December 14, 2022
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Cindy Lopez:
Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen. Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Adobe, and we’re so thankful for their support of this Voices of Compassion podcast.
Many children identified as twice exceptional or 2e feel different, like they just don’t fit in and therefore can be more susceptible to mental health challenges. They might feel isolated from their peers because of their giftedness and their neurodiversity, whether it be autism, learning differences, ADHD, anxiety, or otherwise, and some live with the constant feeling that they’re not living up to their gifted potential, or they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. What this in mind, how can parents, caregivers and educators effectively support twice exceptional children? Today we talk with Dr. Christine Pearston, Licensed Clinical Psychologist at CHC who suggests we start by looking at the whole child strengths, interests and challenges alike. Welcome Christine.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Hi Cindy. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and to talk about the 2e population. It’s actually something that I wasn’t very familiar with until just a couple of years ago when my prior boss over here, Vivien Keil set me up with the gifted support center in Ann Smith, and over the past couple of years I’ve just learned so much about working with these children who have such amazing strengths.
Cindy Lopez:
Thanks for being here with us today. We are talking about twice exceptional students and we might refer to them as 2e. So first, let’s define what we mean when we say twice exceptional.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah, twice exceptional can sound like such a loaded term, and I think there are a lot of misconceptions about it. So often, you know, someone might say, “okay, my child is twice exceptional,” and people who don’t understand what that means will think it’s this very arrogant, kind of, um, way of saying, “oh my kid’s super special,” right, because in lay terms, we think, oh, exceptional like is above average, it’s fantastic, it’s great, it’s this good thing, which it can be, but exceptional basically means you differ from the norm, like you are the except, right? So you’re an outlier in some way.
If you’re twice exceptional then that means that you’re an outlier in two ways, and so we’ll talk more as we get through later into the podcast about why this can present as such a difficulty for some kids, specifically when we say 2e learners or twice exceptional learners, we mean one of the ways in which the individual differs from the general population is in giftedness. Their cognitive abilities are scoring higher on our IQ tests, and they think differently, often just in this kind of deeper, really rich way. So they have these exceptional quote unquote, “cognitive abilities,” and then they’re exceptional in another way and that is typically linked to some kind of a learning style. So a twice exceptional learner might be gifted, have an IQ of say, you know, 130 or you know, 140, something like that, but then also be struggling with some kind of neurodiversity: ADHD, autism, dyslexia or another learning disability. Even sometimes we talk about mental health challenges or anxiety too. So if you have these two different ways that you’re different from the normal population or normal bell curve distribution, then you’re twice exceptional.
Cindy Lopez:
So, thinking about the term twice exceptional it’s not a diagnosis, right? So does that mean?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
So it’s not a diagnosis, meaning it’s not a medical term, it’s not something that you would find in the DSM, or, you know, the ICD manual. It’s not a code that you would submit to your insurance company. What it is, is more of a classification or a category. It’s a way that we can identify these learners. What’s interesting is, you know, I would say, this is a term that we talk about often in the educational world. Ideally we’d be able to put it on like an IEP, an individualized education plan. However, the way that the school system is structured in our country is not focused on giftedness, right? So, we really focus on a deficit model, on a weakness model because if you’re gifted, then they say, “okay, like you’re fine, you don’t need any extra help,” right, according to our schools. So, when you see your child’s IEP, right, if he or she has one, it’s gonna give you a classification of a learning disorder or an emotional difficulty or autism or other health impairment. It’s not gonna talk about the gifted piece. So it will only focus on one of the exceptions, and that’s typically the weakness. Um, and so it’s tricky to find schools that really understand, even if it’s not going on the IEP in those words, who really get what’s going on because it can present differently for these 2e kids.
Cindy Lopez:
So Christine, you just mentioned giftedness, and I’m wondering how that’s measured?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
So we measure it using standardized intelligence tests or IQ tests. So the gold standard and what we would usually use is the Wechsler scale. There’s three different versions of that. So I’ll most commonly use the WISC, Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children. And there’s also, the WAIS, which is 16 plus, that’s the one that we use for adults, and then for our littles, we have the WPPSI that goes down to preschool. So the Wechsler scale is most common, these days, but we also have some other ones that we’ll use, you know, the Stanford-Binet, for example. And when we administer those tests we’re looking to see how far a kiddo can go, and where they can max out on the scale, and we’re comparing their performance overall in different domains. So we’ll look at verbal domains, non-verbal domains, memory, processing speed, different kinds of things, and we wanna see how they’re comparing with other kids the same age as them. So these tests have been really rigorously normed, and really, normed within three month age range. So we’ll look at somebody who say, you know, 11 years and 3 months to 11 years and 6 months, how is your child comparing to other kids across the country? Thank you for explaining different types of assessments. We’ll include those in our resources. The psychologist who’s doing the assessment or educational psychologist or specialist they’ll know what test to use. A lot of parents will come to us requesting these IQ tests, very specific IQ tests for their kids, and one thing that we really encourage parents to not do actually, is to not try and over prepare for these tests. So don’t really worry about what test your child is taking because a lot of parents want kids to study or practice, but what that does is it actually ends up invalidating the test results.
Cindy Lopez:
That’s good to know. So as we think about our twice exceptional kids, what do you see as their most common struggles?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Well, you know, as we talked about they differ from the norm in two different ways, two really big ways. The biggest struggle is often feeling like they don’t fit in, not fitting in with their peers. Um, and that could be in a lot of different ways. A lot of our gifted kids, even if they’re not twice exceptional, right, if they’re, you know, just straight up gifted, don’t feel like they fit in with their peers, they might get along better with adults or kids who are a little older, and they might have a hard time connecting with kids the same age as them because they’re just thinking in different ways, and it can be harder to have some of those conversations or to have like the kind of richness and depth of conversation that they are longing for with kids who just haven’t cognitively developed that skillset or that way of thinking just yet. So they can often feel really different. They can sometimes feel a little bit lonely or isolated. You add on the additional exception, right, if you’re different from your peers in that you have some kind of neurodiversity. If you have ADHD, you have a hard time focusing, you have a hard time controlling impulses. If you have a hard time connecting with your peers, let’s say you’ve got, you know, autism or an executive functioning weakness or a learning struggle, that’s another thing that sets you apart from your peers and it can feel especially bad, particularly when it’s not labeled or diagnosed yet.
A lot of our 2e kids will fly under the radar when it comes to being diagnosed because they’re not struggling in school yet at an early age as a lot of other kids would be with dyslexia or ADHD per se because their gifted cognitive ability is helping them kind of coast by and compensate. So they may not have been recognized for having some of the difficulties that they have, but then they see themselves quote unquote, “underperforming” according to what they kind of know they can do, and then that doesn’t feel good either. So they’re looking around maybe at their peers or they’re looking at their history of learning and saying, well,” things usually come easy to me, why is this such a struggle when my other friends are kind of getting it?” Or, “I usually do better than them in this realm, but now there’s this disconnect.” And then we’ll see them start labeling themselves as just, “stupid,” or “I’m just lazy” or “I just don’t get it,” and they can start to lose some of that passion for learning. So there’s a lot of struggles that go along with being twice exceptional and just feeling very different.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. And you alluded to this, but because of that, they would be more prone to mental health kinds of issues like anxiety and depression. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah, it’s absolutely a vulnerability, and you know, one of our first line of defenses is early identification. So if kids understand what’s going on with them, then it makes it a little bit easier for them to not just feel different and wonder why. I think a lot of our gifted kids, as I said, because they have such a depth of awareness and sensitivity to things that are going on, it lends itself to some more anxiety and depression or other internalizing disorders — that’s what we call them, you know, when you like kinda take the weight of the world on yourself. We call that internalizing, and so we see that a lot, you know, if I have a kiddo come into my office as a therapist who’s reporting symptoms of depression, and their parents say, “oh yeah, they had an IQ test,” and you know, it’s anywhere above 120, I sit there and I go, “okay, I’ve gotta put my existential therapy hat on because we’re going all into existential crises. What happens after death? You know, how are we gonna fix climate change?” And these kids like really thrive on having some of these adult connections and therapy spaces where they have a safe space to explore some of these ideas because their friends are thinking like, “someone stole the ball from me on foursquare,” or like teens are all talking about, you know, dating, and then you’ve got this kid over here who’s just worried about the world ending, and like society crumbling, and they’re just thinking about these really advanced topics and they’re wondering like, “why does nobody else see this? Why does nobody else care, what’s going on?” So, we get really deep, and we as adults are able to find peers to talk to about some of these things, and it’s a lot harder for kids to find peers who can relate to them in these worries.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. I could imagine that peers would kind of see them as different, right or at least quirky and yeah, and just makes them feel like they don’t fit in. And we still have that need to fit in, like, we want to be normal. We don’t wanna stand apart, right, but really it’s those differences are what make our interactions really interesting and make exciting kinds of differences in our society.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
You’re exactly right. We need people with different abilities in our world because there are so many different problems that need to be solved and so many just like different jobs that need to be done. However, we also as humans to thrive need social connection that’s so important. So that’s why people want to be normal or fit in because it’s a survival mechanism. Um, you know, and so that’s like not saying, you know, like, okay, these kids are doomed to be alone, right, that’s not true, but there is research that shows that kids who are gifted or twice exceptional that they do better adjustment wise and with mental health if they spend at least some of their time with other kids who fit their cognitive profile, so they don’t feel so alone. There are several gifted schools, for example in the Bay Area in particular. It doesn’t have to be a school. The research doesn’t even really show that going to a gifted school is what makes the difference for your kid, but in some way, shape or form kids should have an opportunity to spend time with their peers who have similar abilities because then they won’t feel so alone and so isolated.
Mike:
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Cindy Lopez:
So as we think about our twice exceptional kids, let’s talk about their strengths. I think that’s so important because they have some really amazing strengths, but I think a lot of times they don’t see that themselves.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting that you say that Cindy. You know, our gifted and twice exceptional learners they are really prone to perfectionism, so seeing their strengths is really hard for them. And it’s so sad to watch especially for parents I think really watching their kids struggle with this because as parents you can see the strengths, right? You know what your kid is good at, and you see them just like mastering concepts that most people would never even have thought of at their age. And they’re sitting there thinking, “ah, I’m so stupid. Why can’t I get this?” You know, it’s just devastating. So I think this focus on strengths is really important. It’s one of my qualms with the IEP system because it’s not strengths based, it’s weakness based, it’s deficit based. So, I think that trying to identify ways for these kids to explore their areas of strength and to feel really competent and masterful at something is really important.
As I mentioned when we were talking about the IQ tests, we assess a variety of domains. We’ll look at verbal reasoning. We’ll look at nonverbal reasoning. If a kid’s really good at visual spatial processing let’s get them into something like, you know, robotics and engineering or building or architecture. If a kid’s really good with words and verbal reasoning, let’s get them into a writing workshop or reading book club or theater, or, you know, singing, things like that. Let’s really capitalize on their strengths and their interests so that they have a space where they feel like they’re really flourishing, and this doesn’t mean like, don’t work on the deficits, right? You know, we certainly want kids to be practicing in the areas that they’re weak at, like all of us should be. We should all be trying to build up our areas of weakness a bit, but we also rely on our strengths too and that’s just really especially important for our 2e kids.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, I was listening to a speaker once who said, “we know ourselves by what we don’t do well.” It’s kind of how we define ourselves. It’s like these are my weaknesses. So to really flip that script is important and to explicitly and intentionally do that with our kids. So what if we did that, Christine? I’m wondering what happens if we tap into their strengths versus their deficits? Is that an effective strategy for supporting our twice exceptional students?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s not even just twice exceptional. I think all humans really thrive on being acknowledged for what we do well. It helps mental health, it helps social functioning. It is important to keep working on the weaknesses, but also kids can be encouraged to use their strengths to compensate for weaknesses or, you know, if a kid is really struggling in math, for example, but they have gifted verbal abilities, they can be encouraged to talk their way through that math problem with someone. Like just, oh, “talk through it out loud,” and suddenly it clicks, it starts to make more sense. So finding these creative ways to really use the strengths to your advantage can also help to just build confidence in some of the areas where one is struggling.
Cindy Lopez:
Do you have any specific strategies or tools that parents or even educators could use to support our twice exceptional kids, especially maybe around mental health?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah, being aware is a big one. Our gifted kids, I put my existential hat on when I’m in therapy with them because the regular CBT toolkit is just not gonna cut it for a lot of these kids. They’re thinking too deeply and no amount of deep breathing is gonna solve, you know, the COVID crisis, right? Like I think understanding and validating and also, you know, trying to find ways to help kiddos get out of their head a little bit when they’re kind of spiraling either on, you know, why they did so poorly on this test or this one problem or spiraling about all the crises in the world. Definitely finding that fine line between brushing it off as, “oh, you don’t have to worry about that, it’s not a big deal” cause that feels really invalidating, but also, you know, not like diving into it and going, yeah, “oh it’s so terrible, you’re right, it’s the end of the world,” like, you know, we wanna find that, that balance. I’m saying, “yeah, you know, you’re right, and there isn’t really a quick fix for that, that is something that we as a society are gonna have to work on and like right now, it’s time for swimming lessons,” like let’s go get in the pool and let’s just get your body moving because that’s what we can focus on right now, that’s what we can control in this moment or like, you know, “do you want some help working on your homework assignment? Cause I know that this homework assignment is bringing up all of these thoughts and like ideas.” We’ll see this a lot when kids are learning about like the Holocaust, for example. Our gifted kids dive into their empathy for uh everyone who has gone through this, and so being able to separate that a little bit and acknowledge, “yeah, this is why we’re learning about it because it was so terrible,” and, you know, “you still have to get this assignment done.” So how can we kind of talk about this? How can we use that empathy or feeling to fuel it? Um, but also separate and say, “this isn’t happening to me right now and this isn’t happening to somebody that I know and a part of making sure it doesn’t happen again is learning about it and writing about it and talking about it. So let’s do this assignment.” It’s a really fine line. It’s a difficult balance.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. You’ve mentioned this a bit, but school can be really tricky for twice exceptional students, so what kinds of supports can help?
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
The traditional school system is just not designed for twice exceptional kids or for gifted kids in general. If we think about the bell curve, right, average intelligence is typically somewhere between, you know, like 90 to 110 in terms of the IQ score. and most kids will require a certain amount of repetition of material, and they’ll thrive on a certain type of teaching. Our gifted twice exceptional kids might get bored with the repetition. They might lose motivation really fast, and they are thinking 10 steps ahead of a lot of their peers on some things, and they get bored and lose steam and then our kiddos with some trouble with neurodiversity you add that on top of it and then all of a sudden they’re struggling as well. And so they’re bored in school, but also like, you know, it’s kind of because it’s too easy, but then it’s not too easy, and why am I still not getting good grades on this?
So the traditional school model in the US is often not a great fit unless you have, you know, one of those unicorn teachers that really understands, yeah, giftedness and twice exceptional learners, and can work with you. So, there are other school settings, but there’s also even just, you know, having an IEP in place to address neurodiversity, right, to have accommodations that you need, whether that be extra time or, you know, fidget tools or extra instruction in an area of weakness and then also just checking in with teachers to make sure that they’re aware of your child’s strengths and what tends to work for them and what engages them. So this isn’t to say, you know, you have to go to a private school if you have a twice exceptional learner. That’s not necessarily true, but it’s really working with teachers to see that they can meet your kids needs, meet them where they’re at. You know, even if you’re attending a regular public school system, having opportunities to engage with some other youth or in an area that you’re interested in, right? Like these, extracurricular development programs. Johns Hopkins has a great program for giftedness. I think Stanford has programs for giftedness, or even like, you know, Russian math lessons and things like that. So finding, extracurriculars or enrichment programs that are in an area of interest for your child is an excellent way to supplement a public school system education.
Cindy Lopez:
It’s interesting hearing you talk about working with parents, working with the teachers, caregivers, to help them really understand that twice exceptional student. As a longtime educator myself, I think sometimes parents can feel like, well, the teacher doesn’t wanna hear it, right? However, I think that most teachers really do want to hear any kinds of things that help really unlock some important information about the child, and as a parent or caregiver, if you approach a teacher as a partner, that kind of approach is a completely different kind of approach than telling them what to do or how to be. So I think for parents and caregivers as you’re working with educators and school systems coming alongside teachers and really partnering with them is an important kind of mindset in that process.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
That’s so important, Cindy, what you just said. I think that’s huge. All the teachers I know got into this field because they want kids to succeed. You know, no one’s sitting there just hoping that your child fails. So, really coming in with that mindset and, you know, meanwhile, nobody wants to be told how to do their job, right, you know, I certainly don’t like, I’ll take feedback and I wanna understand your child, but I don’t want someone, who doesn’t have a therapy degree to walk in and tell me how to do therapy, right? So I would say the same probably goes for most teachers, but they do wanna know your child. They want to know what makes them tick, what makes them motivated, what deflates that motivation, and they wanna work with you. They want to find what is gonna help open up their mind to different things and help them progress.
Cindy Lopez:
And it’s so important to go back to kind of where we started our conversation around twice exceptional and mental health. So at CHC that’s where our area of expertise is, it’s that intersection of learning and mental health. And so were paying attention to that piece, that social-emotional wellness of kids and especially as you look at your twice exceptional students that mental health piece is important to address. It’s easy to kind of get stuck on the academic piece I think with gifted kids, but you wanna make sure that that social-emotional piece, that you’re supporting it in the same way with the same degree of attention to it. And so that kids really feel like that perfectionism that they tend toward and that feeling different that they experience every day, you want to support them in those ways and in some ways more important than the academic support.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
It’s true. Yeah. Don’t just focus on school. I think a lot of gifted kids, it’s very easy for them to get wrapped up in that as their identity. You know, “I’m the kid that does well in school. I’m the kid that gets A’s. I’m the kid that gets the best grades on the tests. That’s who I am and as soon as I don’t get the best grade, I don’t know who I am anymore.” It is really important to think about, you know, we talked about strengths, but like strengths and interests. What really brings your kid joy? What lights them up? Aside from just getting an A on a test, cause I’m sure that lights them up in some ways too, right, that feels good, but finding all the different facets that make up your child as a human. We want them to be able to see all of those things and not just wrap their identity up in performance because that definitely breeds perfectionism.
I was also thinking that as you were just talking the academic piece tends to be easier in some ways, you know, the A’s come easier or whatever, but we also know that even when kids are gifted that school may not be easy for them. They’re motivated by different things, and so they may not be as motivated to learn or to get an A, and so I’m also mindful of our listeners who have those twice exceptional kids who don’t perform well in school, so understanding their strengths really becomes even that much more important.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I’ve seen plenty of kids come in, you know, who are extremely intelligent and who say school is just not worth my time, right? This stuff doesn’t actually mean anything, right? I’m not learning anything that relates to real world problems, and so I don’t care, and they really struggle with that motivation. So finding, again, what makes them tick, what helps get them engaged is really, really helpful.
Cindy Lopez:
Well, Christine, thank you so much for being with us today and talking on this topic, twice exceptional students, and I’m wondering if you have any final words or advice you have for our listeners.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Thank you so much for having me, Cindy. I would say in terms of just, you know, final, final words or if you take nothing else away from this, it’s really just know your child, and treat your child as a whole child, strengths and weaknesses all wrapped up together, in interests and dislikes, and sensitivities and all of that. You know, just really, acknowledging who your kid is, aside from a diagnosis that’s written on paper or a classification on an IEP or grades that come back on a report card. Your kid is so much more than that. You guys know this, but really keeping that in mind, and helping your child to see that too as well.
Cindy Lopez: To our listeners, if you want to know more, please visit us at chconline.org. We do see twice exceptional kids…
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
All the time.
Cindy Lopez:
…and assess students around that too so if you need help or some support or have questions, please contact us. You can also reach out to our care team. You can email at careteam@online.org. So thank you again for joining us Christine and for your time. And thank you to our listeners and we hope you’ll listen in again to our next episode.
Christine Pearston, PsyD:
Thank you so much.
Cindy Lopez:
Visit us online at podcasts.chconline.org. Make sure to subscribe to Voices of Compassion so you never miss an episode, and we’d love it if you’d leave us a rating and review. Have a question? Send us an email or a voice memo at podcasts@chconline.org. We’re here for you when you need us.
