Strategies for Helping Your 2E Child to Focus
When working with twice exceptional (2e) children, teachers and parents discover many ways in which to adapt activities or instructions so that the children can be set up to succeed.  A few of the ways that I have observed over the past few years are:

• Placing colored cloth “shades” over fluorescent lighting.  This softens the lighting and soothes many children.
• Playing music in the classroom or during study time at home.  Sometimes what adults might consider a distraction actually helps these children to concentrate.
• Providing movement breaks is beneficial to concentration.  Letting children get up and move around periodically helps them to focus.
• Offering positive affective messages during lessons or study time provides encouragement that the child is trying.  These messages should be very specific, not “You’re doing a great job” but “I really like the way you are forming your letters.”
• Allowing the use of “fidgets” helps many children to pay attention.  By physically manipulating something (squishy ball, koosh ball, small toy, small stuffed creature, etc.), the child’s mind can concentrate on a task more easily.
• Allowing some children to type papers or to dictate them rather than hand write can produce astounding results.  Sometimes a child is considered to be a non-writer or a parent may have great difficulty getting a child to begin writing a paper.  Allowing the child to type it or dictate it may solve this problem.
• Alternating instruction from quiet desk work to physical activity to small group work to whole class instruction, with very little whole class instruction, can really benefit some 2e children.  Similarly, at home, alternating the types of tasks you ask your child to do can really create a more cooperative child: sit still and read for 20 minutes then take out the trash then help to cook dinner then sit still at the table may make each of those tasks more palatable for the 2e child.
• Creating “games” for lessons can help many 2e children.  Observing a class that was having difficulty writing with details, a teacher asked the class to stop writing and to draw simple monsters.  They giggled and laughed and drew their monsters.  She then asked them to write instructions for someone else to draw them.  They learned that details are important. In another class, students were learning about circles. They were loud and not paying attention to the lesson.  Rather than get frustrated, the teacher said that they were going to drop the lesson for the day.  Instead, they were going to make stained glass windows to hang up in the classroom window.  She had them draw large circles and then plot points, label, and color with markers.  They ended up with stained glass windows and had a lot of fun learning about radius, diameter, and chords. 
• Providing countdowns to transitions is key to cooperation with 2e kids: “5 minutes,” “3 minutes,” “1 minute,” ringing of bells to transition to the next activity all help the child to make those transitions.  One parent tells her children that when they need to leave a playground or beach or pool or someplace else where they are having a lot of fun and do not want to leave that they do need to leave but she will make time for “favorite thing time” at which point they are allowed to do their favorite thing one more time before leaving.  They know that after “favorite thing time” it is time to leave.
• Asking children to gauge their understanding by showing thumbs up, thumbs middle, or thumbs down sometimes helps children to express their level of approval in a non-verbal way.  One family uses this technique with meals, television choices, movie previews, and other family decisions.
• Allowing children to listen to audio books as they follow along with the reading sometimes helps 2e children to focus on the story and improves their reading proficiency.
• Introducing some 2e children to yoga can help them to release extra energy and to focus.
• Proving aerobic balls for 2e children to sit on while reading, writing, eating, watching television, or doing just about any activity can provide stimulation and movement which frees them to concentrate better.
• Allowing children to chew gum in class at school and while doing homework can help them to focus.
• Accepting work in written or verbal form can be helpful to 2e children.  This assumes that a parent or teacher is okay with the fact that knowledge is key, not format.
• Announcing dance breaks periodically can relieve stress and wake up the mind and body.  One teacher frequently senses the need for movement and will call out “dance break,” put on music, and allow the class to dance for 3 minutes.  She dances along and everyone laughs and has a good time.  When dance time is over, everyone gets back to work.
• Giving instructions both verbally and in writing can help some 2e children.  Children pay attention in different ways and if you find yourself saying, “I asked you five times to do that” perhaps you would have better luck writing down your requests either on a white board, a chalk board, note pads, or some other means available to you.  One parent writes on sticky notes which she attaches to doors, mirrors, toilet seats, backpacks, etc.  The child sees the notes and is reminded of what it is that he is supposed to do without her repeating herself.

All of these ways (and more) are examples of things you can do to help your child to be more focused. Please share your own ideas for helping your child to focus on the task at hand.

Twice Exceptionality
First of all, what does the term “twice exceptional” mean?  Simply, it refers to a child who is intellectually gifted, but who also has some challenge to learning, including, but not limited to, ADHD, an autism spectrum disorder, a behavioral or emotional disorder, or a specific learning disability.  Unfortunately, often the giftedness is masked by the disability, the disability is masked by the giftedness, or neither is addressed since the child appears to be doing fine.  twice exceptionality is a puzzle and we must identify all of the pieces in order to help the child to fulfill his potential.


As we seek to understand appropriate measures by which to identify twice-exceptional children, we must also understand the complexities of twice-exceptionality. While we have to look at a child’s innate intelligence and academic potential, we also need to be able to see the array of possible impediments to the child’s reaching that potential.  


When we talk about twice-exceptional (2E) learners, there is a tendency to look at them as a group.  What can we do for 2X learners?  How can we modify curriculum for 2E learners?  How should we differentiate for 2E learners?  Unfortunately, the problem is not that straightforward.  Gifted students who have physical, emotional, psychological, or cognitive obstacles in their paths need to be addressed differently.  For example, a teacher certainly would not provide the same accommodations to a blind gifted student as to a gifted student who is deaf.  Similarly, the needs of the gifted child with ADHD are different from those of a gifted child with emotional or behavioral issues.  To carry the argument in a slightly different direction, the needs of a student at one end of the autism spectrum are even quite different from those for the student at the other end.  We want to provide the best educational opportunities possible to each child, but we would be doing these 2E learners a disservice if we thought of them all as simply “2E.”  We absolutely must look at their individual needs based upon the type and degree of both their obstacles and their giftedness.


In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed as reauthorization of The Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  In NCLB, giftedness was defined as: “Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.” [Title IX, Part A, Definition 22. (2002)]  Many states and districts do follow this NCLB definition. Gone is reliance on the measure of one’s giftedness as a numerical number achieved on an intelligence test; however, intelligence quotients (IQs) may still qualify one as gifted in terms of providing a window into the “potential for high achievement.”


As children reach the school years, parents often see signs of giftedness in their children first.  Stories abound of how Johnny was speaking in complete sentences at 1 or Susie was reading at 3.  These certainly are early signs of precociousness; however, other signs must be considered as well (depending upon which definition of giftedness we choose to use).  Similarly, if a parent sees that Johnny has difficulty distinguishing among vowel sounds, or writes illegibly, reads haltingly or becomes enraged at the slightest provocation, there may be a twice-exceptionality.  I believe that parents are integral players in identifying 2E children. 


The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) tells us, in its position paper on twice exceptionality, “Whereas the concept itself is becoming more well-known both in and out of gifted education, professionals still are unsure of the prevalence of twice-exceptionality because no federal agency gathers base-rate data for this group of students. Estimates made through various sources, such as the U.S. Department of Education, suggest that there are approximately 360,000 twice-exceptional students in America’s schools (National Education Association, 2006), making the call for awareness and understanding about twice-exceptionality critical for educators nationwide.


Also to be considered, Piaget believed that we must understand a child’s logic in order to understand their level of intelligence.  He believed, "Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves."  (http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/piaget02.html)  Any true measure of their intelligence, then, should be one that allows them a degree of individual exploration and re-invention.  


NAGC cautions, “IQ tests do not measure creativity, leadership, initiative, curiosity, commitment, artistic skill, musical talent, social skills, emotional well-being, or physical prowess - all components which can be included in definitions of giftedness. There is considerable evidence that students who are economically disadvantaged, from ethnic minorities, and/or speak English as a second language generally receive a lower score on IQ tests. This is a fault in the tests, not the students” [Callahan, C. M. & Eichner, H. (2009). IQ Tests and Your Child.  Retrieved November 3, 2009 from www.nagc.org].


The bottom line, then, is that when looking at the possibility of twice exceptionality, we need to look at the whole child.  We need to be aware of how easily he learns, assimilates, and displays knowledge, but also of when he becomes frustrated, how he relates to other children his chronological age, and parents’ impressions of the child.  Only by putting together all of the pieces of the puzzle that is each child can we assist him in fulfilling his true potential.