The stakes are awesome. That's how we learn." And they just have this whole wall—like, one of their sons came home and like, "I totally failed this math test, and this is what I learned," and they just—they take the time to celebrate those mistakes. So I thought that was a pretty awesome way to sort of deal with that as a family. Abby Kirigin: That is really cool. And that reminds me—um, we often do family goals in the summer, but but what's important—and I think it's similar to this—is that we all have them. So you know, adults as well. So it's like, you know, what does my son—you know, he's going to try to read this many books or or do this independent thing—he's you know, learning about—but I also have a goal. So like last summer was to to, you know, start writing a book. And my husband had his own goals. And so we're all keeping track—we all had a sheet up on the kitchen wall where all of us had our goals, and all of us were completing them. And I think it's like you're saying—you model what you want your children to to do and become, and you show them that you're always um, I think I was just saying that we, you know, we're always as adults modeling what we want to see in our children. So we're showing how we're always learning and always growing and always have our own goals and interests that we're working towards. Um, and you know, it's not just for them—it's for us as well. We make mistakes, we learn things, you know, just like Heather said. It's a great way to show that your children really that these things are true because you're modeling them for them as well. Callie Turk: Well, and I think—I think to like even without having a wall—like even just being able to talk like at dinner or in the car about your day and what went well and what didn't well and maybe where you goofed and made a mistake and how you're planning to do it differently the next time—I think that's super super valuable also to show your kids that you're human and you have bumps and you you you keep going. But I do think there's a lot of different—there's a lot of different angles on perfectionism, and I'm I'm sort of struck just by this conversation and how many times it came up in the questions that in our Google group might be worth—we could find a few resources out there from some experts on perfectionism. Because there are different—there is perfection—people have perfectionism for different reasons. Some perfectionism can be a little healthy; toxic perfectionism is not. Um, there's there's definitely different points of view on it, and I think I'd like to be more educated on that. And um, so maybe we can look for some some good videos and resources out there. I think Matt Zakresky does a presentation on perfectionism, and he might be doing it at the William & Mary 2e conference on the 25th and 26th of February. So well, we're almost to the end. Any any last-minute comments or questions before we wrap it up? I just really want to thank Abby for taking the time to share this and giving us this platform. I know that for talking about strengths, I know I'm walking away just reminding myself that I need to learn as much about my kids as I can. I need to connect with them and let them help kind of lead on some of these strength-based areas and what they want to pursue. Um, I was reminded that strengths can sometimes be about the process and not just the topic—like, so often I think I get caught up in like, "Oh, she likes computer science—let's, you know—" but sometimes it's their process that actually is really interesting. So I definitely took quite a few things away from from tonight, and I hope everybody else did too. Thank you so much, Abby. Thank you. Thank you, guys, all for coming. Inspiring. Wonderful. Thank you.

Didn't make it to the live event? Do you have students with learning differences who struggle to show what you know to be immense strengths, leading to high anxiety? Do you have talented or precocious students with unexpected behavior challenges who don't seem to respond well to traditional behavior techniques? Do you wonder how to rethink your approach to supporting them while also meeting the needs of all the students in your classroom? You might have encountered twice-exceptional (2e) learners! These students experience both high ability and learning challenges, which can lead to anxiety and behavior issues. Join this session for an inside look into these children’s experiences and specific strategies to help these kids—and your classroom—thrive. Hosted by Santa Clara County SELPAs, Palo Alto Educator Association, and REEL. When: Monday, January 24, 2022; 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. PT See the transcript here: Leo Mapagu: Okay, again, uh, just a quick introduction. Welcome everyone, uh, to our, uh, today's session on, uh, supporting your bright but struggling students. I am Leo Mapagu. I am the executive director for Santa Clara County SELPA, and I am excited to be here to partner with REEL, a non-profit organization working with, uh, our educators and parents to, where to raise awareness about twice exceptionality. Um, I think back in March, uh, 2020, Brielle, uh, reached out to me. It's, uh, it's almost a year, and, uh, finally we come to a product of that, um, of that new partnership. Um, and with our shared interest in collaboration to address the needs of our educators and our students with disabilities, here we are on our project one at least with, uh, with SELPA. And I, I do want to state that I want to welcome everyone, but I want to make sure that we are here to recognize the importance of 2e. Um, I was asked like, "Why do you think it's important to hear, you know, this message, this information?" Um, the Council of Exceptional Children recently had a critical conversations webinar about, uh, minoritized to e-learners, and, uh, 2e has got, has gotten momentum on, on, on, on how we can try to, uh, marry, uh, 2e and students with disabilities. And it is important to recognize that we do have, uh, the two e-learners who are also students with disabilities. Uh, without further ado, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to pass this torch to, uh, Terry Baldwin. Um, Terry, tag, you're it for now. Thank you. Teri Baldwin: Hi, I'm Teri Baldwin. I'm the president of the Palo Alto Educators Association, and I'm just so happy everyone's here. Thank you. This is an important topic, and, um, I've been kind of collaborating with REEL for a few years now, and they reached out to me, and it's been a wonderful collaboration. They've brought stuff into our schools and in Palo Alto, so I'm just very happy to have this working relationship with these great people. So thank you for being here. Abby Kirigin: Great, thank you so much, Leo and Terry. Thank you to Santa Clara County Office of Education and to Palo Alto Educators Association for co-hosting this with us today. Um, just so you all know, we'd love this session today to feel as interactive as possible. Um, so we welcome you if you have questions at any time. You can use the chat or the QA function, um, to send us messages. And later on in the session, we are going to be actually asking you to contribute thoughts and ideas by using the chat functionality, and we will have an opportunity at the end of the session to discuss questions and have time to talk into Q&A. And also, as you know, you heard, we are recording. We're recording for distribution later, but we will turn off the recording before that Q&A session. So, um, my name is Abby Kirigin, and I'm here today with Callie Turk and Yael Valek, and we are here today to talk to you about how to better understand your bright but struggling twice exceptional students. The three of us are parents who first learned about twice exceptionality through our own experiences with our own children, and then we really decided to dedicate ourselves to this cause. In fact, two of us are now doctoral students of education in this specialty area, and all of us bring our backgrounds as entrepreneurs, designers, researchers, and also teacher professional development creators to this work. So just to give you a brief overview of what we're going to do today, we're just going to start by explaining to you a little bit more about who we are as REEL and what we do as an organization and a quick intro to twice exceptionality. Then we'll dig a little deeper into complexities of twice exceptionality, go through a few vignettes of individual students, and talk about, um, their experiences and how we can support them in the classroom and at home, and talk about some tips, and then have some time at the end for a reflection. So as Leo mentioned, REEL is a non-profit organization. We strive to ensure that twice exceptional students, which is often referred to as 2e students, they thrive in school by raising that parent and educator awareness. So we provide tools, resources, events, services for parents and educators, and we do professional development workshops, speaker series, and everything we do is towards that ultimate goal of increasing the 2e student success in school and ultimately in life. And as Teri mentioned, we, I thought we would give you a little bit of an example of some of our work we've done with the Palo Alto Unified School District. And so here are a bunch of pictures of things that we've done in the past. We have done learning differences simulations for, uh, classroom teachers and educators. We've done teacher professional development day workshops. We've had a learning specialist focused workshop. We sponsor Jonathan Mooney to come and speak to the educator community. We've also provided diverse neurodiversity books and math kits to the classrooms, and we've also sponsored a twice exceptional film screening for, again, for the teachers and educators in the district. And for parents, we've done a multitude of things as well, such as parent engagement summit presentations, learning differences simulations for parents. We've co-sponsored speakers. We've put on our own speaker series, and we've worked with several partners, uh, in the area in addition to the Community Advisory Committee for Special Ed in Palo Alto, but also Parents Place and Parents Helping Parents and CHC. And we've got a bunch of tools and resources and a workshop menu for you. You can look on our website, which is reel2e.org . If you head over to the educators tab, you can see what we've got. We've got a bunch of different workshops that we can bring to your school. We would happy to come and present to your community to talk to you about twice exceptionality, do a learning differences simulation, talk about females in neurodiversity, or a variety of other topics. So just a quick, um, brief introduction to what 2e is so we can all be on the same page as we move forward today. So 2e students have distinguishing strengths as well as complex challenges at the same time. So one thing that we found that's very helpful, um, to think of twice exceptional students, they're often called being green, which means that they've got what's kind of considered their yellow strength areas, their high potentials, their high abilities, and at the same time they've got complex blue challenges, which combine, combine together that blue and that yellow to make a green student. So in your classroom, you might have a yellow student, you might have a blue student, uh, you might have some who have some at different times. Twice exceptional students are always in that green, and that interaction is a whole new experience all together from just those two things separately. There's a very well known executive function and ADHD coach named Seth Perler, and as he says, "In a nutshell, if you have a child that you know that's smart or bright but who struggles to show it, they may be twice exceptional." And in fact, about five percent of kids are 2e. Some of the challenge, that challenges that 2e students might face are specific learning differences such as dyslexia or dyscalculia, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, autism, or any of the 13 disabling conditions under IDEA, which can qualify as a challenge. It's also important, um, to approach twice exceptionality through the lens of DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Twice exceptional learners are really more likely to fall through the cracks than children who experience a learning difference without that accompanying asynchronous development. And their strengths, their challenges can often be misdiagnosed or are very difficult to spot given that dual nature of what's going on. And these twice exceptional students are really a subset of the broader neurodiversity community, and the neurodiversity, the neurodiverse community is really a group that deserves a seat at the table in any DEI conversation and discussion. And it's also important to note that the challenges of twice exceptionality can often be further compounded if a student is a person of color. In that case, many people in the 2e community refer to these students as thrice exceptional because they live at that intersection of race, learning disability, and high ability. And then before we really delve even deeper into twice exceptionality, I'd just like to let you know that everything we're going to be presenting to you today and discussing with you today is based on research, and these are three actually really great research references. So after our talk today, we'd really, you know, if you're interested in learning even more, we welcome you to come back, look at the slides, take, you know, go and check out these research references, or you can always reach out to any of the three of us for more references or more support. Thanks, Abby. Callie Turk: So, um, as Abby mentioned, we are all parents of 2e children ourselves, so I wanted to give you an example, uh, from my own son about changes that are possible in the classroom for students like him. So this is an example of something he made in third grade. He was exceptionally bright and engaging, but getting him to do class work was difficult if it wasn't in his area of interest. So that may already make you think of some kids in your own classroom. And he started to show less and less enthusiasm for school. After I had a conversation with Oren's teacher about 2e students and their need, she changed the way she thought about classroom assignments. So here's an example where they were supposed to make a poster showing a law, and so that they were learning the differences between laws and rules. Now, my son has a very vivid imagination, and he asked, "Can I please make a law for my imaginary bear land, Babalaya?" And the teacher's first reaction was, "No, you have to make a law from the real world." But then she thought about the 2e lens, and if the lesson is really about a rule versus a law, does it matter if it's from an imaginary land if that's what it takes to get him to participate? She allowed him to show this rule, and he enthusiastically engaged with the assignment, and he got the whole class excited making creative laws like this one against art fairs, which came up because mom dragged him to too many that summer. So this is one small vignette, and we don't pretend that 2e students are easy to figure out. Believe us, we know what it's like as their parents. But when they are engaged, they elevate classroom discussions and become leaders in their areas of strength, and it's changes like these, both small and large, that made my son feel heard, helped him connect with his classwork, and also increase the engagement of the entire classroom. And so we hope that by sharing the same 2e lens with you that I shared with his teacher, you can feel this change in your own classroom. So we're used to looking at bell curves when we think about students and where they fall, and of course no one is always at the 50th percentile on everything, but most students fall within a fairly narrow range of the middle. 2e kids display much more extremes on either end of the curve, and they do so regularly, not just in one math unit. It's who they are and how they show up consistently. In this example, you can see this 2e student has a general intellectual ability that is extremely high, and so is their mathematical reasoning. However, their processing speed is low, and their writing is low. So although it's on the low end of the middle, there was a huge gap between these scores on the curve. This child's math scores show up as just above average. So why is he having so much trouble completing basic assignments and having anxiety during math? Even scores in the middle can feel like a major deficit to these kids since their intellectual reasoning is so high. The disability is masking their gifted math ability, and the giftedness is masking the disability, making the student appear to perform average in math. Because of this discrepancy, math can be both too hard and too easy at the same time. The child feels that math reasoning comes easily to him. He's ready to tackle more advanced concepts and feels bored, but he can't process information quickly or write a lot of answers, so he feels like a failure. He can understand extremely advanced math concepts but can't complete a repetitive worksheet on something simple. Also notice where social skills and behavior lie on the curve. This is called asynchronous development. You may have a fourth grader who does math at a seventh grade level, writes at a second grade level, socializes at a first grade level, and reasons at a 12th grade level. Imagine how confusing that is for the child, let alone for their parents and educators. This is just one example of a 2e bell curve. Every child has a different chart, which is another reason 2e students are tricky. A 2e child could also be super strong in writing and have no interest in math. So 2e individuals are change makers in the world, and we're going to share some of them with you and some of the strengths that come with being a 2e to show why it's important to nurture these kids in the classroom. So people who make connections across disciplines like Steven Spielberg have advanced 3D spatial perspectives and thinking like Steve Jobs and are good at narrative reasoning, recalling stories, episodes, and concepts like Whoopi Goldberg. These can be traits of people with dyslexia. Creative, out of the box thinking like Dave Pilkey, enthusiasm like Simone Biles. We want her enthusiasm and risk takers, adventurers, seek novelty and curious like Richard Branson. These can be traits of people with ADHD. Knowledge, skill, passion, and motivation in interest areas like Sir Anthony Hopkins, intently focused on details like Dan Aykroyd, a logical thinker and honest like Greta Thunberg. These can be traits of people with autism. So as you can see, these are all world change makers that we would love to nurture, but imagine what it must have been like for them to be in a K-12 classroom. In addition to strengths, what you'll often see in the classroom is the struggles that 2e kids are facing. One of the toughest ones is masking. So masking is working hard to appear normal, and the kids are exhausted just surviving the day trying to blend in. This energy that's spent on masking creates a lot of anxiety and creates unexpected behaviors in the classroom. You may also see a class clown. Some students cover areas of difficulty with humor, like maybe if they have trouble reading aloud and it's really time, you may see some joking happening. You may notice sensory challenges and meltdowns. Some may come from when the classroom gets loud, when there's certain noises that are annoying to the student, sometimes from being touched or being in a crowded area, sometimes the lights can be too bright. And when you get the sensory challenges compounded, you can see some meltdowns. You may see social challenges. Often 2e kids are the ones that are walking around alone on the playground or may have difficulty in group work. You may see resistance, and it's often unexpected resistance to seemingly simple tasks where you just can't figure out why the student won't do them. And you may see unexpected underperformance. So when you're talking to the student, it can be clear they have a high level of understanding of what you're teaching, but then they just can't seem to get it down on paper, and it's, it can be very confusing. And all of these together, the masking and the social challenges and the academic challenges, can lead to a high level of, of anxiety, and often that's what leads parents or educators to seek more evaluation to understand what's going on with the student. You may also see disengagement. You may see the child reading a book in the corner or writing the most minimal answers that they can and just losing engagement in the classroom. And then ultimately, a lot of this can lead in the older grades to school refusal where you just can't get the 2e student to school anymore. So how do you know if you have a 2e student in the classroom? Maybe some of this has sort of, you know, sparked something, and you're thinking about someone in your classroom. So here's some tips, maybe finding someone, identifying them in your classroom. So you'll notice that there's high cognitive ability but lower than expected achievement, even if they're grade level. You'll see that they excel and participate well in areas of high interest, but they appear unmotivated or lazy in areas that they're not interested in. You'll see that they may participate well in class discussions or be very verbal talking about some of the subjects with you, but then they don't follow through with implementation and actually completing the project. They may be very humorous to cover up some of their challenges, or they're just a very funny kid, and they may resist demonstrating their weaknesses or use avoidance tactics. 2e students often thrive on complexity, and they have difficulty with rote memorization. They may understand concepts very easily or quickly and then are frustrated that they have to show them repeatedly or have to produce specific output. So maybe hearing this, uh, will make you think of someone that you've, one of the students in your classroom or that you've encountered. So we really love this video, which was created by the Aurora Public Schools in Colorado about a bright six-year-old who's struggling with math. It's a very powerful video because you'll hear from educators, parents, and Riley himself and how they all work together to support him. You may want to grab a tissue. [Video content - various speakers discussing Riley's situation] "It's hard for people to understand like, oh, he's so smart, he should be able to," and it doesn't work that way. There's no should, you know. Often their disability can pull down their area of strength so that they look just average in a classroom. They look like they'll do fine, uh, with general classroom supports. "The teachers thought that he moved around too much and everything in class, and he didn't pay attention, but then the teachers would ask him after they went over, like they would read a story, and he could tell you all the details in the story, and he could give you the sequence of what happened in the story, but he was, it just seemed like he was not focused." "And sometimes their gift and their disability mask each other, and so, um, it's really hard to untangle, and the most we got usually was like, you know, it was he was a behavior issue. And so it's like, well, what's going on because he's not a bad kid, you know? So there's got to be something more to this." "And the most important piece to remember is that we have to identify their strengths and program for that first. That's how a student will feel valued, engaged in the classroom, and like they have a piece of the community that they fit into. And then we can accommodate and plan for their area of disability." "We first assumed giftedness and that maybe there was some boredom and maybe this was the behavior challenge, and so, um, we asked to have him tested, and we didn't know at the time that he also had the autism diagnosis." "I've realized that Riley isn't limited in math just because he can't read the questions. He, you know, as long as I can read to him, I mean, he can understand and, you know, do all of the work that everybody else in that classroom can do." "For Riley in particular, that's opened up just so much in terms of him feeling like he has strengths and he has things to bring to the table, which some of our kids and IEPs don't realize just because they struggle in one aspect that doesn't mean that that's the whole kid." "Writing, you gotta like write a whole summary for like a few days, and math just takes like, you answered, answer the questions. That's like all you got to do." "When we have a good team and we have people that are listening to us, it's night and day, like we go from, you know, meltdowns and school refusal and, you know, withdrawal, like where we don't even see him around the house, to like this kid that's just blossoming and wants to be a part of the family and is excited for every day and has friends. And I mean, this is, I didn't know if you would have friends, you know? Kids with autism a lot of times don't connect, and he's got great friends here, you know." "So that's because we know the stuff that they think are challenging, you can help them with it, and the stuff that you're challenged with, they could help you with that too, so it's a team effort." All right, I have to say that ending always gets me. Ah, that, that Riley, he's so cute. Um, so I'm Cali, and I'm just so grateful all of you have joined today. I know we've had quite a few people join since, um, we began, so thank you very much for coming. We're actually entering the slightly more interactive part of the session, so I hope you get your fingers loosened up, and you'll be ready to do some typing with us. Before we jump into some vignettes that we've put together to bring all this, all to life even a little more, we did put together quite a few resources for you, and the best way for you to access those is to go ahead and go to this tiny URL, which is tinyurl.com/realselpaJan2022 . And I'm sorry, Terry, I just was running out of room, so I didn't put the P-A-E-A in there, and I should have, so my apologies. So if you go to that link, you're going to find a wide range of materials there. You'll be able to link back to these slides so that you can refer to them in the future. You will be able to access our, um, 2e, you probably can't see this because I have my background on, but there's a 2e, uh, one pager that if you flip over onto the backup or go to the back of it has a lot of great information about specific challenges that you might face in your classroom and possible solutions. We also have included is the child twice exceptional checklist. We also have an excerpt from the Fairfax County Public Schools 2e handbook that you might want to refer to as we go to the vignettes. And then we have a couple of other pieces of information that we'll refer to as we go through, and the link is in the chat if that's an easier way for you to get to the information. Sorry, let me just go back and say a couple other things. If you scroll down, then you'll see we're going to work through a vignette on a student named Ben and a student named Kendra, and those have blank spaces that you can either make a copy of and fill in on your computer or you can print out later and write your notes in. And we also have provided you with a completely blank vignette so that if you would like to create a vignette for one of your own students in the future, you'll have a resource to do that. And if you keep scrolling down the page, you'll see that we have these answer sheets, but please no peeking. But we just want you to rest assured that you will have something that has all the different parts we're going to discuss today. So, um, you know, the vignettes we're going to go through, they are composite versions of real life students and situations here in Silicon Valley. The vignettes, we want to just acknowledge like that we are definitely all human. The reactions that we're gonna present in the vignettes are really natural ones that we've all had, whether we're parents or teachers. And, um, you know, so we just want to make sure you know that we know that being a teacher is really tough, and we cannot capture all the nuances of what you face in your classroom in any vignette. So we really want to honor you and all that you do and just recognize that the things that we are going to talk about and the solutions we come up with, they're just possibilities. There is no one right answer. There is no perfect answer. We're all just doing our best. So, um, we know that if, if a, an educator or a parent is doing the best they can with a 2e child, then that's going to make a big difference. And also that I, we hope what you'll notice is that the solutions that we suggest and come up with, um, they really are usually good for all students. So when we think about our 2e kids, we try not to come up with ideas that are so, you know, out there crazy that they only work for that one child because we know that's not realistic, that you need solutions that are really going to support everyone in your classroom as much as possible. So, so just know that that's kind of the aim that we're going with. So the first, uh, one we want to talk about is a kiddo called Ben, and I'm gonna read a little story about Ben, and we're gonna then dive into some, some tips and strategies for working with Ben. So Ben is in the fifth grade, and he is gifted with autism and ADHD. He loves Minecraft, and he will discuss it in great detail to anyone who will listen and even those who won't. He has an uncanny ability to connect ideas that sometimes really stuns his teacher. His memory surprises other students. They came to him in fourth grade to hear facts about the missions when they were studying them, and he really loves to ham it up when he gets to act out class projects. He came into the fifth grade with Smarter Balanced test results showing that he is performing above grade level in math, and he received an 80% on the pre-test for the new math unit on volume. He keeps asking for harder math. Math was scheduled just before lunch last Friday. During lesson time, Ben refused to sit on the rug, which led to a power struggle with his teacher. He was messing around all during math work time, doodling and reading books, despite reminders to stay on task. Just before lunch, the teacher told Ben, "I noticed you didn't make good use of your time. You're going to need to complete this work either at recess or as homework in addition to the regular math homework. You ask for harder math, but I can't give you harder math if you won't complete the basic math first." Ben got mad. He yelled loudly, threw his math book on the ground, and stormed out of the classroom. So in this scenario, the teacher's seeing quite a lot of strengths. He has a very high math ability. He has an amazing memory for facts. He makes really wonderful idea connections, and he really is great at showing mastery in creative ways. But he's messing around a lot instead of working. He's yelling and throwing books. Sometimes he won't sit on the rug, and sometimes he even storms out of the classroom. So this teacher may not know a lot about twice exceptional learners yet, and so their perspective before they learn about 2e might sound something like this: "Hi, I'm Ben's teacher. You know, Ben just seems to be lazy. I gave him so many reminders, and he still didn't do his work, and he has a behavior problem. I'm tired of his blow-ups. This math should be easy for him. I don't know why he can't just get it done. I can't give him harder math before he shows me he can do the basic math. Right now I'm very frustrated. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a nine. "I think that what I'm going to do is tell Ben that his behavior is unacceptable. I'll tell him that this should be easy for you, why can't you just get it done? I'll have him try to complete his work during recess, and I will not give him any more advanced math." So in this situation, Ben is likely to continue tuning out for math. He's probably going to keep having meltdowns when he's pushed, and the teacher is probably going to keep feeling pretty frustrated with the situation. So before we talk about how we can rethink this child's situation and how to work with them, we really base a lot of our work in terms of reframing and how we're looking at the child that we're working with and really adopting that approach that Ross Green suggests that kids will do well if they can and that a lot of times what's going on with our 2e kids is that it's not that they won't do something, but they can't do it yet. And what we have to do is really change our own mindset as the adults in their lives and just become a lot more curious about what is going on with the child. So instead of assuming that a child won't do something, start thinking about what might be happening that makes it so that the child can't do something yet. So we shift from being more judgmental to being a little more curious. We change our view of the child from maybe someone who's being willful or defiant to maybe someone who has too many stressors in their life or a skills deficit or maybe a sensory issue. Something is going on, and I, you know, understanding that there's something with this child that, uh, is making this difficult for them, and that helps us with our thinking. We move from like thinking about they just want attention or they're lazy or they're obstinate to what is getting in their way? How can I be someone who can help this child? And that really helps us then have a different response to the child. So instead of kind of offering rewards and punishments and, and just sort of more simplistic ways of trying to get the child to cooperate, what I'm really trying to do is figure out what the barriers are for the child, remove those barriers much as possible or work with the child to figure out how we can work around some of the barriers. And this changes the child's experience completely. They move from feeling frustrated, guilty, ashamed, embarrassed to really feeling like they are in a supportive relationship and that this is an adult that they can trust. Now I want to acknowledge before we move on that this all looks very easy in this lovely graphic, and it sounds super easy on paper, um, and it's hard to do. And I think one of the things we want to acknowledge is that we have to be able to care for ourselves, and we have to make sure that we're walking into a situation within as much emotional regulation as we can so that we can help them, kind of like putting on our own air mask to help the one who needs the help. So just know that you'll do better or worse with this on certain days depending on your own emotional regulation, and that's okay. You're human, and our, our goal here is to raise these kids into full-grown humans, and it's good for them to be working with humans and see the true human experience. So, so now let's think about what Ben's perspective might be because in our story, we really didn't get a clear enough view on what Ben's perspective is. "I'm Ben. I'm tired, and I'm hungry for lunch. It's been a long morning. I don't like sitting on the carpet so close to everyone. It's making me feel uncomfortable. I already know this math, and I still have to do so many repetitive problems. Writing is hard for me. I can't write that many answers. I'm stupid. I can't even pay attention to easy math, even though I wish I could do harder math that's more interesting. And now I might miss recess, and my body needs to run around, or I might have extra homework on top of regular homework, which is already very stressful for me." So we can see that with Ben, his ADHD and his autism are causing experiences for him in the classroom that maybe aren't as obvious on the surface in terms of the sensory issues on the carpet, in terms of the need to move that move his body. His strength in math is making it harder for him to really want to do a lot of repetitive problems because he has some writing challenges. It might be daunting to think about having to write so many different answers for something he already knows a lot about. So now we have a better understanding of what's going on for Ben and his experience. We've been able to reframe our perspective based on understanding Ben better. So what might be the teacher's thoughts now that they have this twice exceptional perspective? "Oh no, poor Ben. He's really having a hard time. He couldn't hold it in any longer. He must feel really bad inside for having to react that way, and he was having a hard time focusing. I bet he's getting hungry and didn't want others, you know, he didn't want to touch others on the rug. He's really had to work hard today. He must be tired. I wonder if this math is too easy for him and he's frustrated, but at the same time, writing is difficult for him. Maybe the worksheet has too many problems on it, and so it's a little overwhelming for him right now. I'm, I'm still a little bit frustrated, but I'm on a scale of one to ten, I think I'm about a three." So with that reframed perspective, the teacher's stress level has gone down, and also the teacher has that better understanding of what it might take to actually help Ben. But before we jump into brainstorming, and now that we've reframed our thinking, what can we actually do to help the student? Like what are some of the top tips and strategies for actually working with these kiddos? So the, the first one we always give, and if you only remember one thing from this presentation, this would be it, and that is to do all you can to connect with these kids. These kids thrive so much better in a classroom where they are known and cared for and really believe and trust in their teacher. So, you know, really taking that time to get to know the child, whether you have time to talk to them outside of class like at recess, or you can do little one-on-one meetings with some of the students, doing strength-based activities throughout the year, learning about their interests and learning preferences. These are all things that will help you establish that relationship, and they really do rely on that trusted bond with their teacher for motivation. And you will get so much more out of them, even in their area of challenge, if you have that really strong bond with the student. And one of the things we also have really learned, especially as we've gone through the pandemic and parents had to spend a lot of time at home with their children for a while, is actually parents know even more about their kids now and their learning preferences and what motivates them and demotivates them than probably ever before. So, uh, you know, really creating that strong triangle between the teacher, the parent, and the student is helpful. And even more helpful is getting out of the mode of just talking about what's happening now and maybe what the challenges are now, but really getting everyone to think about what could be for this student, what would just be a fantastic outcome, a goal, something this child would love, who this child could be, and have everyone working towards that. Really elevates the conversation and, and deepens that connection, um, that, that there will be between these three people. We have other top tips that really are very important as well. The first is for our 2e learners, it is so important that they get to have time in their day where their strengths and their passions shine. They spend so much time thinking about what they are not good at, but they really will engage best if their passions and strengths are woven into their schoolwork. So maybe the child doesn't like math but loves Pokemon, so maybe there's a way to do some Pokemon math problems. Or maybe the child doesn't like to write but is passionate about sharks, so how about giving them the choice instead of doing the regular assignment to research sharks and make a PowerPoint presentation to the class? There are so many different ways that you could work on strengths and passions. We could do a whole other workshop just on that, but just even thinking about it and looking for those ways is super helpful for these kids. You know, part of that reframing that is so important is just around the curiosity and empathy, and there is almost always some kind of logic to frustrating behavior. They don't tend to give teachers and parents a hard time just to give a hard time. Usually they are having a hard time. So one trick that Y'all learned that I thought was very interesting was have them maybe rate the different parts of their day using animals they like, like I really like sharks but I don't like snails. And if you have the chance to go through and rate their day on that kind of method, then if you notice there are too many snails, you might notice there are more meltdowns, and it gives you some clues about why that's happening and maybe how to balance things out. So there's lots of ways to really think about being curious and empathetic, and you all will find your own, but that's just so important that we continue to want to learn more about these kids and don't close the doors on them. And then we talked about the asynchronous development before, and this is just something that it can be very hard for us to get our heads wrapped around, but there is can be such a wide difference in a child's skill level if they're twice exceptional, and we have to be able to be flexible in our minds about that. So they might be excellent at math and really struggle with writing, or they might have an amazing imagination but then not be able to actually produce anything because they have some kind of other writing difficulty. They might be someone who has an amazing imagination, but they can't read very well yet, which because they might actually have dyslexia. So it's just really important that we are remembering that these are children who are experiencing exceptional strengths and great difficulties, and so we need to really be able to adjust around that, which takes some time, some mental gymnastics. And a lot of this leads into just adopting flexible approaches as much as you possibly can. So a lot of school districts in our area are adopting Universal Design for Learning, which really integrates a lot of these concepts, giving kids multiple ways to enter into a unit, whether that's reading or watching a video or acting something out or doing a simulation. And then thinking about different ways that the child can exit out of a unit. Is there a way for them to show mastery that maybe is a little different than what you expected? Can you give them choices in how they do it? Could they, could they write an essay or put on a play or do a presentation or design something or create something or build a Lego set? There are so many different ways that we can let kids show their mastery. Of course, there are times when the child has to show you they can write, and it's always a question of looking at the unit and saying what is the goal of the unit? If the goal of the unit is to show something written, then that needs to be the goal of that unit. But perhaps every unit does not need to have writing embedded into it if that is a struggle for that child, for instance. And then we talked about that connection and that importance of the connection between the parent, the student, and the teacher. Usually these students actually also have a much broader team that is part of their system. So what we want to be able to do is also connect with the other people on their team to generate ideas, to integrate strength-based approaches, to introduce the flexibility. So whether it's an OT, a speech and language therapist, could be a reading specialist, there are all different kinds of people who they may be working with, the school counselor, the school psychologist, and we want to make sure we're really working together as a team to come up with solutions. Uh, one of the resources we wanted to make sure to point out to you that you can access later that might be helpful is, um, the, uh, these are what we are calling the eight strength-based activities to kick off the school year, but they really can be used at any time. And if you want to access this blog post, you'll find a list of activities that can really help you get to know your kids. Now what I want to say about this is some teachers really do a great job of taking time to get to know what their kids' interests and learning preferences are. What is the level up step is when you actually use that information throughout the year in your curriculum design and in your classroom. So we do hear some, um, some people will say, "Oh, my teacher got to know me, but they didn't ever use it." So please try to find ways to actually use the information you gather throughout the year, and we do have some examples of how people have done that if that would ever be of interest to go deeper. So let's get back to Ben. Let's start thinking about some strategies that could help Ben, and this is where we were hoping you all would hopefully get in the chat and suggest some ideas you have now that you know more about Ben. You have that reframed perspective. You have some ideas of the top tips for working with these learners. You can actually refer to, like I said, the back of the 2e fact sheet. I'm going to have to change my video so that you can actually see it. Let me move this so it looks kind of like this on the back. And that's still not great with blurring, is it? But I can't show, I can't show you my background right now right now. And then there's the Fairfax County one. Those might have some ideas for you. So any ideas that you can put in the chat that you might suggest in terms of helping Ben, who's having a hard time, who got very upset, who doesn't like sitting on the carpet, who was hungry, who the math is too easy but the writing is too difficult? [Chat responses from participants:] "Give choices." Yeah, yeah, can you think of some specific choices or choices you might offer? We were thinking, um, in this case, you know, like in terms of choices, um, we know that that Ben tested out, he tested out of 80% of the content, the content and the pre-assessment. And so maybe there are parts that he could skip because he's already shown mastery of those parts. Yeah, "less busy work." Oh, I love that. "Opportunity to help appear with math." Yeah, "speak text-to-speech." That's great. "Snacks available and a plan in place for when he is hungry so that is not an issue." Yeah, "quality over quantity." "Getting to know the student, collaborating with him to decide how he wants to submit his writing." Oh yeah, that's great. Yeah, "allow him a menu of different activities that will show his strengths, and then he can choose what he wants to do." Yeah, that's great. Does anyone think of like a specific unit or lesson that they do where they could, they could build something in like that? Like, um, we had an idea around volume calculations, something around volume problems and what his interests are. "Centers with different strategies and activities." Yeah, we were thinking you could tie the volume problems into Minecraft volume calculations, maybe have Ben show other kids how you think about volume using Minecraft since he loves Minecraft so much. Yeah, "volume and real life experiences." Yeah, that's great. Just so you know, we always love these ideas. And yeah, "menus and choice boards." I think too, um, Danielle, hello, um, one of the things too like that's fun with choice board sometimes is like that kind of gamification a little bit, you know? Yeah, this is awesome. This is awesome. All right, Ben is in good hands here. Yeah, Ben is in good hands with you all. I'm gonna, um, go through some of the strategies we came up with, but please keep, keep throwing your ideas in, in here because we keep collecting more ideas for Ben. So, you know, one of the key things we always say is ask Ben why was he so frustrated and problem solve, like actually sit and chat with Ben. And then, you know, you can say, "I need you to show me that you know this math, so what can we do so that it's not so overwhelming for you for next time?" So that could be part of that choice board too, or part of, part of that coming up with what's going to be on that choice board, or, you know, how he's going to show what he knows, what, which strategies that you came up with make the most sense to Ben, which is a great thing to do because these guys usually have lots of ideas. Um, we talked about, you talked about this too, different ways that Ben can show mastery than a worksheet. So that was something you all, you all came up with too. Um, fewer problems, or if you know that he's mastered a lot of the work, what kind of extensions could you give Ben instead of the rep, the repetition? We find that a lot of, uh, power struggles end up happening because, um, the, the setup is that the child has to complete the basic work before they can get to the extension work. But if we already know the child's mastered the basic work, can we just move to, to the extensions? So we talked about this too, skipping the parts you pre-tested. Um, how about just allowing him to take breaks between problems and maybe talk to him about, you know, rewards that are valuable to him that he might look, uh, look forward to? We talked about tying the volume problems into Minecraft volume calculations. So you all, I think I, I think I got through all of the ideas you all said in the chat, and we can certainly, um, I think you should like just check in your chat. I think you should be able to chat to everyone, but if you can't, we'll make sure everything is noted. And I think we went through all of your ideas, and I think we covered this really well. And so let's just say to wrap this one up and move on to our next vignette, um, you know, what really happened in this situation was the teacher did some joint problem solving with Ben, really got to the root of the problem around that need for movement and the sensory experience and the desire for more interesting work. And they'd agreed on solutions to try the next time. And because of that, Ben really developed a great deal of trust in his teacher, and he felt really connected to her. So Ben was having fewer meltdowns and really a lot more excitement about math. And because of this, the teacher and he decided that he would start actually a Minecraft math club, and that really got a lot of the kids in the class more excited and to work with Ben, which really helped then also with his social skills. And it made math more interesting for everyone. So that is Ben. And before we move on to our next vignette, which is going to be around Kendra, we just want to make sure everyone, when you put ideas in the chat, please select everyone in the chat instead of just host and panelists, and then everyone can see them. We believe that everyone should be able to do that, um, because we have someone here who did that, and we want to, we're going to copy and paste all of the people's ideas that you guys had into the chat for Ben. And then as we move into Kendra, please feel free to weigh in in the chat. Yael Valek: Okay, so next we're going to talk about Kendra, and Kendra is a very interesting, uh, interesting case. Not as obvious. Ben had more obvious behavior challenges in the classroom. Kendra's behavior experiences are not quite as obvious. So I'm going to share Kendra's story with you. So Kendra is a bright eighth grader. She appears to be doing fine in school, but she's quietly struggling. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in fifth grade, so three years ago. She has deep knowledge and interest in science and math, but she finds it terribly difficult to express herself through writing and to keep up with all of the required reading, especially as she's going through these more advanced grade levels. She misses points on assignments that have a lot of writing or that require students to explain more, and even when she's given more time, she sometimes can't think what to write and often doesn't come up with more than one sentence. Sometimes she feels a little bored in math class because she grasps the concepts there very quickly, but then she goes to English, and she feels really stupid and very discouraged. Her English teacher is nice and often lets her off the hook by letting her write less than other students or even skip assignments, but this doesn't feel great to Kendra because she does really feel like she can meet the same expectations as the other kids if she just had a little more support. She's mature enough to hold it together at school, but she is exhausted when she gets home. No one at school knows that when she comes home, she often is in her bed in the fetal position for the rest of the night. Kendra's mom tells her teachers that Kendra is like a duck. On the surface, she seems to be doing well, but she's paddling furiously under the water just to keep up. Kendra spends the majority of her weekends focusing on homework so that she won't have to struggle to keep up with everything during the week. When a teacher adds a last minute quiz or unexpected homework, she becomes very dysregulated. Kendra's mom tried to talk with a teacher about the situation, but the teachers just don't really see the problem because she seems pretty happy and well adjusted to them. But for Kendra, it really seems never-ending, and life just doesn't look that great. So for Kendra, you know, she seems like a pretty happy and well-adjusted student. She's working hard. She really likes STEM. She's very advanced in math, and she loves science. She's involved in quite a lot of school activities. So on the whole, she seems like she's okay. But her mom says she's really struggling to finish the homework, and her teachers do notice that she has pretty poor spelling and some incomplete writing assignments. And given how strong she is in other things, she's really getting much lower than expected grades on many of her written assessments. So what would a teacher who hasn't had any training on twice exceptional kids possibly think in this situation? "Hi, I'm Kendra's teacher. I just don't know why Kendra's mom keeps bugging me. Other kids are struggling way more than her. I don't believe it's taking Kendra as long to get her homework done as, uh, she and her mom claim. Uh, sure, Kendra does seem to have some trouble getting her ideas on paper, but that happens to a lot of kids. And if there really was a pro, were a problem, I think Kendra would self-advocate more and send me an email when she's working on that homework. I don't hear from her, so I think things must be okay. "Like other kids with dyslexia, Kendra just has to get through school. It'll be hard, but she'll be fine in the long run. Sure, she's not the best student, but she's doing okay. I don't see what the problem is. Um, you know, on a scale of one to ten, I would say my stress level about this is kind of a five. "So what I think I'm going to do is I've already let her not have to write as much as other kids, and I can require even less of her, and probably she'll be okay. And I'll just keep deflecting Kendra's mom and remind her that Kendra's doing just fine." So in this situation, what's likely to happen is that with no one at school to recognize the struggle she's having, Kendra will keep having to mask her academic challenges, and her anxiety will increase, and she probably will spiral downhill. Her emotional well-being may be compromised to the point of school refusal or worse. So now let's do our reframing. It's like with our 2e hat on, and let's learn a little bit about what's going on with the child on the inside. "Hi, I'm Kendra. I have a lot of ideas, but it's so hard for me to get them on paper. I'm worried my friends will think I'm stupid because I write so much less than they do. I could do more if I had more help. I need to email my teacher, but I'm afraid they'll see how awful my spelling is. I'm so embarrassed. I hate my life. All I do is work on the weekend so I can make it through the week, but I'm exhausted every night. There's no end in sight." So with that reframed perspective, assuming the teacher has had that chance to be curious and really work with Kendra a little more and talk to Kendra's mom some, what would the teacher's 2e perspective be? "Wow, I learned a lot from talking to Kendra's mom. I had no idea school was impacting her mental health so profoundly. I see that with more support, Kendra could work at a much higher level and feel more accomplished, and that seems like something that's actually really important to her. She knows she can count on me to help her stretch and grow in a safe way. Kendra has a lot to offer to our classroom. It'll be tricky to focus on her strengths without creating that stress, but I feel confident if we work together as a team, we can make progress. My stress level now on a scale of one to ten is about a two." All right, so now that the teacher has been able to reframe and have that curiosity and empathy and really partnership with Kendra, what are some of the responses that we might take? How might we design learning environment and strategy to help Kendra? Please put your ideas in the chat, and make sure you've selected everyone. [Chat responses from participants:] Yeah, Christine says, "Provide graphic organizers to support writing assignments, helping include all parts. Provide supports in class like small group check-ins and writing conference to make sure she is on track and see what support she might need." Yeah, "help with a spell check." Yeah, that ability to, yeah, always be using the computer if possible and accessing all of those tools that can help. Yes, Danielle, that casual conversation with Kendra, talking to everyone except the student is not a good way to go, especially with one who's 13 or 14 and more likely to engage actually with a teacher than with a parent sometimes. Yeah, "working, conferring with her regularly." Mm-hmm. What about other ways to show what she knows? Does it always have to be writing? I mean, sometimes we think about, you know, as kids get through middle school and high school, or just the writing ramps up. Are there other things she could do? Yep, "typing instead of handwriting." How about anything we could do to, um, yeah, "showing through video clips, presentations, iMovie." Yes, remember some of our dyslexic, uh, strengths are, you know, really how that creativity and how can we bring some of those dyslexic strengths to work and to, to play to bear. "Poster work, video games, scribe for written work, dictation, speech to text." Yep, this is stuff you can get in Google already. Um, "comic books." That's a lot, that's something we hear from a lot of people. I mean, and no one thing works for everyone. We can't say this is always going to work for someone who has dyslexia or dysgraphia, but comic books are often, um, something that work, giving that kind of option to do something different or something that's more pictorial. Yeah, this is great. All right, well, you can keep adding your ideas into the chat, and I'll go through some of the ideas we came up with. So one thing is helping that can really help is providing that sample work, you know, and the really clear rubric so that she knows what she's aiming for. She's someone who's really trying to plan ahead and get our work done. And sometimes, sometimes 2e kids, because they like complexity, they might like, come up with like, like a very complex project in their head, but then they can't execute it as well because of their learning difference. And sometimes if they actually see a work product that's just kind of what you're typically aiming for, it helps them understand what they're aiming for and reshape their expectations. And that's another thing we often tell teachers is don't always show like the best product, like sometimes show like the expected product, like this is what I would expect you to be able to do, not necessarily what last year's star student did after, you know, putting in 100 hours of work. So that, that can really help too, just because sometimes the 2e mind wants to do something amazing and complex, and they're just not quite ready for it. We talked about this checking it, you guys came up with this one, checking in frequently, make sure that she's asking questions. We know that she's a little bit embarrassed right now. We have to help her work on her self-advocacy, advocacy skills. We can't expect eighth graders to actually know how to self-advocate quite yet. We have to put in that scaffolding and show them how to do it. Um, you know, we talked about this too, choices and how to showcase their learning: videos, skit, comics, drawings, slideshows. Going back to the, um, the checking in frequently too is, you know, sometimes kids as they're starting to develop their own self-advocacy skills, they will come to you and try to make that a positive interaction. Like if a child is working on self-advocacy and they're just shot down when every time they come to, come to someone, then they stop advocating for themselves. So we always talk about, you know, even if you can't give the child exactly what they want, you know, find, uh, find something that gives them that sense that positive reinforcement that talking to the adults was a good idea. We talked about other school-based professionals we might want to bring in, either for instructional strategies or support, because she's having a lot of anxiety and depression. We might want to think about can we access the school psychologist or the counselor? Uh, would, would have learned, even though Ken, sexy, Kendra may not qualify for an IEP, but she's still having struggles because she has dyslexia. What tips might the learning specialist have that I could integrate into my classroom? Um, we always say too, it's really great to have classroom routines for all the students so you can complete writing assignments in class as much as possible, more so than as homework. And that way the child doesn't see it as also weighing on them when they go home, and they can access the teacher if they need help. So things like, you know, giving, giving prompts for all the kids, helping break down writing assignments into smaller chunks to guide their writing, really encouraging drafts and rewrites, um, so that they know that first one doesn't, whatever they turn in first is not supposed to be their best work. One of the things we have seen work is like a parent homework pass. So rather than you as the teacher always like saying, "Ah, you don't have to do that assignment, or just do this little part," you can actually give the homework pass to the parent and child, and so that way the child can say, "I think I need to pass on this one," but they know that they're not going to necessarily get a pass on everything, especially because that child may want to show what they know. Um, and then definitely like not just offering the text-to-speech tools, but offering quiet places that students can go to do that and offering those tools to everyone in the class, letting everyone use speech to, text-to-speech, um, I mean, did I have that backward there? Text to speech, speech to text, speech to text, I think we have it backwards here, so that we're normalizing the approach. Because part of what happens with these teenagers is they don't want to seem different from anyone else. So if it's just something, you know, we let a lot of people do, and it's just something normal that anyone can access when they need it, they're more likely to take advantage. And then building on her strengths, let's look for ways maybe to get her to be a mentor to younger students, maybe working on a science challenge or start some kind of STEM-focused club, so that we don't forget that that Kendra has a lot of strengths that she'd like to bring to the school environment and not always working on her deficits. So what happened in this situation was that, you know, once Kendra's teaching team understood that she really was masking most of her struggles when she was at school, they found ways to work with Kendra and her family and other members of the team to implement a lot of these instructional strategies as well as relationship building techniques that really helped Kendra have a better outlook on school. She started mentoring younger students who were struggling with science projects, which really built her confidence that she had something to offer, and she was able to show more of her strengths and became a better self-advocate with this new trusting environment. And the strategies that the teacher used to help improve Kendra's experience and performance really, many of the students started to take advantage of, and it was just a better experience for everyone in the, in the classroom. If you really want to go deeper on supporting struggling writers, we hosted an event in November with Dr. Susan Baum, who's one of the leading experts in twice exceptionality and working with students in the classroom, and this was a very powerful presentation, and the link to it is in your resources, and I highly encourage you to check it out if this is a problem, um, that you, you find you're facing a lot. We find that anxiety and writing challenges tend to be very pervasive across the twice exceptional community. Uh, before we shift to questions and answers, we know that quite a few people who are attending today are actually, um, coming to us from the special education world, and thank you so much for what you do. We know right now it is a very difficult time to be working in special education, so thank you for that. And sometimes people will think that twice exceptional kids cannot or don't qualify for accommodations or direct services, and that's actually not the case. They can be eligible for remediation, accommodation, and services based on the data and assessments that the district is using and what information you've uncovered about the child and what they need. And we really also encourage that in, if a child does qualify for these accommodations or services, that their strengths are woven throughout, that it is not something that is just about their deficits. Uh, some of the kinds of accommodations we've seen in 504s are like we've talked about, alternative ways of demonstrating mastery, having access to challenging activities, really minimizing the repetitive tasks, giving them choices. These kids often struggle with group work. They have so often have social challenges, and they need that scaffolding and support to really learn how to work effectively in a group. And then leadership opportunities actually are a great way for them to develop skills and, and work on some of their challenging areas. And then in terms of the IEP, again, driven by the assessment data that you have, you know, they might qualify for counseling, some social skills development and support, behavioral support, OT, all the assistive technologies we've talked about. We should not keep assistive technologies from a child that has a learning disability, even if they're working at grade level or above. Um, they often need help with their executive functioning, and they, especially if they have dysgraphia, dyslexia, or dyscalculia, probably will qualify for some kind of specialized academic instruction in math, reading, or writing. One other little tip I wanted to note before we go on is like please try your best to the extent it's possible not to pull kids out of class during the time that their main class is working on their strengths. That is a common thing that people will do. "Oh, you're good in math. We're going to pull you out for, you know, this other thing during math time." But that is really, really hard on the child. That means all day they are only working in their deficits, and they never get the chance to have those moments of joy. And in, in the middle, in high school, we say if it's possible at all, try not to replace their elective time with their remediation and intervention because that's when they can shine. That's when they're going to be able to develop the skills that they really, that are going to make them the person they're going to be. So that's not always possible, and we know that, so we're just saying do your best, please, and keep it in mind. And also think about ways to integrate their strengths and interests into the services that they have. So, um, that's, that's those are just some tips we have around accommodations and IEPs. So before we move into our Q&A period, we wanted to close with some sage words from Seth Perler, who is an executive function a coach and ADHD expert, about why it's so important that we support these kids. "Way, finally, we really need, literally, I'm not trying to be cheesy here, the world needs to eat kids. We need them to develop their strengths. They have a very, very, very unique perspective and approach to life, to thinking, to problem solving. We need them to develop their strengths and their talents and their passions and their interests. We need them to feel good about who they are. As a culture, as a world, we need them. But also just for themselves, to have a great quality of life, to be able to self-actualize, to be able to feel happy and successful. That's what we really want for our kids." Abby Kirigin: So we always think it's important to set aside time at the end of any workshop a little bit of space for you to have a moment to think about an action step that you might take next based on what you've learned today. And recognizing that we don't all process information at the same speed, and some of you may need more time than others to think this through, there's no pressure on you to share what you might do is your next action step. But if you'd like, we'd love to hear about it in the chat, what you think you might, might do next. If we were all together, we would give you a postcard. We'd give you a chance to write down what you think you would do, and then we would send it to you in a month just as a little, little reminder of our time together. But since we're remote, we won't be doing that today. So if you don't mind just taking a moment, and then as people are reflecting on their action step and hopefully someone will share one with us, um, just so you know, at the end of the presentation, in addition to all of the links we have in the resource document, we have the links to our website and to the different sources that we source materials that we used in this presentation, so that hopefully will make it easier for you if you want to share any of these resources with your own teams. And that's it for us and what we have to present. We'd love to hear any questions you all have if you, you can put them in the chat. Um, I love that "attending a meeting for twice exceptional student, will share the resources and strategies." I'm actually going to stop recording now. There we go.

Rethinking Adulthood, a neurodiverse trajectory Thursday, 11/12, 7-8:30pm What does it mean to be an adult? How is the transition to adulthood addressed in neurodivergent populations? Presented by a neurodivergent educator, we will explore the social and emotional elements of this transition and how we can better support our students and children through this process and the neurodiverse trajectory. Amy Faigin is a neurodivergent educator, activist and individual. Diagnosed as autistic at age thirteen, she attended Bridges Academy, a school for twice-exceptional students. After graduating from high school, she pursued a degree in Digital Media at Otis College of Art and Design, and began work as an independent designer. Amy now teaches at Bridges Academy, instructing in entertainment design, technological history, and mentoring students through their self-directed Young Expert program. She also works with the Ed Asner Family Center as a spokesperson, educator, and co-leader of their LGBTQ+ group. Amy is presently pursuing further education through the Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education in order to continue growing as an educator and advocate. See the transcript here: Amy Faigin: Appreciate that so much. And I also appreciate you giving me this platform and this opportunity to speak as a neurodivergent and autistic person. It means a lot to me because I talk a lot about how our voices need to be elevated, and you are doing that for me tonight. So thank you sincerely, REEL Palo Alto and CAC, for sponsoring this. And, um, thank you everybody who's here for lending me your ear for a few minutes. Um, I very sincerely appreciate it. So today we're looking at adulthood and rethinking it a little bit. Oh no—I didn't want to click that. I wanted to click this one. Now I feel like a true teacher—I just fumbled a button during a presentation. And this is about a neuro-diverse trajectory towards adulthood. So Callie did an excellent job of introducing me and really covered a lot of bases, but I wanted to present myself with some fish. Fish are my passion. And I am an educator working at Bridges Academy. I work with twice-exceptional students who are neurodivergent as well as being identified as highly gifted in one or more domains. I live in Los Angeles with over 200 fish, a small but growing collection of reptiles, my affectionate dog, and an extraordinarily patient fiancé. For today's workshop—well, introduction—that's recursive. That's what we're doing right now. And I'm going to share the DBBST with you all and give you an opportunity to explore this test with me. Um, you'll get a chance to take it, and then afterwards we will debrief it. We'll examine what some of those results might mean. And then I'm going to present on neurodivergence and adulthood. Specifically, we can examine that transition to adulthood, how the DBBST applies, and then how we can use that information to better the lives of our children. So the DBBST—this is the adulthood test. It is a measurement of an individual's preparedness for adulthood by assessing your responses in three categories: early development, adolescent development, and early adulthood. We can calculate a DBBST score, which can then be used to measure an individual against a bell curve and make meaningful predictions about how one might transition to adulthood. So I have—let me bring up the chat. And I am just going to paste a link to this test in the chat. And this is just a Google Doc. You're welcome to make a copy of it for yourself. You can print out a copy and fill it out on your own pencil and paper if you prefer that. You can just run a calculator on your phone—however makes you most comfortable. This is an abbreviated version of the test, so it shouldn't take you more than about 10 minutes to take and calculate a score. I just sent the link. And what I'm going to do right now is set a timer for 10 minutes and let people play with this metric tool. I thought about playing the Jeopardy theme song, but I was worried about your presentation getting copyright striked. But you can all mentally play the Jeopardy theme. So that 10 minutes starts now. Callie Turk: Amy. I'm just keeping an eye on when new people come, reposting since the chat, you know, doesn't show up. Amy Faigin: Thank you, Callie. Callie Turk: Amy, Allison wants to know if they've never done something, what number do they put? Amy says if you've never done something or you have yet to hit a benchmark, you enter 30. If you're just joining us and you're wondering why we're quiet, we are working on a little test called the DBBST, and the link is in the chat. We've had a couple new people join. If you're just joining us, we are in the middle of a little period where we are working on a little test called the DVDST, and the link to it is in the chat. Susan says her test won't share or do anything with the age line. I think, Susan, um—you the part—yeah, you can, um, you can either make a copy of the file, or you can just put your answers on a separate sheet of paper. I believe Susan, just add up the scores yourself. Amy will clarify if that is not the case. Amy says there—this is a pencil-and-paper edition, and she's trying to get a version that will auto-calculate. I'm reading these things because I'm not sure. I think the chat will show up in the recording, but just in case, I want people who see this later to be able to get to what they need. For those of you who are just joining, we are getting close to the end of taking a test called the DBBST, and I have posted the link to that in the, um, in the chat. Oh, here, Marilyn. I'm going to put the link here in the chat. Thank you for letting me know. If you are just joining us, we're working on the test, and the link is in the chat—although I don't, uh, know how much time we have. Amy Faigin: Just about 20 seconds left on the timer. You are welcome to go and look at the test later if you have the link. You can always go and look at it. All right, time is up. So debriefing the DBBST—first of all, my score is a 398.25, which—if your score is higher than mine, please talk to me after this because, um, that is the highest score that should be in the room. I am the best adult—clearly, my score says so. So some responses to the test that I have heard in feedback when I have tried this out in other audiences: Some people have said, "This test feels unfair," or, "I'm being measured against a standard that isn't my own," or, "These benchmarks didn't apply to my life in a meaningful way. This test feels rigged." This test is kind of—the DBBST stands for the Developmental Benchmark Test. So before I get into anything else, just real quick, I have to put this in the universe. While what I'm talking about predominantly focuses on neurodivergence and social justice, the issues that I'm going to be presenting today are intersectional in nature. So factors such as race, gender, sex, economic background, and cognitive or physical ability do impact or exacerbate these issues. Who am I when I unmask? I am sorry—first of all—that I played a trick on you and made you take the DBBST. I will not pull any more pranks. I'm actually not good at pranks. Um, that's why I had to turn my camera off and go mute because I can't keep a straight face. The thing about the fish is true, but also, I am twice-exceptional myself. I am autistic and loud and proud. I am a happy person. I am a person who has lived the journey that I'm going to be describing tonight firsthand. I'm an artist, a scientist. I'm not a fan of low-quality generic clip art. Um, there won't be any more of that in these slides either—I promise. And, um, no more tricks from here on out. It's going to be straightforward. So let's talk about neurodivergence and adulthood—for real this time. We asked you at the beginning what adulthood meant to you. What does it mean to be an adult? And we got some interesting answers. Some folks said living independently, paying taxes, maybe driving is a big one, completing an education, financial productivity, having a job, skill acquisition, or legal consent to contracts—that's sort of how the government defines it. I missed half of this thing because there's something wrong with my Zoom instance. What about long-term happiness, health, and autonomy? Is this presentation an elaborate excuse for Amy to Google cute babies? Yes. But when we examine the transition to adulthood, we find that it doesn't really exist culturally. We kind of go, "You're 18 now," and when a person has turned 18, they're an adult in terms of legal access and expectations and responsibilities. Now, I'm a biologist—I said I was a scientist—so I'm gonna throw a little bit of jargon at you, but I'll try and keep it jargon-light. Myelinogenesis is the process where a brain grows new neurons, and we have two major growth spurts of myelinogenesis in our lifetime. The first one being that magical time between when a baby makes eye contact and when they're about six or seven years old. And then the second one starts in adolescence and continues through the mid-20s. Your brain does continue to grow after your 20s. You're never done growing and learning. But there is a developmental process that, uh, is as intense as your toddlerhood happening during puberty. We set the cutoff date for adulthood at 18 when typically developing brains don't really reach what we would consider complete until age 21 to 24. In addition to that, neurodivergent individuals often have what we call developmental delays. Both ADHD and autism have developmental delays as key elements in their identification. To clarify, a developmental delay is not the same thing as a regression. It's rather that an individual isn't uniformly hitting expected developmental benchmarks. So for a twice-exceptional student, this might manifest as early speech development before walking or reading before fine motor development. You'll see them hitting some benchmarks, but other ones might be lagging behind. As far as the internal experience, social and emotional or executive function delays are what's most commonly reported within the community, but academic or motor or sensory delays are also experienced. I myself had a visual processing delay. The timeline of these delays can vary from one individual to another. It's not like you can say a person has X diagnosis and therefore will be three years behind. Every person grows at a different rate. IQ scores can indicate the extent of the delay to some degree, but learning profiles are uneven. These predictions aren't absolute. And more often than not, what we find is that in the case of an IQ being a compensatory factor for a delay, it's because a person is straining themselves. And a quick note about function labels—this question came up before: Do these experiences differ between high-functioning or low-functioning individuals? It is my belief that when we use the term "low-functioning" to describe a person, we stop looking for opportunities to help an individual be successful. And when we use the term "high-functioning," we stop looking for ways in which an individual might need help. I'm autistic. I love to put things in boxes. But this is something that doesn't fit in two boxes. Rather, I would say that function is often a function of context. So when I'm citing statistics, I'm citing broad statistics. I'm not looking at the disabled population as being typical disabled and twice-exceptional disabled or any kind of binary like that. We are all one neurodivergent community. So let's examine the consequences of an unsupported transition, which is what is the status quo currently. Before I get into that, I want to remind people that I am happy today. I have personally faced many of these struggles—and that are endemic to growing up neurodiverse in a world that is not made for me. But I am a happy and healthy person in spite of those experiences. I have meaningful relationships. I have a career that I love. I enjoy fine dining. I enjoy art and travel. Life is good. I have people who are meaningful in my life. But I'm in the minority. Some of the information that I'm gonna present today is going to be upsetting, and it should be upsetting. But I don't want this information to frighten you or drive you to despair. I want it to galvanize you. I want you to be bothered by the information I'm going to present, and then I want you to turn that upset into action. I don't want to be pitied. I want to be heard. PTSD and other emotional consequences are frequently reported in our community. We navigate a world that is not made for us. I describe this as the existential wound, which is the awareness that every neurodivergent person or disabled person—or honestly, marginalized person—feels when they recognize that they are not part of the dominant narrative and that they are not wanted in the world, but rather have to fight for their place in it. This hurts in a way that we carry with us. When we look at the lack of neurodiverse voices in dictating our treatment—very often, historically, in medical treatment and in education—we find that our population has been mistreated because of misunderstanding because we are not being listened to. Statistically, neurodiverse people are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes. We're often framed as being the perpetrators. If you watch movies, you'll see, "Oh, the crazy person with the knife who committed the crime." More often than not, the mentally ill or disabled person is on the receiving end of violence. Autism, in particular, comes with an elevated risk of negative life experiences—excuse me—um, which include things like job loss, eviction, divorce—things that have major emotional and economic impact and quality-of-life impact. We also face institutional discrimination. The question of whether to out oneself or not comes up a lot in these conversations. "Do I tell my employer or my school that I am disabled or divergent in some way?" And I can't answer that question because it really does depend on the institution, on the individuals running it. And it can be hard for a disabled person to navigate and know whether or not a space is one that will support them or whether they should remain secretive about their needs. And the ADA is not enough because there are a lot of local laws and state laws that bypass it. At-will employment, which is the employment law in the state of California, makes discrimination unprovable because a person can be fired at any time for any reason. Your employer may not say, "I fired you for being autistic," or "for having ADHD," or "for being dyslexic." They’ll say, "I fired you for being late," or "I fired you because I had too many staff," even though we just hired three staff. So it becomes impossible to prove that you faced a discriminatory action. In many states, right-to-work laws remit—limit our rights at work. In, I want to say, 21 states, it is legal to pay a disabled person a subminimum wage. It may be a higher number. I have links to all of my resources—I will share after this presentation in my slideshow. Fewer than 20 percent of autistic students complete college in five years or less. I myself faced the difficulties in college. It's hard when you have an executive function disorder to get help because, in order to get help for an executive function disorder, you must first contact the school's disability office and make an appointment with their counselor. Their counselor will tell you that you need a psychiatrist's note. So you need to make an appointment with your psychiatrist, remember to request the note, get the note, remember to keep it in your bag, make a follow-up appointment at the disability office, and file the paperwork. And you must do this for every class, every semester—for an executive function disorder, which makes it hard to follow multi-process, multi-step instructions. I completed that process all of once in my college career. We face suppressed economic development. Eighty-five percent of autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed. Thirty percent of the ADHD population experiences chronic unemployment. Fifty-two percent of dyslexic individuals report facing workplace discrimination. And 20 to 30 percent of the USA's prison population is cognitively disabled. We have the highest rate of prisoners per capita of any developed country in the world, and a significant portion of them are cognitively disabled individuals. I find a problem with that, personally. There are also physical health risks and consequences. Regardless of twice-exceptional status, neurodiverse individuals are at an elevated risk of negative health outcomes. We face an elevated risk of accidental death, suicide, addiction-related death, physical abuse, violent crime, and medical neglect. And these factors shorten our lives. Autistic people, on average, have a life expectancy that's 16 years shorter than the general population. Bipolar disorder reduces life expectancy between 9 and 20 years. And ADHD doubles the risk of premature death. I myself faced medical neglect when living in Arizona. I had an autoimmune disorder that was sparked by an infection and ended up causing a cardiac incident that took me multiple years to recover from because the doctor did not believe me when I was doing all this research. I—my partner is dyslexic, so of course I had to investigate dyslexia. And I found that the life expectancy of someone with dyslexia is between 100 and 200 years. They strive in beauty and always spill milk in their boots. They can be clumsy and, um, I don't know what the source on that information is. I wouldn't personally trust it. My partner does not want to live to be 200 years old without me. So those are some scary pieces of data. And a lot of parents and a lot of educators are sitting here going, "How can I prepare my child for adulthood given this horrifying spread of data?" And I want you to ask instead, "How can I rethink adulthood—where and when it happens—in order to give my child room to grow into an adult safely and naturally?" Which brings us back to benchmarks and rethinking them. Individuals are going to mature at different rates according to their own neurology and background. And I believe it is our job as educators and parents to respect that process and work on developing targeted support in order to ensure long-term success as adults—rather than being concerned about an adherence to an external timeline. I have some proposed solutions. I'm not going to leave you hanging with all that data and no idea what to do with it. So we can ask: Is this a chicken-or-egg problem? Is this a problem for schools? The home? Broader society? This seems big—where do we start? And I believe in oyakodon. Oyakodon is a Japanese dish where chicken is cooked in egg. I don't think this is a chicken-or-egg problem. I think this is a chicken-and-egg problem. And that it's too big for us to address from one angle. The way that we tackle this is by each addressing this from our own place of strength. So as far as the family solutions go, the first thing is to reconsider the timeline for adulthood and ask yourself: Is this expectation healthy for my child, or is it being framed by an external narrative? Callie sent me a really beautiful article written by an individual who learned how to drive at 30. There is no reason that a person absolutely must have control of a vehicle at 16. I don't think that, um, neurotypical kids should be driving at 16 necessarily. I've seen what they do on the road. Incorporate teaching life skills into daily routines: cooking, housekeeping, transportation, basic first aid—so that when your child is on their own, they can feed and wash themselves and live in a hygienic environment and, you know, put a band-aid on. Introduce financial management strategies early. I mentioned the, um, executive functioning disorder that I have. A lot of autistic people experience difficulty with executive functioning. A lot of people with ADHD and dyslexia do as well. Financial management strategies—the quicker we can get into them and practicing them, the more it's going to protect us economically. And normalize imperfection and vulnerability in front of your kids. Model humanity and humility. It's okay to be imperfect. And it will honestly give your kid a lot of peace of mind to know that adults aren't perfect. For teachers and education-specific solutions: I hear a lot the saying, "Assume competence," and I absolutely agree with that ideology. But I also want to assume that every student is going to need help at some point in their academic career—regardless of their ability or disability status. To that end, I think that we need to change schools beyond a 12th-grade education. If a kid isn't developmentally "cooked" until they're 21, so to speak, then they should have the opportunity to stay in high school until the age of 21. There should be transitionary programs that utilize partner universities or online colleges. I think that this should be the standard practice. Make differentiated education the default. So instead of having a standard curriculum and special education and 2e materials, establish a library of approaches to topics that allow students to learn from their strengths. I think that all schools should have full-time mental health staff and occupational therapists, as well as life-skill training opportunities for students. I've seen what having counselors on campus does for the students' welfare, and I think that that should be a basic prac—a standard practice. Um, and change schools and universities to be more welcoming to neurodiverse students—and all students. Make accessibility the default rather than forcing disabled students to seek it out. In addition to modifying staff, I think this should extend to physical spaces and curriculum. And as far as the big picture—if you don't have a classroom or a kid—here's what you can do. And also what everyone should be doing: Politically engage and demand disability rights. Don't forget that 2e individuals are gifted and disabled, so these rights do apply to us—and we need them. Call for trained advocates in situations where individuals may be vulnerable: so police and legal interactions, educational counseling, medical scenarios, housing negotiations—anywhere where there's going to be a major life-altering decision, there should be advocates available to help navigate it. And please vote. A lot of neurodiverse people cannot vote—either due to legal barriers or criminal records. If somebody has a full conservatorship, they may not have access to the ability to vote. If somebody has a felony record, they cannot vote in many states. So you must vote on our behalf, please, when we cannot. And sever the link between economics and education. Higher education has to be economically accessible to protect students from accruing debt before they're cognitively equipped to fully understand it. We're asking an 18-year-old to sign a loan that's the equivalent to a down payment on a house when their brain isn't fully developed. Students can't be economically penalized for needing an extended education. I also believe we need to sever the tie between military and education. I see too many kids who are 18 years old seeing the military as their only economic inlet to higher education. I think we should raise the age of military service to 21—when brains are more developed—and reduce economic incentives. People shouldn't have to go to war in order to access a better life. And lastly, model neurodiversity acceptance in your life—in your language, in your family, in your classroom. When you go to the supermarket, practice normalizing variances within human cognition and speaking and thinking about them in a compassionate and respectful manner. Listen to neurodiverse people. Hi, I'm talking. Thank you for listening. Um, so long as we are the "other," we can't have equity. Humanize us so that we may be treated humanely. Humanize us so that we may be treated humanely. Loving our children for who they are—and really loving our fellow humans—means accepting us as individuals with our own needs and developmental timelines. We cannot hold them to an external standard that was built by a system that was constructed without taking them into account. Our present system asks children to take a test that's rigged against them—a DBBST—and this is particularly true of our neurodiverse population. We have to reframe how we think about transitioning to adulthood and better scaffold the system in order to allow our children to grow in a way that is natural, healthy, and joyful. I want to take an extra minute to thank REEL Palo Alto and the Community Advisory Committee for elevating my voice. You have given me—a neurodivergent person—a space to speak and people to listen to me, and I very deeply appreciate it. And I also want to thank everybody who attended tonight for letting me be heard. Callie Turk: T hank you so much, Amy. And I know that, um, we wanted to have people put questions into the chat, and I think y'all's going to say a few words about that. But I wondered—before we turn it over to Yale for Q&A—can you just give people a little more, um, information on your background and kind of the journey you took and what college looked like for you? Amy Faigin: And—oh, college was a nightmare for me. Um, I took eight years to finish college, and I had to drop out. I think two and a half times. One of those times, I thought, "I'm gonna go to a different college. I'm gonna go live in a different state." And I spent a year in Arizona, and I don't think any of those credits ended up counting towards my degree in the end. Um, but it was a learning experience. I don't think my brain was really fully "cooked," so to speak, until my mid-20s. Maybe 26 or 27 is when I really figured stuff out. Um, to the extent that I could control my emotions and control and make conscious decisions about how I wanted to navigate through life. Callie Turk: And I think I'm—I'm curious. I—I'm taking advantage of having a microphone to say, like, I—how did your parents help you through that? What were the strategies they used? I mean, I think for a lot of parents thinking about their child going on like an eight-year journey kind of like you did to—and then and coming into your own now—how are your parents helpful with that? What did they do? Amy Faigin: What—well, my mom is a superhero. Um, she's my champion. But I think that that was honestly a very hard time for her too because my mom was more of a typically developed individual. She had a more traditional college trajectory. She finished in a typical amount of time. She got a graduate degree. She got a career. She got a house. And these happened in the sequence that society told her they should happen, and it worked for her. And then she winds up with me, and it's not working for me. Um, and there wasn't a playbook for that. It was a source of a lot of frustration in our relationship for a time. We didn't get along. And I think that I sort of figured out my footing, and I think my mom sort of figured out that the timeline was external—that it didn't matter if I finish something in two years or in two and a half years. It got done. And we came together in understanding at that point, and she's one of my best friends in the world right now. Yael Valek: That's wonderful. Wonderful. So we have, um, one question. We have some that were asked in advance as well. She says, "I'm very interested in college. I have a 20-year-old daughter in college who is struggling to feel included. What would you suggest as possible gap years so that she's not just home?" Amy Faigin: I think that for gap years—that there's no reason to necessarily walk away from the idea of education entirely. There's taking a class or two, or taking a creative class, or an internship, or an apprenticeship, volunteering with animals. That's—or taking a job. I spent part of my gap years in college working at a warehouse where we sold freshwater fish for aquariums. And it was my favorite job on earth because I could wear headphones and basically work out all day carrying around jugs of water with fish in them. And there was no brain activity involved, but it was a time that I sort of gestated internally and grew. Yael Valek: So one of the, um, questions that someone asked before this: "Are what are some like key moments in your life—classes or extracurriculars you participated in or friends or teachers who helped you towards your journey?"Um, how do we promote and cultivate self-awareness as a means to achieving self-determination? Amy Faigin: That's a good question. There's like two pieces to that question, and I'm trying to, like, chunk them apart in my brain. The first chunk is, as far as like getting inspiration, I really believe in punctuated equilibrium as a developmental philosophy. I think that we grow way more than we anticipate in one week and weigh less than we anticipate in one year sometimes. So I think it's about seeking the unknown and accessing it with an open mind. I've learned tons from attending two-hour lectures from artists, and I've learned nothing in six-month biology classes. Um, and then—what was the second half of that question? Sorry. Yael Valek: "How do we cultivate—" No, it's a big question: "How do we cultivate self-awareness as a means to achieving self-determination?" Amy Faigin: Man, how does one have an epiphany? Um, I think that we don't—there's not really a prescriptive place that you find it. I found a lot of it through bibliotherapy, personally—reading a lot and playing video games. And I went through one year of my life where I watched 100 movies in one year. Um, but absorbing all of that information—eventually something clicked. I think that it'll be a different magic thing for everyone—for every individual. Yael Valek: Kimberly, did you want to ask one? Kimberly Eng Lee: Yes. Hi, everyone. Um, I have a question here from someone in the audience, and it is something that resonates for us at home as well. Um, so the question is: "I'm curious what you think about age-inappropriate interests. I know plenty of neurotypical adults who love Disney and other age-inappropriate things, so it's not exclusive to neurodiverse people. Um, and personally—this must be a teacher—I don't care if, um, if my students do, but it makes it hard for them to develop friendships at a high school age level. Do you think we should be pushing kids towards age-appropriate interests so that they can be more accepted by their peers, or should we be pushing the societal change and accepting kids and their interests?" Amy Faigin: I vote for the societal change, to be honest. I know it's not a small task, but I spent a lot of time in middle school and high school denying the things that I loved in order to try and fit in. I know a lot of neurodivergent people mask, and it is part of that existential wound that I described—to not be able to be your authentic self in the world and vulnerable and to be embraced. I love anime, and I love video games, and that is not necessarily an age-appropriate thing for an adult woman. But those things bring me joy. I have found other adults that enjoy those things with me, and we have formed communities where we are able to be our authentic selves with each other. And I found it helps me to connect authentically with my students. So I say: Let your kids love what they love. Embrace them for who they are. Their passions will grow and evolve as they do at whatever rate is right for them. And in the meantime, Disney songs are excellent. Like, I still have "Shiny" stuck in my head from Moana . Yael Valek: Oh, great. Now that's gonna get stuck in my head. Amy Faigin: I had one kid who was singing the "You're Welcome" song all of spring break every time we went to break, and it was beautiful. Okay, someone asks: "Finding connections in college seems to be an essential piece to gaining confidence that can help lead to success in other areas. Without this piece, it seems that nothing else follows. How can students find their people? I've heard this saying for years, and I don't believe my daughter has ever experienced this." Amy Faigin: I did not find my people in college. Um, just so you know. That's—that's one of those timelines that people are told: "You need to make these social connections in college." They can come afterwards. I found a lot of my people on the internet, and I found most of my people through my special interests—which is where you find those most meaningful connections. So video games and anime made me friends. Kimberly Eng Lee: Okay, we have another question from the chat: "At any point, did you try to suppress your autism to be able to fit in? My daughter and other young autistics I work with often try to ignore their disability, and as a result may ignore other peers with disabilities." Amy Faigin: Oh, 150 percent. I—I used to—first of all, cry and say, "I wish I was normal," a lot. And I spent most of my teen years and early to mid-20s thinking, "If I can just fake being social good enough, nobody will notice that I'm autistic, and then I won't be autistic anymore because clearly autism is only how other people seem to experience." Um, this proved to be false. It just left me feeling really detached from myself, and it—it made it harder for me to seek out the accommodations that would have made my life easier. Um, and by the way, I wasn't able to, like, fake my way out of autism. I'm still autistic. But the difference is now that I love myself, and I love my brain and my life, and being autistic is wonderful. And you can rip it out of my cold, dead hands now. Like, I wouldn't trade my brain for a "normal" brain for all of the money in the world. Kimberly Eng Lee: Amy, can you share some, um, ideas for families—um, maybe parents that have not yet, um, been able to connect to their child and their work to their young adult and wondering how to be assured that things are going to be okay? Because for a parent, I think that's the biggest fear. You know, I think it's wonderful that we're hearing your lived experience, um, but—but for families that are not actually having a communication with—with their—with their kids, do you have comments on that? Amy Faigin: Do you mean as in an individual is not verbal, or the individual's not emotionally connecting? Kimberly Eng Lee: Um, either—emotionally or actually, there's not a lot of—there's not a lot of communication between the—the—the individual and—and their family. Amy Faigin: I think that that can come on a delayed timeline. I also want to remind people that neurodivergent people sometimes experience and express affection differently and intimacy differently. I did not give my mother a full-body hug until I was 16 years old because hugging was just way too much sensory information. It's like taking in an entire novel in 10 seconds as far as content, and I just couldn't handle it until my brain had developed to a certain point. People are going to have different timelines. So it might be that this happens in late teens. It might be that it happens in the 20s. It might be that it happens in adulthood. Um, it might be that the specific form of connection that an individual wants isn't how that child communicates. It might be that I could have maybe never hugged my mom, but that doesn't mean I don't love and connect with my mother in other ways that are my personal love language. I still don't hug her that often—I should after this. But, um, we communicate in other manners that are more naturalistic to me. And we have found a way to bridge that language gap, so to speak, and connect with each other. It didn't happen early. The real communication—like I said—didn't happen until my brain started to solidify at like 26, 27. Um, for every person, it's going to be a different timeline, and it's going to be a different end result. But connection is very possible. Kimberly Eng Lee: Thank you for assuring us of that. Um, another question: "Is there a right age to tell your child—um, to tell their child about their diagnosis?" Amy Faigin: Um, I think it depends on the kid to an extent and to the family to an extent. Some kids are going to take that diagnosis better than others. Um, and I also think that it depends a lot on the context and how it's addressed in the family. When I learned that I was autistic, it was in an admittedly confrontational and contentious manner, and it didn't make me feel very excited about being an autistic person. I think that if you introduce the idea to children that neurodiversity exists—that everybody has a different brain, and that those different brains are what make us different, beautiful people—and, "This is the name that we call the shape of your brain," and don't attach a value judgment to it—but that can happen relatively early in development. I—I mean, I plan to tell my kids as soon as they can have a conversation—so like six or seven. I hope my kids are autistic. I expect them to be. Yael Valek: So Amy, you're so inspiring. I'm wondering if you feel like—you know, this is just my own question—but, um, why it is that you ended up in such a different place from some of the statistics that you described in your presentation? Amy Faigin: Um, because I had the good fortune of implementing some of those solutions in my life. I had the good fortune of being surrounded by an education system at Bridges Academy and a community through my friends and family that understood me to the best extent at the time and were willing to embrace me. So I had opportunities to grow at a delayed rate. My family—my mother wasn't thrilled about it, I'm sure—but she allowed it to happen. So I was able to grow up in a manner that was naturalistic—with patience and support. And I had educators that let that happen. And I had people who taught me that my autism wasn't something that made me less of a person, even though that was the external narrative. And I was able to sit there and live in my own brain and go, "Wait a minute, I'm a whole person. I'm gonna go tell the world about this." Kimberly Eng Lee: Okay, I have another question: "At what age—um, at what age were you able to figure out what kind of support you needed to be successful?" Amy Faigin: Unfortunately, I was delayed on that front because I didn't like my diagnosis, and I thought I was gonna cure myself by just dressing cute enough and flirting with boys and making friends with popular girls. Um, I don't even know what "popular" means anymore. But so I didn't figure that out until maybe my late teens or early 20s. What I will tell you is that my students have it figured out. I have 12-year-olds who say, "I need time and a half on this test because this subject gives me anxiety, and anxiety makes me work more slowly." Cool. Um, so I think that's part of the reason I encourage giving a diagnosis early—because a diagnosis is not a value judgment. It's a tool and an identifier. This is how you can say, "Here's my brain shape, and this is what I need." And I find that very valuable. My kids know their brain shape, and they can tell me what they need. Um, maybe from the age of 12 or older. Kimberly Eng Lee: Right. And here's a follow-on: "Kind of how—how were—how you were able to to discern what kinds of supports you needed, and then maybe if there were a few key events that you could recall that impacted your path?" Amy Faigin: The biggest asset for me was my community and finding other neurodivergent people to talk to and to ask questions and to share memes with. We communicate a lot via memes. There's a photo that says, "Autism is like a sundae bar," and it has all these different toppings for things like gastric issues or anxiety or dyspraxia or dyslexia or obsessive-compulsive disorder or high attention to detail. And every autistic person has a different combination. And just to see it laid out like that—we're constantly sharing information like that within our community. In addition to resources like, "This accommodation worked for me." Um, so I do feel like finding the tribe, so to speak, is enormously valuable—not just in terms of feeling connected, but in terms of figuring out, "How do I navigate a world that wasn't made for me?" If other people have navigated it, we can share the map. Kimberly Eng Lee: Great. There's a question in the chat that, um, and it's related to college, and it asks which colleges you attended and what you'd recommend—but maybe also for other autistics—but maybe also what are the qualities of, um, of, uh, higher education that people should be thinking about? Amy Faigin: I went to Otis College of Art and Design on a dare because I was a hyper-competitive person who was planning on going to med school. I didn't get into med school, but my art teacher dared me to apply to art school, and I pivoted, um, very abruptly. And I like Otis College of Art and Design, and I think that they have—since I graduated—become better equipped to deal with neurodivergent individuals and embrace them and give them a more valuable learning experience. It was a hard experience for me, but not one I regret. I have heard good things about Landmark College—specifically for neurodivergent individuals—as a really welcoming space and one of those semi-transitional colleges. And I think it's CIP in Long Beach, um, also has a transitional program for neurodivergent students. Um, there's also a link from Callie in the chat for Thrive College Counseling, where Dr. Marcy Schwartz has advice on that front, um, because it's been admittedly a hot minute since I was in college or looking at colleges. Callie Turk: Yes. And Marcy—she was part of the K-12 team for the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit, so we got to know her really well. And she specializes in helping families with children with learning differences think about college and what will work best for their children. Amy Faigin: Lynn, you asked me a really tricky question: "How can parents figure out which autistic-related groups out there are promoting your viewpoint when there are so many out there with different viewpoints?" I think the biggest indicator for whether an advocacy group is a good one or maybe a less trustworthy one is whether they are elevating and engaging with the voices that they are claiming to protect. I think that if you are looking for a group to support your autistic child, do they have autistic people that they are communicating with to guide them? Do they have autistic speakers? Do they have autistic people on their staff? I think that that's one of the biggest indicators, um, which is why I'm so happy to be with REELand CAC as an autistic and neurodivergent person and have my voice be elevated. Yael Valek: We love hearing your voice. So I know you touched on this in your presentation, but someone asked: "What are the most useful and important life skills for transitioning to adulthood?" Amy Faigin: Executive function is a big one, and that sometimes can be one that's slow to grow—especially that's one of the ones that we tend to get hit with delays. But the ability to hold multiple tasks in your mind at the same time and navigate them effectively—how many times are you driving home from work and you're thinking, "I need to stop by the grocery store. The grocery list is on my phone. I need to make sure I stop by the bank and get cash first." All of those steps can be more difficult for a neurodivergent person to hold in their brain at one time. And that's a skill that we need to work to develop. And that sort of ties into economic management—remembering to do things like get quarters for the laundry machine and pay your water bill and pay your rent and make sure your credit card doesn't go into default. Holding all of those tasks in mind. So I think economic management and executive function in general would be my two biggest ones. Kimberly Eng Lee: So, Amy, you talked about, um, about encouraging families to decouple timeline, right, from from their, um, from their child's experience. Can you describe for us, um, you know, what was that like as it clicked for those those particular life skills that you talked about? You know, I mean, I think we will often look at that, uh, at others and say, "Oh, they've already got it," and they don't. And and it's hard to—it's hard to wrestle with, um, seeing your your adult child—adult child—like, "I don't think they get it yet," but and then you're wondering, "Will it ever come?" So since you've kind of you're on the other side of that now and that's that has, um, you know, you've you've developed that maturity—can you explain what that's like? Is that just like an aha moment, or, um— Amy Faigin See, I don't—I don't think I'm 100% on the other side of it is the thing. I think that adulthood is like an asymptote in math. It's a point that we are constantly getting closer to but never actually can touch—that platonic ideal of the grown-up who has everything together. I don't think they exist. I think that every once in a while, you spill coffee on your socks, and life just gets in the way. But I think that we gain more experience, and the days that we drop everything and lose our minds and can't get it done become fewer and fewer—hopefully. And we also can not only internally manage but create our own adult networks that help us externally manage as well—because you're not really an adult on your own. You're an adult within a community. Kimberly Eng Lee: How can neurodiverse people build a life in their passion areas?" Amy Faigin: They say that if you get work at what you love, then you'll never work a day in your life. But that's not true. You will just work much harder and take it much more personally. Um, but build—build well. Recognize need. I don't think that anybody is going to necessarily make a living braiding horsehair. Um, maybe—maybe somebody. But if you find a job at the racetrack, maybe the horses need their manes braided. So find somebody who's willing to pay you to do what you already like doing. Callie Turk: Did anyone ask you yet to put up the references and resources because Kim Vargas was asking for—oh, let me—what I'll do is I will grab—let me find it real quick. And then—and then Lynn has another question, and, um, I'm just going to pick a couple more from the pre-submitted questions and put them in the chat for you, Ellen, Kimberly, to sort through. Amy Faigin: So real quickly, this is a link to the slideshow, and in the speaker notes, there are links to all of my sources. Oh, I just sent it to share to Sherry privately instead of the whole chat. There we go. Now everyone can see. That's the presentation link. Kimberly Eng Lee: Okay. So Lynn's question is: "Are there any tools—tools, strategies, or technologies—that you've been that you found to be helpful to help you to scaffold the executive functioning?" Amy Faigin: My phone. Oh my god, phones are amazing. I grew up in the paper planner days when they would hand you that, um, schedule—you had that little book. I can't even remember what it's called. Oh my gosh. And it had all of the dates, and you were supposed to write down every single homework assignment. And I was so excited about it, and I would fill out two days worth of pages, and then a half page—oh, and then it was lost at the bottom of my backpack forever. My phone vibrates. So my, uh, my schedule vibrates and gets my attention, and that's great. Um, and it also has maps. An agenda—that's what it's called. They still hand them out every school year. And if I were still getting them, they would still be at the bottom of my purse Oh, 100%. And all my homework assignments ended up there too. What's wonderful about technology is when I was in high school, I would do my homework on my computer and email it to my teachers. It never got lost in the bottom of my backpack. If anything, it just get lost in my files, but then my teacher would scold me, and it was still there. It wasn't a crumpled pile. Yael Valek: Yes. All the Schoology kind of systems have helped with that a lot. So somebody now asks: "What advice do you have for how to handle the anxiety of the environment and sensory challenges?" Amy Faigin: I do a couple of things for that. I, um, first of all, brace myself for the day. Um, I—I say that I'm putting on my war paint when I put on my makeup and my armor when I'm putting on my clothes. And I make sure that I am specifically choosing clothes and to do my hair in such a way that it will leave me physically comfortable for the whole day. So I don't wear like a nice button-down blouse if I know that I have to look presentable for more than an hour. I'll wear like a soft fabric dress because I know that the sensory issue is going to distract me. So I plan in advance. It's sort of how people do "phone, wallet, keys." I do a sensory check. The other thing I do is I make sure that the people in the space that I'm going to know that I am neurodivergent as often as that is safe. It's not always safe. But that way, if I escape into the back room because I need to get away from noise, or if I disappear on a walk to go around the block to get away from people, that isn't a surprising thing. It's how I am managing so that I can participate fully. Callie Turk: So, Amy, I'm sorry—I forgot to put with that question that it was also in the specific context of college. I mean, you're those are all great, and those might all apply to college, but, um, we did put in our Q&A for the pre-, um, submitted questions—I don't know if you saw this—I think you did—was the panel they did at the UC Davis Mind Institute that was the five women who attended or were alumni of UC Davis. And I thought they had some really great suggestions about how to think through college and how you're, you know, like, going and doing the path ahead of time—like, no, looking for sensory-safe spaces along the path, you know, packing their own lunch so they didn't have to go into crowded cafeterias. And I—I thought that was a great presentation, and I put the link in in that other document. I'll repost that link. But I'm curious—when you were in college, where there are specific things beyond what you've already shared, which was more than enough, but if there were is anything specific about the college environment—because that was the original question. Amy Faigin: I—I honestly had a rough time in college because I didn't think to do those things for the most part. It was, um—you sort of pick them up as you go along. You realize that, "Oh, I have snacks in my bag, and I had a less terrible day. I should pack snacks more often." Um, I would also say bring an escape. Sometimes you just have to pull the emotional fire alarm, and it's great to have a book or a Game Boy—or, I guess, Nintendo Switch—and just kind of find a quiet corner. And when the teacher calls a 10-minute break, take an actual break from the class mentally and exit that space and go into a book or a game or a video just for those 10 minutes before returning. I find that those breaks—the internal ones—are very valuable. Yael Valek: I see we have a question here that says, um, "Did you accept your diagnosis early? Sorry, was diagnosed with autism in March but till now he's still refusing to accept it. He's afraid of others looking differently at him and hated that I persuaded him to get a diagnosis. He felt his life changed because he now has a burden." Amy Faigin: I know that feeling. Um, I really do. When I got diagnosed, uh, the first thing I did was I asked my mom, "Does this mean that I'm stupid?" And she goes, "You're in your head. You know you're not stupid." I don't think of the autism diagnosis as a burden. It's a lens through which you can understand yourself. And with clarity comes power. So when you get the autism diagnosis or the ADHD diagnosis or the bipolar diagnosis, the truth is you haven't changed. You are the exact same person you were 45 minutes before the medical appointment where they handed you the name of your brain shape. All they did was describe who you were before you walked into the office in an admittedly medical term. That term is now your sword through which you can cut the brush, so to speak, that has been inhibiting your life. You can explain it. You can now find accommodations and get them. Okay. But no, I didn't accept it at first. I did not like it at all. Kimberly Eng Lee: There's another question that came in advance says: "My 18-year-old takes so long to make social connections and gives up too soon in new situations. He won't go to therapy or coaching, believing that nobody can teach him these skills. The result is he hasn't made even one friend in college this semester. Do I force him to get help or just watch him flounder? Does he have to hit bottom before he'll accept help? What do parents see us—I think seek for help understanding their young adults—who do parents seek help from to understand their young adults?" Amy Faigin: I—I think I'd have to know the individual in question before I could really make a call like where is therapy the ideal line. I think therapy is great. I think everyone should go to therapy, but not everyone feels that way. I don't think that it's fair to force somebody necessarily to get the help. And I don't think that that's how you get consent in help. Maybe instead of saying, "You need to go to therapy," or, "You need to get coaching or counseling," find therapeutic environments that you can participate with your son in. Go places with him. Meet people with him. Find special interests—are gonna are like my favorite thing to gravitate to. Find what he's interested in, and rather than worrying about getting him into a social group for people that have his neurology, get him into a social group for people who like the same things he likes. If he likes anime, go to anime conventions with him. I've seen people do parent-child cosplays. They're cool. People are going to come up and want to take photos. You'll get interactions. You'll trade business cards. You'll buy comics. If he's really into biology, go to the aquarium. If he's really into space, take him to the observatory. So let the interest guide rather than the disability or diagnosis. Yael Valek: Um, I have another question here: "How do you help someone who is very easily overwhelmed with anxiety on even small tasks to even begin to think about the future, let alone approach or begin a long-term plan?" Amy Faigin: Bring the anxiety down first before you try and accomplish anything. You're not going to get any kind of cognitive function while a person is in fight-or-flight mode. So put any choices aside for a minute until the emotional status is such that you can engage. Um, as far as thinking future-wise in a manner that's not so anxiety-inducing, my mom teaches me to start at the end and work backwards. So to set—what is my goal for the end product? Now, what is the halfway mark? Now, what is the halfway mark? Until you've gotten to, "Well, if I'm going to be president of the United States in 30 years, I guess I need to brush my teeth tonight." And you've pulled the goal backwards until it's something that's manageable. Kimberly Eng Lee: That's great. That sounds familiar. Um, so, uh, another question: "Besides the special school like Bridges, are there other types of experiences or family habits that can help autistic students to develop that powerful sense of ability and ambition?" Amy Faigin: I think it starts at home. I think it starts with embracing the child fully—and the parent and the siblings and the rest of the family members really looking at the kid and not seeing something wrong with them. I think that that's square one. Because if you start from that point—"This is who my child is, and they are okay, and who they are is okay"—then every interaction you have with them and every choice you make on their behalf comes from a place of not trying to correct your child but rather trying to uplift and embrace them more fully. And I think that when you let that guide your relationship with them and how you help them navigate the world, they will pick up on it. And if you don't see anything wrong with them, they don't see anything wrong with themselves. Then they will not let anybody else act as if there's something wrong with them. Yael Valek: It's beautiful. Um, I did have a question, uh, related to that. This my question is, um, so—we don't have a Bridges up here. We keep talking about, uh, trying to get them to expand up here. Um, but what can we do in, um, the schools that our children are in here—um, minor in just you know, public, local public school? Um, I assume—did you start out going to local public school before you transferred to Bridges? And, um, do you have any recommendations on what we can do to support our kids there? Amy Faigin : I think our schools need more money—teacher doesn't say that. And I think that we need a curriculum overhaul that allows for differentiation because I see differentiation as curriculum of curriculum as one of those cognitive foundations that allows people to be different from one another. When we divide students into traditional education, gifted education, special education, 2e education, they start to apply value judgments early on. And I think that giving students opportunities to remain together and have their education differentiated within the classroom—so I'm more of a visual learner, I'm going to go to the visual learning corner; I'm more of an auditory learner, I want to listen to the lecture—and make those resources available. Then kids see each other being different, and they stop applying value judgments to those differences. It becomes their norm. Callie Turk: I love that. I was saying I was going to take advantage of the fact that we're co-hosting also to ask Amy a question, which is—I think most—I think I think a big—I think it's a big mind shift for parents to say, "I'm going to try not to pay attention to the timeline." And this is hard, especially in our family because, you know, as you know, my 2e daughter—my, my autistic daughter—has a twin. So, you know, it's very tricky because one is on—they're on different paths. I—I feel like—and I'm totally comfortable with that, but they're not. I don't think they would be. So I guess I'm looking, you know—I also—this is kind of a big question. I also think so many parents think about the regular timeline, and it's it's a fear thing, right? Like, I think in parenting, you can always sort of look at how you're behaving and say, "Am I—am I acting out of love for this child, or I'm acting—am I acting out of fear for their future?" And the fear is usually rooted in love as well, right? It's like, "I—I'm worried." So which which one is driving my choices? And I feel like I'm—I'm coming to be very comfortable with, "Hey, everyone's on their own path, and it's great, and we'll get there. We'll all get to where we need to be, and wherever that is—wherever that is." But I do wonder if you have any words of wisdom: A, for when kids are having a hard time accepting that—like, especially like twins, so you can compare yourself so easily to a sibling—but kids in our area compare themselves to their peers a lot—a lot, right? Yeah. I'd like to hear a little bit about any advice for helping our children accept maybe that it's all right to have their own timeline. But the other one would be advice you have for parents to help them get out of that fear mindset. Amy Faigin : Um, for the parents' fear or the child's fear? Callie Turk: Their own fear is okay, right? Um, I think the question is, "Am I doing this out of love, or am I doing this out of fear?" Amy Faigin : It's also, "Why is this important?" When you are tearing your hair out because your child refuses to enroll in college or refuses to learn how to drive or refuses to go out with friends—um, why? Why—why am I tearing my hair out over this? What is my fear? I name the fear. "I'm afraid that my child will never learn how to drive. I'm afraid that my child will never, you know, live independently. Will never have friends." And and pull back. "Is this realistic? Do I really think that my child is going to be 60 years old and incapable of sleeping without the lights on?" And chances are, no. So would it be the end of the world if they were 58 years old and still needed a nightlight and figured it out at 59? And it wouldn't. So they're going to get there. My younger brother used to have to sleep in my parents' room, and he did this until an age that would embarrass him if I revealed it. And people used to ask my mother, "Aren't you worried? You know, he's getting a little old to be sleeping in your bedroom." And he would show up every night with a pillow and a blanket, and he would like kind of salute my folks and then lay down at the foot of their bed on the floor. And my mom said, "I have a feeling by the time he goes to college, he'll have figured out the night fears. It's gonna happen." And the thing that makes us afraid, I think so often, is that other people tell us, "You have to graduate high school at 18. You have to finish college at 22. You need to finish graduate school or your trade school by 25. Own a house by 30." I don't know anybody my age who owns a house. Um, these are stories that are told to us from outside—from older generations that lived in different economic circumstances. They're from the media. They're from fiction, to be honest, a lot of the time. So instead of worrying about, "This is how it should be,"—"How will it make my child healthy? How will it make my child safe?" They're gonna get there. Growth doesn't stop in the human brain. Like, it—it doesn't until you reach the end of your life. That's when myelinogenesis ceases. Yael Valek: So to what extent would you say to parents to nudge toward some of these goals while still being supportive and caring? What is the balance? Amy Faigin : I tell my students that I'm like—when they're when I'm bothering them, I say, "I'm the most singular annoying adult in your life right now." Um, and I can nudge pretty hard. I don't know—it's one of those like it's not baking where there's exact ingredient lists. It's more like a sauté where it's to your taste and to your kid. Every kid has a different stress—stress threshold, and you want to make sure that you are pushing them to the point where their stress that encourages growth—the good stress, the motivation—but not to the point where it shuts them down emotionally and impairs their cognitive function. When people are stressed to the point of fight-or-flight, they cease growing altogether. Yael Valek: And how did you know that some of the school environments you were in were not the right ones for you? When should parents look to make a change? Amy Faigin : I had reached a point in my depression when I—before I went to Bridges—where I was running away from home very frequently, and the police were bringing me back. They told my parents that if they had to bring me back again that I would be put into the foster care system. I had, um, very erratic behaviors. I was engaging in self-destructive habits, um, because a lot—I hadn't developed any impulse control, and I had so much anger and so much pain that I was lashing out at really everyone around me. And I think the breaking point—I am like the second or third time I ran away from home, and my brother had snuck a cell phone in my bag because, um, he wanted me to be able to call home. And I did end up calling home, but by then the police were already there to pick me up. And I think my mom just realized this wasn't how she wanted her family to work and that something was very wrong with the system that I was currently in—that this wasn't who I was to be acting out so severely, um—and she started to really actively find solutions for me. Don't let it get to that point, though. Like, there was—there was no information out there when I was that young. People were like, "Girls aren't autistic, so we don't know what your daughter is." And, um, also, "Traditional child-rearing won't work on autistic kids, but we don't know what does work," was basically the advice she got at first. Create a space where your child feels safe communicating with you so that they can tell you when they're having a hard time. And when they tell you they're having a hard time, believe them. Callie Turk: Your mom really does sound like a superhero. Amy Faigin : Oh, she's my champion. I—favorite human. I think she may be on here. So thank you—that's why I'm asking my—that's why I'm watching what I say about her and not talking too much trash. No, she—she really ended up blazing a trail where there wasn't one when it came to bringing me up. Callie Turk: Yeah. I think we have time for one more question, and there's one here from Mahala: "How do you know when the goal set for yourself or your kids is manageable or not? Because when they are not manageable, then the failure follows, and it can be very traumatizing. I'm talking about goals like career, college choices, or even smaller like everyday stuff." Amy Faigin : I think that that kind of comes back to modeling humanity and humility in your own life. Failure is normal and inevitable, and it's about how we respond to it and how we make choices to try and avoid it and accept that we made the best choices we could at the time and things sometimes don't work out. Um, and to recognize—sometimes I—I—I mean, I think I'm—I'm the best adult in the room. I passed the DBBST with the highest score ever, and I still make mistakes sometimes. And I sometimes overexert myself and think I can pull something off and absolutely cannot. And you just kind of sometimes you have to have a bad day and accept it and move through it and listen to like a sad album on repeat three times and have a bowl of ice cream and go to bed a little early and then wake up in the face the next day. Kimberly Eb: Great. Well, um, Amy, we've—we've come to the close of our time, and we could really listen to you, um, forever. Um, and it's just been such a privilege to, um, you know, to hear a real lived experience. Um, you know, I think on behalf of of, um, the Palo Alto CAC and REEL, and more importantly, I think each of the parents, um, and community members that are that are on this call—you know, we, um, we just thank you that you have modeled for us vulnerability, you know, and, um, and just showed us your bravery in, um, in in being yourself and and and sharing that with us. So, um, you know, we—we can't thank you enough for that. It's—it's a—it's unfortunately a a rare occasion that we, um, can see someone as and hear from someone as real as you. And I think what you're doing is you're actually showing us that this is the kind of, um, um, relationship that we want—that you're encouraging us to build with our own, um, in our own family and with our own—with our own children. Um, I just—speaking as a as a parent, you know, I think what you said about, um, asking whether or not this is something that we're doing or wondering or, um, out of love or out of fear—um, just as as a parent—that is, uh, myself—uh, just having that—asking myself that question all the time and and not and like you said, naming it, um, and then going in and embracing—embracing my kid. Um, so we really, really thank you for your time tonight, and, um, thank you again for—like I said—giving me a space to have this voice. Amy Faigin : I appreciate it. I think that this is how we build that brighter future—is by listening to each other and communicating. Thank you. Kimberly Eng Lee: You're precious. Thank you. Calile's on—you're on mute, Callie. Callie Turk: Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful night. Love your kids. We hope to see you at another event soon. Amy Faigin : Love yourselves as well. Yael Valek: Thank you, Amy. That was truly inspirational. Good night, everyone. Have a good evening. Amy Faigin : Thank you so much again for giving me your time in your ears. See you soon.

Transcript below Monday, Mar 29, 2021, 7-8:30pm Panel Featuring: Dr. Kari Berquist, Psychologist, http://kariberquist.com/about.html Nancy Kong, Educational Therapist Toni Ratzburg, Clinical Director, MFT, https://www.beaconwellnessteam.com/toni-ratzburg-lmft-52576 Knowing how your brain learns—and talking with your teachers about how they can modify assignments to fit your learning needs—is touted as one of the most important skills 2e students should develop. 2e kids often lose self-esteem when they aren’t able to learn the way the classroom or assignments are organized. Students gain confidence with the success that comes with having their environment or assignments adjusted so they can access their learning abilities. Explore the prerequisites to self-advocacy, discover how to help students understand what their brain needs to succeed at school, learn specific developmentally-appropriate techniques to try with your 2e learners, and gain skills to help you and your child communicate with educators about your child’s needs. Co-Sponsored with CA C and PTAC Transcript Below Welcome & Introductions Just as a reminder, our event tonight is co-hosted by REEL, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education in Palo Alto, and PTAC, which is the Palo Alto Council of PTAs. I'm Calli, the co-founder of REEL. We support twice-exceptional, neurodivergent learners by building bridges between their parents and educators. Tonight’s panel is focused on self-advocacy—what it looks like, how it evolves, and how we can support it. We’re thrilled to have a mix of student, parent, and educator voices here to share their experiences. Understanding Twice-Exceptionality Twice-exceptional, or 2e, refers to students who are both gifted and have learning differences. These students often face unique challenges in school because their strengths can mask their struggles, and vice versa. It’s important to recognize that 2e students may need accommodations while also being capable of advanced work. Supporting them means seeing the whole child—not just their diagnosis or their test scores. Student Voices: Self-Advocacy in Action Student 1: I used to feel like I had to hide parts of myself to fit in. But once I started speaking up about what I needed—extra time, breaks, or just a heads-up before a big assignment—it got easier. Self-advocacy isn’t just about asking for help. It’s about knowing yourself and being brave enough to say, “This is what works for me.” Student 2: I learned to email my teachers before class if I was having a tough day. It helped them understand I wasn’t being lazy—I just needed a little flexibility. Student 3: Sometimes I use humor to explain my needs. Like, “My brain is a Ferrari with bicycle brakes.” It helps people get it without making it awkward. Parent Perspectives Parent 1: At first, I thought I had to do all the advocating for my child. But over time, I realized they needed to find their own voice. I started coaching them on how to talk to teachers and role-playing conversations at home. Parent 2: It’s hard watching your child struggle, especially when they’re misunderstood. But when they start speaking up for themselves, it’s powerful. You see their confidence grow. Parent 3: We use visuals and scripts to help our child prepare for meetings. It’s not about perfection—it’s about practice and progress. Educator Insights Educator 1: Listening is key. When a student tells me what they need, I take it seriously—even if it’s unconventional. That’s how trust is built. Educator 2: I try to offer choices whenever possible. Do you want to present your project as a video or a slide deck? That flexibility helps 2e students shine. Educator 3: Collaboration with parents is essential. They know their child best, and when we work together, the student benefits. Q&A and Community Reflections Audience Member: What advice would you give to a parent whose child is just starting to advocate for themselves? Panel Response: Start small. Encourage your child to speak up in low-stakes situations. Celebrate their efforts, not just the outcomes. Audience Member: How do you handle setbacks when advocacy doesn’t go as planned? Panel Response: Normalize it. Advocacy is a skill, and like any skill, it takes time. Reflect, regroup, and try again. Closing Remarks Thank you to all our panelists for sharing your stories and strategies. Self-advocacy is a journey, and tonight we’ve seen how powerful it can be when students, parents, and educators walk that path together. We encourage you to stay connected, share resources, and continue building inclusive spaces where every learner can thrive.

July 7, 22 7-8:30pm PST Register here Watch recording of Intro to 2e (20 mins) from our first meeting We're teaming up with Parents Helping Parents to offer a quarterly support group for parents of twice-exceptional children. Join us to ask questions and share answers.

Do you have a bright child who struggles to show it at school? Are they doing advanced math at home for fun but won’t fill out a simple worksheet at school? Have they memorized elaborate sequences of historical events but can’t remember to turn in their homework? You may have a twice exceptional (2e) child! Yael Valek and Callie Turk, founders of Resilience and Engagement for Every Learner (REEL) as well as parents of twice exceptional (2e) kids, present an interactive overview of 2e - what it is, why it matters, and effective approaches for supporting 2e learners. 2e students experience both high ability and learning challenges, which presents unique challenges in the classroom, including asynchronous development that may lead to anxiety and behavior issues. Explore strategies to help your child thrive at school. See the transcript here: Callie Turk: Okay, so I thank you all so much for joining us for this session, "Intro to the 2e Learner and Supporting Your Smart and Struggling Student." In this session today, you know, you may have joined because as a parent, it might be confusing—like, why is my smart student struggling at school? Or why is my child so uneven across different subjects? They're very resistant to doing work—why is that? And they're exhibiting some very disruptive or unusual or frightening behaviors—what does that mean? And why are they anxious about school? And how can I work with the school to support them? How can I bring out the best in my child? And when is my child at their most joyful? And how do we get more of that joy into their school experience? So those are the kinds of things we're hoping to talk about today and give you some insights into. We do have a lot to cover, and while we're hoping to have time for Q&A at the end of the session, it may be very tight. This session is usually designed to last at least an hour and a half. We're trying to fit a lot in, so please consider joining us at the lunch and learn that's taking place right after this session if you'd like to continue the conversation. We'll put the link to that in the chat and hope to see you there. And for anyone who's joined late—again, we are recording this session—you might want to consider your video use and your first name only. So, hello and welcome! I am Callie Turk, and I am joined by Yael Valek, and we are the co-founders of a local group called REEL, which stands for Resilience and Engagement for Every Learner. We strive to ensure that twice-exceptional students are thriving in school by raising parent and educator awareness and understanding through resources, tools, services, events, and workshops. And we are just all about building bridges between the parents and educators of twice-exceptional learners. We're also the parents of 2e learners ourselves. So, my kids attended Palo Alto Unified in the past, and Yael's are still at Palo Alto Unified. You can find us at these email addresses, and if you have any follow-up questions, you're welcome to reach out to us. Today, we are going to cover a few main things. We are going to first do an overview of what 2e is—since this is an intro, and some of you may not know that much about twice-exceptionality. We're then going to walk through two different vignettes of students who are twice-exceptional. We're going to sprinkle in a very little thing about 504s and IEPs and then hopefully have time for Q&A at the end. I do want to make one disclaimer up front, and that is: Yael and I are the founders of REEL, and we have a lot of experience talking with, working with, and training educators and parents and educating ourselves about twice-exceptional children. But we are not medical or psychiatric professionals, so our advice is just that—it's advice based on our experience and understanding of 2e learners. I'm gonna hand this over to you, Yael, who's gonna start us off with a little bit of storytime. Yael Valek: So this is something that my son made in third grade. He was bright and engaging, but getting him to do any classwork that was not in his area of interest was very difficult. So you may be familiar with that. And he was showing less and less enthusiasm for school. I ended up having a conversation with Oren's third-grade teacher about 2e students and their needs, and she changed the way she thought about assignments. So this is an example of an assignment where she wanted them to show the difference between a law and a rule. Oren has a very vivid imagination, and he asked, "Could he make his law from his imaginary Bear Land, Babalaya?" And the teacher's first reaction was, "No, you have to make a real law." But after hearing about 2e, she thought about it and said, "What's the point of this lesson? It's to show a rule versus a law, so who cares if he makes it from an imaginary land?" So she allowed it. So he made this law that art fairs are not allowed—in reaction to me taking him to too many that summer. And from then on, he was engaged in the class. He participated well, and all the other students thought this was so funny, so they started making more interesting laws, and it elevated the whole classroom discussion. So this is just one small vignette, and we're not saying it's easy to solve all the 2e students' challenges in this way. But it encouraged us that with small changes in the classroom, a lot of challenges can be overcome. And he ended up connecting with this teacher and becoming one of the star students in the class because she made these changes. And so we wanted to share this 2e lens with you so that hopefully you can make changes like this for your students in their classrooms. Callie Turk: So, what is 2e? So, 2e students have distinguishing strengths—high abilities and/or potential in one or more areas—but they also, at the same time, have complex challenges such as ADHD, specific learning challenges such as dyslexia, they may be on the autism spectrum, they may have high anxiety. And the difference between 2e kids and other kids is: All kids have strengths and challenges. In some areas, they may have a great strength in math and a challenge in writing. But 2e kids are in the middle, having both at all times. So, Seth Perler—he's a famous executive functioning coach—he says, "In a nutshell, if you have a child who you know is bright, but they struggle to show it in school, they may be 2e." And there are estimates that about five percent of kids may be 2e. We anecdotally think it's higher in Silicon Valley. And so this is always important to keep in mind—this being in the green at all times. So we're used to looking at bell curves when we think about students and where they fall. And of course, no one student is in the middle of the bell curve exactly on everything. But most students fall within a little bit plus or minus of the middle of the bell curve across all areas. But this is an example of a 2e profile, and as you can see, the gaps are at extremes. So this is an example of a child who has extremely high general intellectual ability and very high mathematical reasoning, but as you can see, the processing speed is on the low end of the curve. And even though it's just on the low end of average—so that might not show up as something to be alarmed about—the difference between those two is very large, and so it's very confusing for the student. So the child's math scores are showing up as just above average, and the teacher wonders, "Why is this child having trouble in math? Why are they having anxiety and inability to complete assignments?" But what's happening inside the child's brain is that the processing speed feels like an extreme deficit to them, and their gifted math ability is masking the processing speed challenges. And the processing speed challenges are masking the extreme math ability. And so they end up appearing average. So because of this discrepancy—and this happens to my own child—math can be both too hard and too easy at the same time. The child feels that math reasoning comes so easily to them—they're ready to tackle more advanced concepts—but they can't process information quickly or write a lot of answers, so they feel like a failure, and they can't complete a basic, repetitive math worksheet. You can also see that social skills are falling very low on the bell curve, and appropriate behavior may be falling low on the bell curve. And this is typical of developmental asynchrony—you know, developing asynchronously. You may have a fourth grader: They may do math at a seventh-grade level, they may write at a second-grade level, they may socialize at a first-grade level, and they may reason at a 12th-grade level. So you can imagine how confusing that is for the child—and let alone for their parents and their educators. And we just want to point out: This is just one example of a 2e curve. Every 2e child is different. Some are very strong in writing and may fall lower on the curve in math. And that makes it even more confusing because if you've met one 2e child, you've met one 2e child. And although we talk a lot about the struggles of 2e children, we definitely want to emphasize the amazing strengths. Many 2e people are the ones you hear in the news that are changing the world. So one of the strengths of dyslexia is that they make connections across disciplines—like Steven Spielberg. That they have 3D spatial perspectives and thinking—like Steve Jobs. That they have narrative reasoning—recalling stories, episodes, and concepts—like Whoopi Goldberg. These are all strengths of dyslexia. And then creative, out-of-the-box thinking—like Dav Pilkey. Amazing enthusiasm—like Simone Biles. And risk-taking, being adventurous, seeking novelty, and curious—like Richard Branson. These are all strengths of ADHD. And then knowledge, skill, passion, and strong motivation in interest areas—like Sir Anthony Hopkins. Intently focused on details—like Dan Aykroyd. Logical thinking and honest—like Greta Thunberg. And you may have heard—last weekend on Saturday Night Live—Elon Musk came out as being also on the spectrum. These are all strengths of ASD. And I just want you to imagine these amazing world-changers in the classroom in K through 12 and what that must have been like. Yael Valek: As Callie said, we really do want to spend more time focusing on strengths and struggles as much as possible when we're working with these kids. But in terms of understanding what some of the struggles might look like—if you're just getting to know about twice-exceptionality—one is masking. And this is the concept that you know you have a gift or a talent, but it gets hidden by your struggle. Or you're struggling so much that no one can see your gift or talent—or vice versa. And a lot of times, people just don't know. And a lot of times, what happens is these kids go to school, and everyone says they're doing fine, but then they fall apart when they get home. So they may talk about really deep, complex concepts, but they may be just below or even at grade level in reading. Or it may be the quiet girl who does her work but is kind of unengaged socially or in group work. This is something too that we saw happening more—not being able to do this as much—with virtual learning because all the scaffolds and coping mechanisms that a child had in place that worked in school maybe didn't work at home. Sometimes you'll see kids who are really the class clowns—they make a lot of jokes—and this is often to deflect their weak skill areas. And they might be avoiding classes because that's their only easy way out. So that is something we see, especially among—I would say—kids with dyslexia who don't want to have to read out loud in class. We see many different kinds of sensory challenges. Sounds in the classroom might bother them more than you would expect. Maybe they were even exhausted by one Zoom meeting. On the other hand, we saw a lot of kids actually did better at home because there weren't quite as many sensory challenges. So it's interesting when you see a child who has sensory challenges in environments where they don't have control over the situation. We can see that becomes more—if something is really surprising to them that they can't manage on their own. You definitely see social challenges with kids who are twice-exceptional. They might wander around alone on the playground, or they might weave in and out of social groups but not ever really join in on one. So they just can have these problems even if they're not on the spectrum. A lot of times, people think social challenges are only related to people who are autistic, but many people who have learning differences will start avoiding being around other people. Or they'll realize that they're different from other people in some way, and it can become a problem. Oftentimes, when we really start to notice a child is twice-exceptional, it's because they've started to be very resistant. They maybe refuse to read out loud in the classroom, or they don't want to use the whiteboard to share their answers, or they argue with you ad nauseam about their school assignments. This is sort of when parents usually start to really take notice because their child now is displaying these really challenging behaviors—challenging, resistant behavior. And then we have unexpected underperformance. So, you know, you have a child who you know is very bright, but all of a sudden can't perform in a specific academic area. Maybe they struggle with rote memorization. Maybe they can talk through math problems, but they can't read them or write out the answers easily. Or they have a lot of stories in their head, but they can't get them written onto paper. And so you can see that they have so much to offer, but for some reason, it's not coming out. And so a lot of these things can lead to anxiety. The children can just start to shut down, or they're just easily overwhelmed. And this is something that especially can happen with girls when they haven't been diagnosed with a learning difference yet because they will be internalizing a lot of these other struggles, and they'll start to seem anxious. Some of these kids will just completely disengage. They'll either disengage in the classroom by daydreaming, or they'll sneak into a corner to read a book. They also might disengage by just not going to school anymore. So when we were in traditional school, they just won't go to school. Or they might have many, many tardies. For instance, my daughter—who had undiagnosed autism in third grade—was late to school 40 days. Never very late—always like by five minutes—but it was just: She did not want to get out of bed; she did not want to go to school. And so we had to keep cajoling her along. And so those are things that can be a sign that your child is twice-exceptional. So if this is resonating for you and you suspect that your child might be twice-exceptional, we always recommend that you get a formal evaluation and consider getting a deep assessment about your child's strengths and challenges. Your school might offer an evaluation like that, or they may not—hopefully they will—but you may have to consider getting a private evaluation. In the end, the most important thing is that even as you're seeing these struggles, that you are just showing your child a lot of love and support. Callie Turk: So before we move into the next section—where we're going to work on some vignettes to give you a better sense of what these stories look like in real life—we wanted to let you know that you can go to this TinyURL, and we've set up a bunch of resources and details for you that you can access during this session, after this session. We have things like our 2e fact sheet, we have a checklist of things to consider if you think your child might be 2e, we have a link to a blog series we published in the fall called "Living and Learning 2e," which will give you team views on what it's like to be 2e and tips for teachers and parents. And then you will also find all of the information we're going to go through on Ben and Nikki and the vignettes, as well as the slides for that we've been using in the presentation today. So first thing we're going to do is introduce you to Ben. And I am just putting—I'm trying to put the link in the chat. Thank you. This is a story of—oh, I should first say that these are vignettes. We're going to share a couple of vignettes with you, and they're composites of kids that we actually know—our kids, friends' kids, in real life—of real-life students in these situations. And in these vignettes, we acknowledge that we're all human, and the reactions that people have in the classroom to some of these challenges are natural. And it's tough being a 2e parent or educator, and so we honor all the parents and teachers and all the challenges that they face. And some of the answers that we're giving here—there's no one right answer—but we're going to try to give you some tools to deal with some of the challenging behaviors that you may see your students struggling with. So, Ben. So I'm going to read you the vignette story—you're welcome to click and follow along. Ben is in fifth grade. He is gifted, he is autistic, and has ADHD. He loves Minecraft and will discuss it in detail to anyone who will listen—and even those who won't. He has an uncanny ability to connect ideas that sometimes stuns his teachers. His memory surprises other students—who came to him in fourth grade to hear facts about the missions they were studying. He loves hamming it up when he gets to act out class projects. Ben came into the fifth grade with Smarter Balanced test results showing he's performing above grade level in math. He received an 80 on the pretest for the new math unit on volume and keeps asking for harder math. Math was scheduled just before lunch. Last Friday, during lesson time, Ben refused to sit on the rug, which led to a power struggle with his teacher. Ben was messing around all during math work time—doodling and reading books—despite reminders to stay on task. Just before lunch, the teacher told Ben, "I noticed you didn't make good use of your time. I will need you—you will need to complete this work either at recess or as homework in addition to your regular math homework. You asked for harder math, but I can't give you harder math if you won't complete this basic math first." Ben yelled loudly, threw his math book on the ground, and stormed out of the classroom. So in this story, you can see that Ben has many great strengths—strength in math, his memory, making ideas and connections, and showing his mastery in creative ways. But he struggles in class. He messes around, he can yell or throw things, he has a refusal to sit on the rug, and he storms out of the classroom. So the teacher may be thinking: Ben is lazy. I gave him so many reminders, and he still didn't work. He's a behavior problem. I'm tired of him blowing up in class. This math should be easy for him—why can't he just get it done? I can't give him harder math if he can't do this basic math first. So the teacher's stress and frustration level is like at a 9 out of 10 with Ben right now. And so what might the teacher do? Might tell Ben that this behavior is unacceptable. Might have the child stay in during recess to finish the work. They might tell Ben, "This should be easy for you—just get it done." And they might not provide Ben with more advanced math. So—is it the next slide now, Callie? Callie Turk: Before we move on to what happens next with Ben, the key thing that we present is this concept of reframing. This is a key part of helping twice-exceptional kids, and reframing is actually based on Stanford research that was conducted on emotional regulation and the positive impacts that can have on the adults and the children they're working with. We've also found in our personal lives that when we work really hard to reframe our understanding of what our children are experiencing—or what other twice-exceptional children are experiencing—then we are actually better at understanding how to meet their needs. So in terms of reframing, what you're really doing is changing from a mindset of "a child won't do something" to "a child can't yet do something." So instead of walking into a situation and feeling very judgmental in our own mindset as the adult, we walk into a situation trying to feel just very curious about what is going on and ask ourselves: Why might this be happening? What might be causing this? How could I help this child? And we have to also then change our view of the child and not see them just as being so willful or defiant or trying to act out or be bad. What we have to do is reframe and say, "There are probably too many stressors, or there could be a skills deficit. There's something going on that I don't understand yet about this child." And then we have to kind of rethink about our thoughts. Then we can't go to labels like "this child is lazy" or "wants attention" or "is rude." Instead, we really need to get into that curious place of: What's getting in their way, and how can I be helpful? And this will then help us shift our response away from just putting in rewards and punishments or using just a carrot and stick to get kids motivated. What it really helps us to do is look for the barriers that are impacting the child and help find and remove those—and help the child learn about barriers they may face and how they can help find those and remove those. And it really changes then the child's whole experience. Children who are approached from a "won't" perspective end up feeling frustrated or guilty or shameful or anxious—they kind of close down. But when children know we're going to approach them from a perspective of "they can't yet do something, but we believe in them, and we believe we can find solutions," then they feel supported. They become stronger. They learn how to advocate better for themselves as well. And so that is the basis of what we're going to walk through with the vignettes in terms of how we get to a better place for these kids. And just keeping in mind that our own emotional regulation is just very important in working with children. If we can regulate our own emotions, then we can be better equipped to help others—kind of like the "putting on your own oxygen mask first" analogy. Back to Ben. So, what's going on inside? Look at Ben curled up in the corner. What's going on in his mind is he's like: I'm tired. I'm hungry for lunch. It's been a long morning. I don't like sitting on the carpet so close to everyone—it's making me feel uncomfortable. I already know this math, and I still have to do so many repetitive problems. And writing is hard for me—I can't write this many answers. I'm stupid. I can't even pay attention to easy math, even though I wish I could do harder math that's more interesting. Now I might miss recess—and I need to run around—or I might have extra homework, and that's really stressful for me. So now that the teacher has reframed her thoughts, she might be thinking—instead of what we had talked about before about him being lazy and obstinate—is: Oh, Ben is just having a really hard time. He couldn't hold it in any longer. He must feel so bad inside to have reacted by throwing a book. He was having a hard time focusing—I bet he's hungry. And I bet sitting on the rug and touching other kids gives him sensory challenges. He's already had to work hard to get to lunch today, and he must be tired. I wonder if this math is too easy for him, and he's frustrated, but at the same time, the writing's too hard for him. Maybe this worksheet has too many problems on it. Now my stress level as a teacher has gone down from a nine to a three. I feel sympathetic to Ben's situation. So what might I do instead? So now that we've reframed our thinking, what should we do to help this student? So we have a list of tips, and of all the tips that we provide, the number one is that it's very important to build a trusted connection between the student and the teacher. 2e students especially rely on this bond for motivation in their challenge areas. So for us personally, what's worked for us is to have the times with the teacher one-on-one. Sometimes it can be the day before school starts—this year it happened over Zoom—maybe during office hours—to have them connect about passions that they have in common. And for the teacher to really understand the student's strengths and passions and share personal stories together. That way, the teacher will listen when the student self-advocates and help them feel successful. And once that trust is built, I have noticed my children are more willing to work in areas that are not an area they're interested in or have a strength in because they have that connection with the teacher, and the teacher says, "I know you can do it." This year, of course, it was a lot more challenging to build this connection over distance learning, but hopefully it will get easier once we're in person again. And of course, we used to have a student-teacher connection, but it's turned into a triangle this year because the parents were a lot more involved in their children's learning at home. You saw their strengths and challenges this year more than any other time. And so it's important for the parents to connect that information to the teacher because the teacher doesn't know that when your kid comes home at the end of the day—or gets off of Zoom—they're having a meltdown. They might have looked fine to the teacher. I mean, it's important to know that the classroom environment is being overwhelming to them. And also, the connection between the parent and student has changed this year. You know, your child needs to learn to trust that you are there to help them through their challenges and celebrate their strengths rather than push them through schoolwork that leads to tears. And so when students know that you're going to listen when they have an issue and will advocate for change on their behalf, they're more likely to come to you and work with you through challenges and hopefully experience less anxiety. We have a few other top tips. These are the things that tend to always come up in terms of supporting our twice-exceptional learners and getting to a better place with them. First is: Really let their strengths and passions shine. 2e learners tend to have strong interests, and it's very important for them to find a way to weave those into their schoolwork. So like, for instance, maybe your child doesn't love math, but they love Pokémon. So is there a way to integrate a Pokémon worksheet into the work they're doing? Maybe they don't really like to write, but they're passionate about sharks. So could they do a research project about sharks and then make a PowerPoint presentation? I like to talk about the protective power of passions for these kids. These really give them a place to shine, to go deep, and to get much more engaged and motivated in their work. The other one is really about being curious and empathetic—really approaching them to understand the logic behind the frustrating behavior. They really don't intend to give teachers and parents a hard time—really, they are having a hard time. So what you need to do is really approach them not from a place of blame but a place of curiosity. It's super important to think about the asynchronous development and understand that twice-exceptional kids do not develop on a consistent timeline. They may be able to read at a high school level, but they may not be able to really understand what they're reading as well. Or they may not be able to have a friend over for more than an hour without melting down. So their social skills development, their emotional development, may be quite a bit lower than some of their academic progress that they're making. And it's important for us to understand that and accept that—that children do not develop uniformly. There is really no normal—we've moved beyond normal. Another thing—as we've already talked about—is really collaborating with them and their team. And the point we really want to make here is that you really want to problem-solve with the child as much as you possibly can. Really involve the child in helping to plot new paths forward, to find ways to experiment, to find new things to try. And it's really important not just that we collaborate with the child—and we also talked about the parent and the student—but also with their team. These kids often come with a team of support—whether it's a therapist, the school psychologist, a counselor, an occupational therapist, a speech-language practitioner. All these people have really valuable perspectives on the child, and they see—maybe it's a coach outside, maybe it's the person who does kids with them, or they go to the Coder School, or they have something they love. Those people all have really unique perspectives and see the child in their best, their worst, and everything in between. And so how do we bring in all of those perspectives? We really want to make sure that we're being very flexible. I think if you look at our blog series from the fall called "Living and Learning 2e," it's teenagers—2e teenagers—talking about their experiences in school. And I would say flexibility was one of the most important things to them. If they could get to a place where teachers would be flexible on assignments—would give them flexible ways to show they had mastered something, would give them the opportunity to use their strengths to show that they had mastery over content, would let them move on with content if they'd shown they had mastery rather than making them turn in a lot of homework that maybe wasn't that useful. All of those things are really important, and we need to be advocating for flexibility for our kids. And then the last thing is just to learn something new every day. This is something that really all people should have the right to do—is to learn something new because that will keep them engaged in school. It will keep them excited to go. When kids realize they're not going to learn something new—that the focus is going to be on everything they can't do—that's when they really start to shut down. So with these tips in mind, what are some of the strategies for supporting Ben? So typically, this is an hour-and-a-half workshop, and we have you guys working in groups and strategizing ways to help Ben. So we're going to share a few things that we think might help Ben, and if you have more ideas, please share them in the chat or feel free to unmute and share them. So one thing that happened is the teacher finally talked to Ben and said, "Ben, I need you to show me that you know this math. What can we do so it's not so overwhelming for you next time?" And so what Ben and the teacher agreed on is that he would be given fewer problems, and instead of having to repeat once he showed the mastery of something, he would be given extensions—maybe math games to play or something more advanced to learn. And he would not have to do the parts that he had already tested out of. And they also decided that after a certain amount of time—let's say five minutes of working, ten minutes working—that Ben would get a break. And then he would have something to look forward to when he was done. So maybe he gets to play a really cool math game or read a book that he likes. And since Ben loves Minecraft, the teacher started to tie the volume problems into Minecraft calculations. Not only did that make it more interesting to Ben, but it made it more interesting to the whole class since many kids like to play Minecraft. And then allowing him to show different ways to show mastery—other than filling in a worksheet. Could he teach the class something about this topic? Could he make a comic strip about this topic? There are so many creative ways that he could show his mastery. And then she also started to give Ben more interesting and harder work to do. And so what happened to Ben? Instead of being frustrated and throwing books, the teacher joint problem-solved with Ben and got to the root of the problem, and they agreed on solutions to try next time. Ben now trusts his teacher and feels connected with her, so he has fewer meltdowns and a renewed excitement for math. Ben decides to start a Minecraft Math Club, and many kids in the class are excited to work with him on this fun area. And that makes math in the classroom more interesting for everyone. So of course, not everything wraps up so neatly in a bow in real life, but this actually did—a story like this actually did happen in real life. And Ben was a lot happier, more connected to his teachers like this. If anyone has any other strategies they'd like to share, please feel free to add them to the chat. Yael Valek: All right, we're going to shift gears because we wanted to make sure we covered an elementary school student but also a secondary school student because the challenges are a little different, and the solutions are a little different. So we're going to cover a ninth-grade girl named Nikki. And Nikki is a very mild-mannered child. She's sometimes distracted and dreamy, and her teachers always comment on what a polite and quiet student she is. But she's a great problem-solver. She loves science, and she's got a particular passion for nature and biology. She started high school, and she's actually found it to be much more complicated than elementary or middle school. While she has an IEP for ADHD—inattentive type—she has a goal to develop self-advocacy skills. That's one of the things that they're really focusing on. But she's run into some challenges because she also has severe allergies and asthma, so she often has to stay home. And she recently developed a throbbing headache when she was at school. She texted her parents, and they encouraged her to visit the nurse's office. But when she got there, the nurse—who had met Nikki before—looked at the file and noticed that she had all these absences, so she tried to convince Nikki to stay at school. Eventually, the nurse—the parent called the nurse and asked her to review Nikki's file more closely. And what she did—she saw the medical history and the IEP—and so she understood what was going on a little better. But Nikki was super discouraged because the nurse didn't listen to her, and she only checked the file after she spoke to her dad. So she felt like the nurse didn't believe her and that her self-advocacy needs weren't being addressed. Because Nikki misses school so much, it's really hard for her to keep up with all of her work—in particular, in her foreign language class. And when she misses these classes, the teacher says, "Oh, just check the online learning management system. It's all on there." But because Nikki has ADHD, it's very difficult for her to sort through all the layers, and she feels like she's always missing something for her class. So she's just running into a lot of roadblocks, but she doesn't want to cause trouble. But she feels like she could actually do better, and she's trying so hard to hold it together, and she's exhausted when she gets home. So as you can see, she's a very kind, mild-mannered girl. She's seen as athletic and active. She's a great problem-solver. She loves science. But she does have ADHD. She has a lot of anxiety. She's missing assignments, and she's actually missing school. So the teacher—before they reframe their thinking—might think things like: Well, it's going to be hard for her to keep up if she misses school. I think she's making all this stuff up about headaches and stomachaches. I just think she's trying to get out of going to school. The teacher might also think something like: How am I supposed to keep up with over a hundred kids who have IEPs and what they need? It's just too hard. And I'm spending a lot of time on Schoology, so that's enough. A ninth-grader can keep up with everything on Schoology. And some teachers might even think: Well, Nikki doesn't seem like she needs an IEP. I mean, parents and kids these days—they're getting IEPs for nothing. So there's a lot of misunderstanding in a lot of those thoughts. And what's going to happen if we continue down that path is Nikki's going to keep feeling overwhelmed. She's going to feel misunderstood. Her grades will continue to suffer because she doesn't have the organizational skills yet. And she's going to miss out on the honors-level science work because people aren't going to see what she's really capable of. And in this case, she'll start to probably nosedive and miss school more and more, never learn to self-advocate, and she won't learn to trust the adults in her life. So Nikki is not feeling so great at this point, right? Like, she's thinking: Wow, I hate missing school because of my asthma and allergies. I know I'm just going to fall farther and farther behind. But Schoology is so hard to navigate—it seems like assignments are hiding in there. I know other kids can figure it out, but it just seems like a hurdle for me. I really don't want to trouble anyone. I know if I just sit in my classes quietly, my teachers will be happy. But I want to learn too, and it's so hard when I can't keep up with all my assignments. I want to be more independent, but I feel like I'm not as ready for all of the things my classmates are. That people don't listen to me, and they don't help. So at this stage of the game, the teacher's frustration on a scale of one to ten is probably like a five, and Nikki's is very, very high—much higher than that. So when we have a teacher who can reframe all of this with more of a twice-exceptional perspective and have more curiosity about Nikki, then they might think things like: Hey, you know what? Nikki is so calm—it's really hard for me to remember that she has a serious health issue or that she has an IEP for her ADHD. I really should take her seriously when she tells me she isn't feeling well. We can problem-solve together and think about the option for going home if that's what makes sense and what she's advocating for. Or something more like: I'm so grateful that Nikki is well-behaved, but I know there is more going on under the surface. She's fallen behind on her homework, and I should check in with her to see what we can do to help her keep up better. Also, a teacher might think something like: Nikki is a really bright student, and I want her to be able to spend more time learning. So how can we remove some of the barriers that she faces due to her ADHD, allergies, and asthma? When the teacher goes into helping Nikki with those perspectives, it's more likely that the teacher's stress and frustration level is more like a two. I mean, of course, it's stressful to help a student who's struggling no matter what—your curiosity or the situation—but you go into a much better-regulated place when you approach Nikki with that kind of curiosity. So there's a lot of things that the school could do to support Nikki better. Things like: Creating a game plan with Nikki before the illnesses come up—like having a set game plan about the processes that will be followed. Deciding when Nikki will and won't go home. What are some of the other alternatives they might be able to consider? They really should strategize with Nikki about the missing assignments and create a plan for making up the work. And the teacher should be flexible and think about whether all of the original work is actually essential or if there's a way for Nikki to show that she has gained mastery without necessarily doing all of the assignments. And then, in order to really address some of Nikki's really strong interest in science, they could consider compacting some of the science lessons into a deeper project so that Nikki just has one due date and assignment to keep track of—and she gets to go deeper in an area that's really interesting to her. And also, it could be something she could be working on at home when she has to miss due to her illness, but that she's still staying on track. Really, we should also find ways to work with the science department to identify ways to modify assignments and assessments so that students with learning differences can access the content of their more advanced courses without having to jump through a lot of hoops. Because one of the things that can happen with 2e learners is that because their performance and their grades doesn't always match their actual capabilities, they sometimes have roadblocks in getting into the advanced coursework. A couple of things that I thought of after the fact—in terms of her strength—would be ways to really engage around nature and biology in her foreign language. Since that's something that she has been struggling to keep up with, maybe she would be a little better engaged if maybe she could create a nature photography album with the foreign language words in it. Or if they could incorporate something around biology into those lesson plans. Or if they could find out if there are people who are from the countries in the foreign language she's learning who are doctors or biologists and learn about them and how they've done their work. So just finding ways to connect and bridge from that interest she has in science to connect to her foreign language. So the outcome of this situation has been that she still actually does miss a lot of school because of her allergies and asthma—there's not much she can do about that. But now she'll have a better plan for how to keep up with everything when she's missing. And in addition, she will know that the other students and the teachers at the school actually have her back. And that trust is so important for twice-exceptional kids. So she will feel more supported in her learning, and that will help her become a more active advocate when her issues do come up. And she'll know—as she moves into the future—how to advocate for her needs. In this case, because this is based on a real-world scenario, she created a video about a trip she took to Zion National Park, and it had rich detail about the landscape and wildlife. And it deepened her classmates' understanding of ecology and climate change. So while school isn't always easy, Nikki feels calmer, and she's better able to enjoy life and learning. And she knows more about what she needs at school and in the future. And that's Nikki. If anyone has other ideas, you're welcome to contribute those in the chat. And I want to share too that just simply last week—some of these changes can be so small in the classroom—they were presenting about something they learned about ancient China, and my son had built a boat. And he had researched boats, and his strength is his memory and his ability to speak, and his weakness is writing. And so she said, "Go up and present—be one of the first ones." And he said, "But I didn't write a script." And she said, "You don't need a script." And he went right up and presented. And that removed such a big barrier, emphasized his strengths over his weaknesses, he gave a great presentation—he didn't need a script. So those are examples of things like this where you can make the kids' world so much easier in such a simple way. Callie Turk: Everything that we've talked to up until this point are things you can work on with your teachers directly. But if you're finding that that's not solving the challenges and you need more support, your child may qualify for a 504 or an IEP through the school. And some 504 accommodations for 2e students can be around: Alternative demonstration of mastery. Access to challenging activities. Reducing the amount of repetitive tasks. Offering the student more choices about what they write about or what area they research. Support during group work. And leadership opportunities to emphasize the strengths. And then if your student actually needs services at school—such as counseling, social skills classes, behavioral support, occupational therapy, assistive technology, and things like that—then you may need to qualify for an IEP in order to access those services. So these are just other tools that you may use. And I think one of the things we've pointed out here, Yael, is that if you're feeling really overwhelmed or confused or you don't feel like you're being heard, you can reach out to an advocate. And we got these tips from a group called Landmark Advocacy, who did a presentation for us last fall. And they can really—also, they don't—you don't have to use an advocate to go in and fight with the district. It doesn't have to be a fight. It can be coaching behind the scenes—like they can prepare you for a meeting, they can help you come up with ideas for goals for your child. They can also provide that direct support by going with you to meetings if you need that level of support. They're very good at brainstorming solutions to unique challenges that 2e students face—if you find the right ones. So we did it! We made it—I don't know, we rushed through, but we made it to the end with eight minutes to spare and time for questions. If anyone has questions or if you just want to have a conversation—like we said—I'm Callie, this is Yael. I have all the different ways you can be in touch with us here. You can email us, you can check out our website, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And we also have our Google Groups sign-up here. We have a private email list where people can post resources and events and activities, ask questions, and get more helpful advice. And these were just some of the credits and the resources. And like I mentioned, all of this is available in the document that we shared, so you should have access to this. And I will just go back and pull that up too so you can see what all is in there. So Dana was asking, "What percentage of gifted kids have allergies?" I think that's a great question, Dana. I'm going to turn off the recording, and we can have our Q&A if you'd like.