This four-part series will provide a glimpse into what it takes to build and run a successful school for 2e children. It will offer teachers a primer of what 2e students need to thrive, and show parents how they can help or hinder the work of specialized educators. Additionally, it can help medical and therapeutic professionals understand the emotional and social pressures of being 2e. I have worked with 2e children and their families for 20 years, and have created and operated a school for 2e children for the past nine years. This series will celebrate the exceptional abilities, and tackle the most difficult aspects of working with 2e students and their families, through day-in-the-life stories from my school. Stories are how we humans relate to each other, learn from each other, and develop empathy for each other. Read Part 1 of the series.
Successfully operating a school for a population of twice-exceptional students is a Herculean task, especially when one considers that 2e kids often are distinguished by the elaborate and eclectic personalities that accompany their complex neurological profiles.
In other words, serving these students goes far beyond classroom learning. Teachers and administrators must also serve the social and emotional health and needs of a diverse population.
This could include students like Assam, who hit the ceiling on his IQ assessments and has a photographic memory. But if you see him interacting with peers, you would think he is mentally disabled. He is slow to respond to questions. He tries to join in playing with others, but does strange things that don’t match their game. He talks to himself and makes repetitive hand gestures. He often doesn’t even seem to be aware of what is going on around him.
It could also mean students like Jonas, who really wants to have friends, and adults find him absolutely delightful. But peers think he is weird and are not interested in being his friend.
Or Meg, who is exploding with creativity and desperately wants some real friends to join her in the imaginary world she has created in her mind.
Or Aisha, who has no tolerance for anyone’s else’s flaws, but is difficult to be around because she is loud, messy, intrusive, demanding, and tactless.
Or Jess, who is an anteater, quite literally acting like an anteater all day because humans are cruel and he doesn’t want to be one of them.
Or even Megan, who is very socially gifted but still struggles to cope with her extreme empathy and sensitivities. She is the friend every parent wishes for their child, but it comes at a price. She experiences great anxiety about her friends’ problems, holds onto their pain, and is often exhausted by her efforts to support others.
Social interactions and friendships are tricky for 2e children. On a daily basis, I see how hard most of them are working to try to figure out how to be socially successful. For some, it is just too difficult, and they withdraw. Others keep trying, and failing, and it can erode their sense of self. Social struggles for 2e children often stem from attachment issues, sensory dysfunction, overexcitabilities, and anxiety/perfectionism. These deeper emotional and behavioral issues often are socially manifested in the following ways:
A child with intellectual overexcitabilities will be more interested in gaining knowledge than growing friendships. They will spend their time intellectualizing and lecturing others, and may plan elaborate games and expect their peers to listen to long and involved rules. They can be insufferable judges of others’ actions, insist on fairness, and try to resolve playground altercations.
Children who have imaginational overexcitabilities live in a world of their own making, filled with imaginary companions and complex social interactions. They are easily bored and do not engage with peers’ typical games and modes of play. They may always be in role-playing mode, using different voices, or insisting they are someone or something else. Neurotypical children are usually not capable of meeting the levels of imagination required to play in their league. Most other children think they are weird.
For children with emotional overexcitabilities, typical play with peers is fraught with triggers. They often misread peers’ overtures and are overwhelmed by group engagement. They are highly sensitive empaths who feel others’ feelings and don’t understand how to separate those feelings from their own. This can create somatic responses, such as stomach or headaches, and make socializing difficult. Typical childhood friendship issues, such as being criticized or unfriended, is too intense for the child with emotional overexcitability, and they often blame themselves.
At Big Minds — which is an attachment-based, community-focused school that gives 2e students the support necessary to grow — we focus primarily on community attachment, strengths-based learning, positive self-efficacy, and becoming self-directed systems thinkers. We used the work of many groundbreaking theorists in developing Big Minds, including Albert Bandura, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Loris Malaguzzi, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Kazimirz Dabrowski, Jerome Bruner, Gregory Bateson, and Urie Bronfenbrenner. The result is an environment that is well-designed to meet the needs of 2e children, their families, and our teachers.
Teaching 2e children, and supporting their parents, is intense and filled with daily challenges. Just when we get things running smoothly for a student, something happens at home (a birth, a death, a divorce), or the child has a cognitive growth spurt, or hits puberty, and adjustments must be made to help overcome these new stressors. To ensure our teachers have all the necessary tools to be successful, I designed a year-long teacher training program that includes both practicum and theory.
I also wanted to design a workplace where teachers are treated well, paid fairly, have a good work-life balance, and given professional autonomy once they are fully trained. Teachers at Big Minds are not just symbolically the heart of the school, they are treated as foundational professionals. Having been a public school teacher many years ago, I did not want to replicate the bureaucratic nightmare that teachers labor under in most schools in the U.S. I created a model that treats everyone as part of an integrative, supportive, respectful community, because that is what works for 2e people.
Part 2 – Building a Successful Social Foundation
Successfully operating a school for a population of twice-exceptional students is a Herculean task, especially when one considers that 2e kids often are distinguished by the elaborate and eclectic personalities that accompany their complex neurological profiles.
In other words, serving these students goes far beyond classroom learning. Teachers and administrators must also serve the social and emotional health and needs of a diverse population.
This could include students like Assam, who hit the ceiling on his IQ assessments and has a photographic memory. But if you see him interacting with peers, you would think he is mentally disabled. He is slow to respond to questions. He tries to join in playing with others, but does strange things that don’t match their game. He talks to himself and makes repetitive hand gestures. He often doesn’t even seem to be aware of what is going on around him.
It could also mean students like Jonas, who really wants to have friends, and adults find him absolutely delightful. But peers think he is weird and are not interested in being his friend.
Or Meg, who is exploding with creativity and desperately wants some real friends to join her in the imaginary world she has created in her mind.
Or Aisha, who has no tolerance for anyone’s else’s flaws, but is difficult to be around because she is loud, messy, intrusive, demanding, and tactless.
Or Jess, who is an anteater, quite literally acting like an anteater all day because humans are cruel and he doesn’t want to be one of them.
Or even Megan, who is very socially gifted but still struggles to cope with her extreme empathy and sensitivities. She is the friend every parent wishes for their child, but it comes at a price. She experiences great anxiety about her friends’ problems, holds onto their pain, and is often exhausted by her efforts to support others.
Social interactions and friendships are tricky for 2e children. On a daily basis, I see how hard most of them are working to try to figure out how to be socially successful. For some, it is just too difficult, and they withdraw. Others keep trying, and failing, and it can erode their sense of self. Social struggles for 2e children often stem from attachment issues, sensory dysfunction, overexcitabilities, and anxiety/perfectionism. These deeper emotional and behavioral issues often are socially manifested in the following ways:
- 2e children don’t know how to enter play effectively
- They can’t read facial expression and body language
- They don’t understand common social norms, rules, and boundaries
- They don’t bond appropriately (too much too soon, or never enough)
- They often are gullible and vulnerable
- They have difficulty responding to verbal prompts, small talk, or give-and-take conversation, often trying to lecture or perseverate on one topic
- They don’t understand others’ jokes or attempts at humor
- They misread positive social advances as threatening or aggressive
- They have unreasonable expectations of their peers
- They are too intense in many ways (see overexcitabilities below)
- They can’t practice social interaction because they are continually rejected
- They begin to use maladaptive responses
- They overreact to problems or minor disagreements
- They are rigid in their play and inflexible about rules
A child with intellectual overexcitabilities will be more interested in gaining knowledge than growing friendships. They will spend their time intellectualizing and lecturing others, and may plan elaborate games and expect their peers to listen to long and involved rules. They can be insufferable judges of others’ actions, insist on fairness, and try to resolve playground altercations.
Children who have imaginational overexcitabilities live in a world of their own making, filled with imaginary companions and complex social interactions. They are easily bored and do not engage with peers’ typical games and modes of play. They may always be in role-playing mode, using different voices, or insisting they are someone or something else. Neurotypical children are usually not capable of meeting the levels of imagination required to play in their league. Most other children think they are weird.
For children with emotional overexcitabilities, typical play with peers is fraught with triggers. They often misread peers’ overtures and are overwhelmed by group engagement. They are highly sensitive empaths who feel others’ feelings and don’t understand how to separate those feelings from their own. This can create somatic responses, such as stomach or headaches, and make socializing difficult. Typical childhood friendship issues, such as being criticized or unfriended, is too intense for the child with emotional overexcitability, and they often blame themselves.
Imploding and Exploding
The continual social failure of students like these creates a pattern of response that is maladaptive and can severely impact the life of the child and their family. I have categorized two types of maladaptive interactions, the “exploders” and the “imploders.” While all children may display both traits at times, their reactions tend to fall more often into one category than the other. The exploder is the child who is the teacher’s most disruptive student, most likely to be verbally or physically aggressive and act in ways that make others (both adults and children) afraid to be around them. Ross Greene calls these types of children the “unlucky” ones because others are less likely to have empathy for them or want to help them. They are seen as troublemakers who people want to stay away from. Imploders, on the other hand, quietly shut down. They may appear like normal children in the classroom for a time, but they tend to keep to themselves and may daydream during most of their school day. Eventually, they may begin to refuse to go to school, and withdraw from life in general. They may isolate themselves by sleeping, escaping into screen time, and generally staying away from others. When they are the most distressed, they often begin to self-harm, talk about death and escape, or have suicidal ideation or attempts. The suffering of both imploders and exploders compromises their ability to engage in social situations, and they need support and often therapeutic intervention. But it can be hard to find a therapeutic professional who understands 2e children. While finding the right therapist is critical, parents also can seek out resources on overcoming trauma and attachment issues, which can set both the parents and the child up for success. In addition, teaching 2e children about the asynchronies of the 2e mind, the importance of cognitive flexibility, and ways to compensate for overexcitabilities can be a life-changing experience. Helping parents understand their own trauma, and therapeutic ways to work through it, is also necessary for family success. Often, all members of the family need interventions for attachment issues, anxiety, and trauma. [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Social interactions and friendships are tricky for 2e children. On a daily basis, I see how hard most of them are working to try to figure out how to be socially successful. For some, it is just too difficult, and they withdraw. Others keep trying, and failing, and it can erode their sense of self.[/perfectpullquote] In some situations, parents can stand in the way of growth due to their lack of knowledge or purposeful resistance to change. As anyone who has been through therapy knows, change is hard and frightening, and sometimes the work required to overcome the set patterns of behavior is overwhelming. The parents themselves might also be 2e, so they are carrying the baggage of a life lived in a world that didn’t understand or support them. Often the experience of trying to support their child reopens their own wounds and can be an extremely painful process. It is not unusual for parents of 2e children to be overprotective. They often get accused of helicopter parenting or attempting to micromanage their children’s interactions. You can hardly blame them. Most of them have been watching the world grind their child down for years. As their children’s disabilities (and giftedness) make it hard for them to have normal experiences in the world, some parents begin to worry about their future. With each rejection, bullying, and failure comes more and more parental stress, which over time can be stored as trauma. Research shows that parenting a child with multiple or severe disabilities can create levels of trauma that are equivalent to a soldier’s PTSD. Parents of 2e children also need support, understanding, and reasonable accommodation of their anxiety if we are to help them let go of their need to control.Juggling Act
I jokingly call a school for this population the three-ring circus because we are constantly monitoring three interacting rings: children, parents, and teachers. Each of those spheres has to integrate smoothly with the others for the school to maintain equilibrium. We spend a great deal of time helping parents of our new students feel they are supported and understood, so they can begin to ease their fears. We spend even more time teaching their children to become collaborative, functioning, and eventually beloved members of the community, which requires continual processing and feedback. Twice-exceptional children don’t know why they are socially inept; sometimes they don’t even realize how deeply they struggle to form relationships. It requires a special set of skills to teach children how to recognize and change their social behaviors.
At Big Minds — which is an attachment-based, community-focused school that gives 2e students the support necessary to grow — we focus primarily on community attachment, strengths-based learning, positive self-efficacy, and becoming self-directed systems thinkers. We used the work of many groundbreaking theorists in developing Big Minds, including Albert Bandura, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Loris Malaguzzi, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Kazimirz Dabrowski, Jerome Bruner, Gregory Bateson, and Urie Bronfenbrenner. The result is an environment that is well-designed to meet the needs of 2e children, their families, and our teachers.
Teaching 2e children, and supporting their parents, is intense and filled with daily challenges. Just when we get things running smoothly for a student, something happens at home (a birth, a death, a divorce), or the child has a cognitive growth spurt, or hits puberty, and adjustments must be made to help overcome these new stressors. To ensure our teachers have all the necessary tools to be successful, I designed a year-long teacher training program that includes both practicum and theory.
I also wanted to design a workplace where teachers are treated well, paid fairly, have a good work-life balance, and given professional autonomy once they are fully trained. Teachers at Big Minds are not just symbolically the heart of the school, they are treated as foundational professionals. Having been a public school teacher many years ago, I did not want to replicate the bureaucratic nightmare that teachers labor under in most schools in the U.S. I created a model that treats everyone as part of an integrative, supportive, respectful community, because that is what works for 2e people.
Summary
- 2e children need specific, direct training on how to be socially successful
- Children need to be taught how their brain works and why they are behaving the way they commonly do
- Parents of 2e children need to be supported and understood
- Parents need to be taught how to parent 2e children effectively
- Parents eventually need to trust and be able to let go of control
- Having a support group is crucial for parents of 2e children
- Day-to-day teaching of 2e children is a very stressful job
- Teachers need to be supported and cared for in meaningful ways
- Parents need to remember how hard their child’s teacher is working to help their child succeed
- It truly takes a cooperative, supportive village to help 2e children thrive
