Fifteen Years: The Evolution of 2e—Marlo Payne Thurman

The year was 1994. I was a newly-minted school psychologist who needed a job. For my first post-graduate position, I blessedly landed under the expert tutelage of Dr. Linda Silverman. It didn’t take long for her to inspire in me a career that would become my life-long passion — understanding and serving twice-exceptional children.

When I opened my own practice, I specialized in assessment and social skills training for gifted children who struggled with learning. (While I had learned the term twice exceptional from Linda Silverman, few people used it.) Because this population was estimated to be only 15 to 25 percent of gifted children (who were only 5 percent of the general population), I assumed my career path would be slow to grow; but in one year my practice in Boulder, Colorado, had over 300 clients because no one in our area was doing much in the way of special education advocacy for gifted or twice-exceptional children.