Anyone else dealing with twice exceptional?

[triballeader]

Are there any other parents trying their best to parent a child like this? The only other parent I know of is some 500 miles away.

My youngest son is classed as twice exceptional. He had a formal Statement before he darkened the schools gates thanks to ADHD and Aspergers and worried the CDC with his brightness as he cracked the coded doors at eighteen months. He started at a special school as he had almost no speech and a tendency to lash out when frustrated, moved to a mainstream that offered positive inclusion and began to cause havoc by misusing his intelligence. His loan shark racket in year 2 led to a crash course in ethics. Year 3 ended up with him smashing up classrooms when he could not cope with the teacher being wrong. He walked out of the IQ tests the Ed Psych tried to arrange by informing her that if he ever showed her what he could do then he would always have to do it. He refused to use letters preferring a complex system of numbers and symbols only he understood. I thought he was very bright but it was at the end of year 3 when I was called in to deal with a hysterical child that made me think - oh dear the poor sod is gifted as well. He had been asked to imagine he was Dr Who and to write about traveling back in time then forward in time for English. He could not begin because he had got stuck trying to work out how to create a bubble in space that would be capable of bending dimensions and he was very upset because he could not work out how to do it without the universe collapsing. No wonder he was demanding that he be taught physics in year 2.
One emergency trip to CAHMS and the Ed Psych later his school referred him to the national academy- he lasted two university lectures and walked out refusing to go back unless they taught him something he did not know. He has handed in his notice at school, refused to sit for the local Grammars preferring the look of the local Tech School and can be as restful as the spanish inquistion to live with.
I vetoed his idea of catching the train to the University instead of secondary schooling. His do it me-self chemistry set has left holes and burn marks in his room and his current school have now allowed him to wonder off to join in lessons in the building that he likes the look of.
I have not joined NACG simply because my son has such strong views about being pressured in any way. All he wants is space to explore his ideas and teachers he can quiz.

I had hoped by 14 he would be a little happier but he is now refusing to be taught by any teacher he thinks is stupid and asking why all children are so stupid. The school would like him to take all his GCSEs this year but I suspect my son will announce yet again he no longer needs to be at school but school matters more for him as its one of the few places he will go and meet other children. His statement allows for support in social skills.
I have yet another meeting with the Ed psych and co. this week. Last year he sat pointly reading a book on poisons and asking the Ed Psych' if she was sure she did not want him to make her a cup of tea whilst explaining in detail what would happen if anyone tried to make him do anything he did not fancy at school. Not looking forward to this one as he is still bored even with differentation of the course work.

Help is anyone else parenting a twice exceptional child and can they suggest sources for me to stay sane whilst he goes through this gifted aspieKevin stage?

Glad your son moved out from selective mutism as that must have made life a little easier for all of you.

With my son the behaviour does not simply come from being gifted and frustrated it also comes from being registered disabled with an atypical development disorder. The rudeness comes from the unhappy mix of ADHD;he acts before he has thought of possible consequences and ASD the rigidity and seeming rudeness is autistic as he has no real empathy for how another may feel. He has semantic pragmatic disorder and word finding difficulties from a communication disorder- part of having ASD. The local education authority provided special nursery provision once he was 2 and paid for a daily SALT assistant to work with him there. At 4 they moved him to an ASD specific school and where considering a 52 week 24/7 ASD placement until the Ed Psych worked out he was clever, very clever so they looked at building links and providing lots of support for an inclusive mainstream school that was willing to give him a try and cope with his intellectual needs.

Mouthing off to his Ed Psych may sound awful but it is a big behavioural improvement on hitting her with furniture and licking her shoes. ASD+ADHD is hard enough to manage on a good day but add in gifted bits and the mix becomes explosive. The NHS paid for training in System 3 low arousal intervention stratergies and these are used by his school. Using Concerta or similar drugs damps down the ADHD but showed how deep the ASD truly was- that was scary even for the Consultant Psychiatrist.

He has formal support from the education authority which includes the ASD teaching support outreach team, the SENCO and TA's who get specific training to manage him, the school inclusion worker who aims to help his social skills develop, the Snr Ed.Psych and CAHMS. His behaviour was far worse before the Ed Psych recommended allowing him to opt for his own lessons as this gave him some control over his mind. He has had the same Ed Psych for years and believe me she has seen him be far worse. Being able to move in a larger area keeps the severe anxiety under check and keeps him within the school building. If he has to stay in a single room without being able to move or get out he explodes. His school has provided access to spaces he can use a mix of kinetic and visual spatial learning styles as well as a library pass.

If he was just gifted life might be easier but he is registered as disabled and classed as having complex needs due to the severity of both the Aspergers and ADHD. NAGC recommended that he be allowed to research what caught his attention with oversight from a teacher in his particular case, He was and remains twice exceptional but now its backed with teenage hormones just to add extra spice to his sparky toddler level social skills.

what do you think he needs?

other than time to let the hormones run their course? (adhd symptoms can reduce a lot once the whole puberty issue is out of the way as well...)

our situation is different. dd2 has a statement for cerebral palsy and no social/ behavioural difficulties other than those caused by her physical disability.

school sounds fab tbh. they seem to have worked out great ways of dealing with his issues and giving him support.

have the outreach team etc done any specific social skills training with him - facial recognition/ body language for decoding emotions etc? i'm assuming they have - he's quite old for an attempt not to have been made to teach these recognition skills, particularly given his able labels. not suggesting they teach him empathy lol, but quite a lot of kids do grasp the matching concept and have some coping strategies as to how to act if people display x, y, z. is he too complex for that?

Thanks Madwomanintheattic,
He does remind me of a near six foot toddler at the moment. I had forgotten that hormones can turn a child with ADHD into a cross between a beserker and a more tempermental version of Kevin the teenager. I must be the wrong side of tired from trying to keep tabs on where he is and what he is up to. He only sleeps 3 hours out of 24.

Roll on tomorrow his school have him back, I have only had him at home for this week and his DIY project on the use of science in hospitals was getting a little obsessive and prone to trying to speed up improvements in the mechanics and weight of orthotics. Thankfully I see his Ed Psych on Weds.

The ASD team and tier 3 CAHMS have thrown the lot at him since he was two- social stories, circle of friends,PECS, paget-gormall, its like trying to get granite to absorb water.They think he has only achieved as much as he has from using his intellect to problem solve around some of the huge core deficits he has.

My son choose to go to this school; he interviewed the SENCO with his old head teacher and Ed Psych before he agreed to go and have a look. Thankfully they try to treat him as a lively extreme eccentric rather than a none stop rude pest but I am sure that for some staff there must be days that is asking a lot of them.

that's why i was curious, really - kids with asd who are very bright can often use it to their advantage - not overcoming their issues, but learning coping strategies etc.

does melatonin work? assume he's tried it?

will he be able to stay for 6th form where he is?

give queen mary's in roehampton a call - i bet he'd love to visit and talk through some ideas

you need to take it easy too - if he can't be trusted to keep himself safe at night when you are sleeping, you need to get a 'safe-space' funded, or see ot for some ideas. sleep deprivation is a well utilised form of torture, remember. make sure you are getting enough.

Beetlejuice, many thanks for all the suggestions I will ask the Ed psych how her latest assesments of him have gone on Wednesday. His previous school did try to persuade him to access and cooperate with Warwick but he just walked out. He may be more willing to reconsider now after listening to his cousins describing their medical research studies to him this holiday.
I know his current maths teacher is feeding him a? level maths when he is bored in class. He's already in the top stream.

I remember when he was at Birmingham Children's Hospital and he was so bored they let me take it Waterstones and he chose a medical textbook on microbiology as he wanted to know more about the bacteria behind a very nasty eye infection. He was seven at the time and frankly that unnerved me. I thought he might want another Asterix and the Oblix book to read.

I suspect he has been accessing Open University resources from some of his comments and his uncle who taught chemistry at his local university continues to try to hammer in safety protocol when he visits to sleep at are. His interest in maths ebbs and flows. At the moment biosciences are back in but I will try leaving some interesting maths ideas around and wait for him to pick them up and become excited about maths again before I try taking him to Waterstones to look at maths sources.

Both my son and his younger sister have proper safety goggles but from your comments I think I need to buy him a lab coat.
He has tried melatonin and all that did was cohese the three hours he sleeps into one block. I have secured the house to the best of my ability and I do have an insurance policy that specifically covers ?acts of son.? On the plus side if anything does break down in the house is very fast at fixing it.

No one knows quite where his IQ is as he has always refused to sit IQ tests. He's certainly brighter than me and he gives his aunt whose IQ is over 170 a good run for her money. He does have a friend who he occasionally will spend time with whose intelligence and ability has been assessed as profound but that can also be fiery together as their competitive.
I have managed to get into understand I need him to go to school so I can go to university. He can at least understand I need to study humanities in the same way he needs to study science and maths. I have also explained that I cannot offer him access to the science and technical labs his current school has nor can I help him with maths as he left me behind a long time ago. I have tried telling him how I wrote to various places when I was 15 to gain insight into various roles through work experience. I have suggested he might like to do the same and to give some thought to this. I used to get the proverbial taken out of me at school for having the interests I did and being barely able to write so I am trying to find points of connection from this so he knows I am on his side, I will support him but if he truly wants to use his intellect and find out what he could do with it then only he can do so. I have no idea what he'll choose to do and frankly I do not care as long as it is legal, gives him enough money to meet his basic needs and gives him some joy.

It is also so good to know I am not alone , sometimes I do wonder as parenting my son is nothing like special needs or normal parenting that others tell me about. It is so good to know there are other parents trying to juggle kids like this and give them a chance of making it to a reasonably happy adulthood.

Hiya,
I am already studying two in tandem; a BA[Hons]Theology at the local Routledge Uni' whose academic board gave approval to add in a BSc H&SC after they paid for an Ed Psych team to work out what the heck I was doing. I had assumed my old tutors had been telling me fibs when they said I could cope with an undergrad course as they had always added in the phrase 'but of course you will never be as clever as your younger sister and you cannot spell'. I now know not many people are. Guess who badly under-performed as a result of that constant litany. I am loathe to pressure my son- I watched my sister burn out from stress of being fast tracked for Oxford after her o'levels whilst I was left to just get on with whatever caught my interest.

My college allow my 12 yr old daughter to read their library books as she loves philosophy, religion and ethics for fun. She is more like me but she does not have the same burning brilliance that drives my son.

I think this week I need to push the Ed Psych for an idea of just how gifted he might be as he does rather stand out even for our family. They have been talking about setting him on the same option route they do for wannabe doctors but he is not so keen. Poor lad seems to be towards that end of the bell curve where it gets very thin and it is hard to find anyone at your level.
Thank you for all the suggestions and tips- I plan on sitting by the door on Weds whilst we try and sort out what stratergies might help him to stay sane over the next three years until he can enter the sixth form.

you know the melatonin dose can be altered to give the second half on first waking? i assume you've tried upping and splitting the dose so that it extends the total sleep time per night?

it doesn't always work, but often does.

Just a quick note- saw the Ed Psych et al today. Very good meeting as my son decided she was on his side and co-operated with her.
He is not doing the medical doctor route the school offered as he said he does not want to be a medical Dr so there is no point.
They got input form all his teachers and found the ones who differentiate get nice child whilst the ones who expect him to trog with the rest get sullen withdrawn unco-operative child. He does NOT want to take any exams early as he is still worried he does not know enough to pass. He easily could but no one will force him. He has been looking at A'level books and undergrad science when he gets bored so that can continue.
He has been offered BTec's in Engineering and told he can take those as far and as wide as he would like as the Tech' teacher can cope and is qualified to support. First time I have ever seen him grin and look relieved at such a meeting.
The school is using the G&T criteria to allow this as normally the BTec route is kept for the less academic students but they can also differentiate the BTecs so he can be given access to the level he works at.
He will also take the academic route but rather than four sciences will do 3, 2 maths and other BTecs that tie in with his aims of civil engineering. He wants to do drama for fun and practicing talking to people - I told him I did not care if he totally bombed it as a course as long as he enjoyed the lessons and ran with the mixed BTec/ academic route as that has taken the SENCO and inclusion worker some sorting out.
At this point he does not want to go to University but would like to see engineers at work.The Tech' department will help him.
His English shows strong dyslexic tendancies as there is a wide gap between his oral work and his written work. They are loHe has been offered chance to join a specialist Aspie Group similar to ASPIRE to help with the social gaffs and they are also looking at Dragon software for him.
One happier boy who is currently on the 'pute downstairs playing with some of the websites his Ed Pshyc suggested. If this works out for him he may be willing to look at some of the G&T resources the Ed Psych said she could help him with when he felt like he could cope. Will try suggesting the Young Engineers to him again and see if he feels he can cope.
The consensus is the boy is under-performing on purpose as he thought if he showed what he can do no one would let him near any form of engineering and he would be stuck on the medical route. He also said he would prefer to stay at his school and does not want to transfer to any of the grammars as he prefers to be in a technical envioronment.Hopefully this will reduce his stress levels and some of the weird behaviours he has as a result.
phew

Just chiming in that you're definitely not alone. DS1 is only 6, almost 7 and has ASD and ADHD and is gifted in Maths and highly computer literate and a fluent reader, even though he struggles to really understand what he reads, sometimes.

He has a lot of difficulties with school. He spent most of year 1 in school part time and his year 2 teacher made it onto his "hate" list in the record time of less than half a term because she can't distinguish naughtiness from when he is truly struggling and in a state of panic. He's been refusing to do any work, never mind underachieving (little monkey went through a phase of doing things deliberately wrong and inventing some wonderful incorrect spellings:o) and now rarely sets foot in his classroom. He actually seems to be achieving more this way, oddly enough.

And like you, we've found that medicating his ADHD has really exposed his ASD. As much as he can now focus on what he needs to be doing much better, he can also focus on negative things, like who he hates :(

Anyhow, I see things are looking more positive for your son. I hope that keeps up :)

Thanks Ouryve, so far he has been a lot happier and more willing to go into school since that meeting.

I have to admit parenting him can be very hard work so goodness knows what he is like to try and teach. Hurrah for a good state school although I do appreciate they can be hard to find.

Hope your son continues to find teachers who can value him for who he is and encourage the best in him whilst supporting the tougher bits that come from ADHD & ASD. Hope he finds his niche using maths and IT with a subject he loves and can thrive in.

I hope so. He's not been going into his classroom, this week and came across the year 5/6 maths books. He's been working from them with his TA, this week!

Hello, your son sounds so much like my youngest brother, he also has aspergers & is gifted. My brother has always done everything in his own way & his own time, when he was younger he also had a disdain for his teachers & a destructive attitude. He was lucky enough to be privately educated since he was 3 with heads who were highly supportive & wanted 'characters' in the classroom (and character they got!!) The bit about the poisons is eery, I think it must come from a book or something as that was completely my brothers sense of humour and if he was in a destructive mood that is how he would have behaved in what he would have perceived as a pressurised situation.

The way he got through school was by being bribed each year that if he got good enough results he could have games consoles / it equipment / cash, it's amazing how suddenly focused he would become. His secondary school also bent the rules for him, my Mum fed up with his pestering for sports sick notes wrote him a note covering the entire year, for the next 4 years he was quietly allowed to not do any sports which relieved a lot of pressure from him & made him a lot less stressed. They also allowed him to use a laptop in class when the rest of the class were writing.

He was tested for dyslexia & found to have some aspects of dyslexia most notably an inability to structure text. This explained why he would fail exams which should have been easy for him, he always finished exams long before the other children, complaining that it was easy & he was bored only to then fail the exam. He also had problems with misreading questions because of the aspergers, he seemed to have his own interpretation of the questions. His lack of coordination also made it hard for him to write properly, which all added up to a lot of frustration & anger.

We found out recently that he has a very strong sense of empathy and understanding of others - this was a huge shock - it seems he just has no way to express it. We only realised this through his studying english literature at school.

Thought you may like to know that he is now happily at a top university studying a specialised science. He has been able to meet lots of others just like him, spending all his spare time having in depth discussions with friends & online about anything and everything. The university he is at has brought him down to earth as he is surrounded by people who have achieved more & suddenly he is competitive about other things like art allowing him to push himself in ways he had never imagined.

He also has a girlfriend and a flat which is such a relief & no-one would ever have dared to predict. He has mostly outgrown his aspergers, although he still has some aspergers quirks and is still fairly full on - he does not do light conversation!

He now also can laugh at himself, he enjoys programmes like 'big bang theory' and 'IT crowd' and we've always fondly teased him about his eccentricities which I'm sure has helped.

I hope this has helped, looking back the teenage fears of getting an education, partner & career are scary but all that is intensified if you have aspergers and feel like no-one will ever be your friend or fancy you. My brother has turned into such a lovely adult, everyone quickly warms to him for being the individual he is & he has accepted that in some ways he needs to adjust to the world because his one boy fight against the world was pretty pointless. :)

Has helped to read this, thanks for taking the time to post. You will have encouraged a lot of people.

Our 17 year old daughter has just been diagnosed as dyslexic, dyspraxic and gifted. There may have been other things mentioned but our jaws were on the floor by then. We are awaiting the report. We organised this privately ourselves. She has no behavioural issues. She is at a famous highly academic independent school which we now have to approach with all this !! We are reeling. I am looking to make contact with parents further down this road. Thanks.