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All About Dealing With Twice-Exceptional Children

9th November 2021

The identification of twice-exceptional children is sometimes because tough because their gifts and challenges overlap each other. These gifted and talented students are emotionally more sensitive than the rest of the children.

However, due to the existence of more than one kind of special ability like autism spectrum and learning disabilities, it is difficult to figure out what should be the exact procedure to get them back to the mainstream classroom pattern.

SEN courses for teachers enable them to understand the strength and weaknesses of a 2e child. To teach children, having multiple gifts, really needs a lot of patience.

Twice-exceptional characteristics:

2e students lack social skills. Being special and different from the other students, these gifted children often wonder how they communicate with the formers. Some of the 2e students who are challenged with academic skills eventually end up scoring lower than the others, another major reason behind their poor social skills.

The social and emotional quotient of these students is pretty high. They are empathetic and they always love to help others. Then again, they have behavioral issues. 2e children, deep inside, know that they have the same level of potential as ordinary children but they do not understand how to execute their capabilities.

The curiosity of twice-exceptional children is always top-notch. 2e kids tend to excavate any topic in order to reach an accurate solution. Owing to this trait, the procedures they apply are time-consuming, and due to lack of proper training, they often mess up.

Therefore, they get frustrated frequently. Gifted students seem to be quite rebelling to the educators because when they fail to accomplish a task they behave differently. They give, lose hope, and do not want to try again. Their self-esteem falls gradually when they receive negative criticisms from teachers as their special abilities remain unnoticed.

It has been observed that they have massive learning challenges. They cannot solve an academic problem due to LD. This affects their mental health to a great extent.
 

Why 2e children sometimes go beyond the radar?

It is not a cup of cake for everyone to identify children with multiple gifts. Suppose a child is an expert in various extracurricular activities like painting, crafting, etc., but faces a huge problem while he/she begins reading a textbook. Educators usually fail to diagnose such reading or learning disabilities at the initial stage. Consequently, the 2e factor is overlooked.

Parents and teachers often become impatient to understand the problems. Whenever a child who is challenged by multiple factors performs lower than the other children, they think that he/she is not paying enough attention to academics. Research has shown that such problems are due to the combination of two challenges ADHD and dyslexia.

As a matter of fact, tutors unknown of such special abilities of the twice-exceptional children, treat them like ordinary students. There is a massive gap in the training methods specially designed for 2e kids. Thus, they are unable to participate actively in the mainstream classroom sessions.

Some kids do not score high in the grade level. Here, both teachers and parents think that with growing age, they will become more focused on their studies and will score higher. There is a loophole. Such students may have more than one gift but due to lack of attention from the adults, their problem remains hidden.

Diagnosis of multiple gifts:

Formal and informal tests or assignments can be conducted to examine the performance of all the students present in a classroom. Such a task may be a combination of analytical thinking, reading a phrase, painting, etc.

Teachers can take an IQ test. Post exam, he/she can separate the result to understand the performance level of the students. The twice-exceptional children show inconsistency in performance, unlike the other students.

Another great method to identify the existence of any 2e student is by lowering the cut-off marks for any kind of examination. A gifted and challenged student often scores nearby the cut-off marks or even lower.

The time span of the exam can also be reduced to check if all the students are taking the exact amount of time to finish the tests or not.

Supporting the 2e kids:

It is always important to make them feel that they are extremely special and they do not have any lesser amount of potential than ordinary students. The self-esteem and confidence level of the 2e children are generally lower and they hesitate to communicate with others by being insecure.

The teacher must take the responsibility to find out where does the basic problem lie. Be is autism or LD, he/she must confirm from expert advice what aids do a 2e child needs. Regular assessments, engagement in classroom sessions, etc., if checked minutely, the teacher can clearly figure out which of the children need help.

Communication with parents is mandatory. The parents are bound to notice any different behavioral patterns of their children if they are specially gifted and challenged as well. They must inform any uniqueness they observe to the class teacher. Together, they can work on the problem.

Schools can take the help of shadow teachers who have mastered the special education courses. The shadow teachers deal with the specially-abled students one on one and thus their traits can be easily caught and rectified.

The strengths and weaknesses of the 2e children should be dealt with special care. For example, they must be given separate attention to getting rid of their LD and must be inspired to carry on their painting. Such cooperation from the teachers makes the parents lose their worries.

Thus having twice-exception children is never a headache. All they need is proper guidance, and training approaches based on which they can break the shackles of their insecurities and conquer the world!