By: Kayla Suderman
“This is boring! Why do you keep making me do stuff I already know? I HATE school!” My second-grader Lane* screamed through her tears.
It was true. Every time I taught a new concept she either already knew it or mastered it within that day. It was a pace for which I was unprepared. Most lesson plans spent a week on new concepts, or would spiral back to previous taught skills before moving on, but I had to condense an entire week’s lesson plan into one day’s worth of teaching in order to match her speed. It was an incredible amount of extra work on my part, and even then we would still run into many things she already “knew.” How is this even possible? I would marvel. Of course I’d heard the old adage “kids are like sponges” but this seemed extreme.
In the beginning of our homeschool journey we both had immense fun. And while kindergarten was the same confusing story with Lane knowing most subjects, we both still enjoyed the work. However, after three years of that routine we had tired. School was something mundane and pointless to her by second grade since I had somehow failed to academically challenge her. Teaching was now a source of anxiety for me and a fuel for feelings of inadequacy. The problem was I thought I was challenging her, yet at the same time I couldn’t seem to catch up to her. She was reading three grade levels ahead, was at least one grade level ahead in math, and already understood geography as well as most middle school students. But then there was the issue of her handwriting and spelling. Nothing about teaching this child was simple. In second grade she could read words such as “unconscious”, “obscene”, “purification”, “phenomenon” and “omniscient” but would then ask for help in spelling words such as “house”, “state” and her own middle name. Sadly, her handwriting was in worse shape than her spelling with her letters being hardly distinguishable, something I was conscientious of for a year but didn’t genuinely worry until I saw her kindergarten sister Bitty writing with better skill and formation.
While struggling to figure out Lane, I was also struggling with Bitty who was a young kindergartener. Like her sister, Bitty entered kindergarten reading. And like her sister, I didn’t teach her how to read. It just happened. But she was an even more puzzling case. For one, Bitty was unable to sit without fidgeting for more than a few seconds. This was true of her even in the womb. Of my now four children, I still remember her insanely fast movements in utero. None of her siblings mimicked those gymnastic moves to the level she was capable of prenatally. Now in kindergarten, she was a ball of furled energy. While similar to her sister in many areas, there were some distinct differences. With Lane I couldn’t catch up to whatever level she was at. With Bitty I couldn’t get information to stick! Some days it seemed she completely understood concepts but several days later it was if that information literally fell out of her mind. Someone close to me with similar experience in her now-grown child said it is like a “Swiss cheese mind.”
Since Bitty was a young toddler I had lamented it was like living with an amnesiac. Her short term memory was awful. Yet while she frequently forgot simple instructions, sometimes couldn’t remember her birthday, and couldn’t recall the state where she lived, she could hear and identify every instrument she heard in an orchestra, could tell you from age three if a chord was major or minor, and eventually began composing her own piano songs at age six in spite of not being in piano lessons.
Our normal is not the norm.
I’m describing life with twice exceptional (2e) children, a term often used in the gifted community to indicate a gifted individual (someone whose IQ is generally 130 or greater) who also struggles with a learning disorder such as ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, Autism, or sensory processing disorder. I know we’re not the only homeschool family with children like this. This post is a shout out to parents who also find themselves in the perplexing roles of parenting gifted or 2e children. I’m vulnerably sharing our story in hopes it encourages another homeschooling family, something I desperately searched for years ago but was unable to find.
Two years ago we walked into the office of an educational psychologist. It was our cry for help. On the verge of abandoning homeschooling, we desperately needed answers for our children’s oddities. We couldn’t keep up with their learning in some areas yet also couldn’t help them effectively in the areas they struggled. The disparity in their skills was alarming and depressing. Answers finally came. We discovered our daughters each struggle with different learning disabilities yet at the same time are gifted. We finally learned a word for their abilities but more importantly we learned the word to describe their bizarre uneven development: asynchronous, which means they operate on high levels in some areas of their lives yet struggle to be peer-level in other areas, which is common among the gifted population.
Between the girls we covered everything diagnostically from gifted to ADHD to dysgraphia and dyslexia. According to the CDC, roughly 9% of children will be diagnosed with ADHD. About 15% of the population is dyslexic, and in elementary school around 4% of children struggle with dysgraphia. Top that off with only 5% of the overall population being gifted and it looks like we’ve won the “outlier” lottery. Finding another homeschool family that intricately understands the complexities of schooling such out-of-the-norm children is rare, and yet that community is very much needed. I know there are other homeschool families who need to know they’re not alone. Like us, you may be that family. Perhaps you’re ready to quit homeschooling as well, because a bright and voracious learner is not only intense academically and intellectually but also emotionally (more on that later). In fact, the emotional meltdowns our family daily experiences between our children often overshadows their high abilities. For the first half-decade of our parenting career we chalked up their uneven development to poor parenting skills. No one else’s children in our social circle had such paroxysmal behavior. Surely we were doing something wrong.
If you suspect your normal is also not the norm and you’re struggling with that, then keep reading. It can get better. I hope I can offer some online comradery to fellow parents in similar situations with their children!
One of the most helpful tips the educational psychologist offered was to “throw out the tests and repetitious quizzes.” Rather, he said, if our children demonstrate clear mastery of the subject then quickly move on (this can be applicable to gifted or non-gifted children). With gifted children they master content so rapidly that you also run the danger of boring them just as quickly. In the beginning of homeschooling I couldn’t fathom leaving so many blank pages in workbooks. Not only did it seem a waste of money but it would also look as if we did nothing! Furthermore, I feared moving too quickly would inhibit me from seeing “gaps” in their understanding. But we were in a place of desperation. I had no choice but to try what the psychologist suggested. Thankfully, that simple piece of advice has saved us hours of wasted time and tears.
Practically speaking, if your child insists he knows a subject and therefore doesn’t want to do the required work, give him a chance to prove himself. Explain you’re more than happy to move on if he can do several of the problems or questions well enough to show he doesn’t need more practice. You may need to remind him to not be sloppy because if he hastily makes mistakes you may interpret that as him not understanding the material. Both our girls are notorious for blasting through work they know well and ultimately they make careless mistakes because they didn’t take the time to heed the instructions well. It didn’t take long for them to figure out if they wanted to do less of the work they needed to do better on the work and to take their time accurately reflecting what they knew. Also, if you’re aware your child knows the material in the next two, five or twenty lesson plans then skip them! It may not be uncommon for you to go through multiple grade levels in a year’s time. It also may not be uncommon for you to move that quickly for a while and then your child slows down. It’s about finding their level and keeping up with their natural learning pace. And with all things in life, it’s not concretely the same at all times. There will be ups and downs in their abilities, vigor and quickness.
The next tip the psychologist offered seemed culturally counterintuitive, which is don’t worry about what they should know at this age but allow them to be immersed in what they want to know. Yes, that sounds like unschooling. And while it can be taken to that level, it doesn’t have to be. We’ve operated in a strange place for years between structure and unschooling. While I try to keep them on task with expected reading, writing and mathematics, there have been times when we take time off from all school books and plunge into their interests whether that is geology, music, biology, literature or art. Several years ago our children were interested in geology. One kept an elaborate rock collection complete with identification books to help her classify her specimens, and the other was (at the time) an aspiring volcanologist who wanted to learn how to identify different volcano formations, recreate them with experiments, and check out all possible books on geology from the library. So we spent most of our “school” studying geology, doing experiments, traveling to rock and mineral shows so they could interview real geologists, and even created a rock display for our local library to borrow for a month. This is just one example of immersion learning. Because with gifted kids their interest often borders on obsession. They crave lots of detailed information that regularly leads to time-consuming rabbit trails. Amazingly, by time we get back to their regular bookwork they’re so refreshed it’s not difficult to make up what was missed or they somehow learned those skills through their interest-led immersion process. Which leads me to my next point.
Resist the urge to push too hard. With gifted children it’s challenging to fight back the compulsion to drive them forward. It’s also difficult being realistic with what to expect of them, for while they may be capable of talking world politics, history or current events at a mature level, they’re still children who have meltdowns, can’t remember where they put things, and keep messy rooms. This inconsistency can lead to unrealistic expectations that they should operate on high levels in all areas of life. If your second grader can name the countries of the world, or memorize every scene from her favorite book or movie, or perform pre-algebraic equations but cannot tie her shoes and cries like she is still four, that’s a great example of asynchrony. And the danger with asynchrony is it’s tempting to chastise them for being lazy in the things they seem “behind” in. This was the crux with our oldest daughter that ultimately led us to seek an evaluation. In second grade I accused her routinely of being lazy with penmanship and spelling skills as those skills were quite abysmal. She would insist she was trying her hardest, would then break down into tears or flee the room. Imagine my shame when we discovered she has severe dysgraphia, which, simply put, is a writing disorder. It turned out she actually was trying her best. It just wasn’t on the same level as her other abilities or even her peers. Be gentle with your bright child and exercise wisdom to know when to push and when to let them be.
The last issue I want to mention is the emotional side of gifted children. Parents of gifted and/or learning disabled children spend more time and energy than most on coaching their children how to manage emotions in healthy manners. Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified five different areas in which most gifted children demonstrate “overexcitabilities (OEs).” Overexcitabilities is a fancy way of saying gifted individuals feel more, think more, move more, react more, etc. than neurotypical individuals. These five areas are psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional. I’m focusing on the emotional area because it’s the one that can make a family look and feel out of control, especially to others. Gifted children can have passionate and powerful reactions to what seems to others as nonissues. Our five-year-old could win a Broadway award for his melodrama. Recently he fell off his bike and bloodied his knee. While most children would shed tears and ask for a Band-Aid, he took it many steps further. He cried until he felt like puking, but not from the pain. He was so intensely upset that there is pain and suffering in the world and bellowed for over 10 minutes about how his hurt knee is a direct result of Adam and Eve’s fault and their issuance of sin into the world, how some kids are starving to death in other countries, and how life is pointless to live if your body is always going to get hurt. His emotions ran so deep and so long that while I cleaned up his wound I was also doing my best to emotionally coach him through his overwhelming feelings. This is an extremely common response in our children. Last year Lane vomited at church which invoked Bitty to cry for over an hour because she was embarrassed for her sister. Bitty was also so upset for her sister being ill and missing out on time with her friends that consequently Bitty became sick as well from stressing over Lane’s well-being!
Life is a roller-coaster for every family. And for families with gifted or 2e children, that roller coaster often looks a lot different from the ride others are on. Our normal is not the norm. And maybe yours isn’t either. The good news is you are not alone on this journey.
For more information on gifted children check out the following resources:
https://www.davidsongifted.org/
https://www.verywellfamily.com/is-my-child-gifted-1449131
https://www.verywellfamily.com/characteristics-of-gifted-children-1449114
https://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ed_Twice_Exceptional/
*The names of those involved in this article have been changed to protect privacy.
Kayla is above all else devoted to following Christ and reflecting His truths from the Bible in all areas of her life. The biggest area in which her life has been called to glorify and worship God is the journey of raising and educating three 2e children (the fourth is yet to be determined)! In her rare spare time Kayla loves to bird watch, read and discuss theology, study learning disabilities and attend relevant workshops, play with the family’s show Holland Lops, and garden.
Kansas Home Educators 