Is it okay to advocate for your gifted child at school? Yes, of course! While speaking up can make you feel like a “difficult parent”, it is one of the most helpful things you can do for your child.
Gifted and twice-exceptional students are rarely served by default because traditional learning environments do not have specialized training or resources to support the level of tailoring needed. Your intervention is often the thing that gets them the challenge or support they have been missing.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of strategies for educating twice-exceptional students in both physical and virtual classrooms. This guide will help you with conversations with your kids’ school while avoiding having the school resort to ultimately unhelpful outcomes, such as:
- Peer tutoring instead of instruction
- Prizes for finishing early
- Increased amounts of boring classwork versus increased difficulty
- Self-paced video modules with no instructor feedback
- “Gifted-friendly” as a marketing label for programs with no defined criteria or curriculum-level differentiation
The Parent’s Guide to Advocating at School gives you a proven way to advocate, starting with a changed mindset and ending with real-world examples. Download it at the bottom of this page when you are ready.
Inside the Guide
Explore the guide’s four parts at a high level before you download it.
Part 1: Is It Okay to Advocate? Myths vs. Reality
The first hurdle is usually not the school. It is the worry that speaking up makes you pushy, or that a bright kid is fine on their own. Part 1 takes both myths apart and shows why gifted, asynchronous, and twice-exceptional learners all need active support.
Part 2: Conversations That Really Work
Now that you have decided to speak up, what do you say? Part 2 gives you a four-step approach to that first teacher conversation, including how to frame your child’s traits in a positive way, email templates to use as a starting point, and how to build a portfolio of your child’s work.
Part 3: From One Teacher to Your Full Support Team
One teacher is a great start, but there are a lot of people who support your child’s holistic growth. Part 3 shows you how to grow from a one-person relationship into a full team and how to keep a relationship map, so you are clear on who to turn to for what. From teachers and specialists to counselors, everyone works together to help your child reach their full potential.
Part 4: Boredom, Rights, 2e, and When Advocacy Gets Hard
Not every situation can be resolved with a friendly email. Part 4 covers the harder ground: chronic boredom and underachievement as well as how to keep going when the answer is not ideal. It also speaks to the legal landscape; there is no federal mandate for gifted education, so much of a twice-exceptional family’s leverage comes from the disability side through IDEA and Section 504.
Who Benefits Most From This Guide
This guide is for you if you are the parent of:
- The bored kid
- The coasting kid
- The kid who consistently excels at one subject and fails at another
- The kid whose struggles keep getting waved off
It is also for the parent who suspects their child is twice exceptional, watching a capable kid struggle in ways the school keeps explaining away.
What Is Twice Exceptional?
Twice exceptional (2e) describes a child who is both gifted and has one or more learning differences or disabilities. ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, autism, an anxiety disorder, a processing or sensory difference all fall under that category.
Example: a child who aces a discussion, but his written assignment comes back half-finished and full of spelling errors. Turns out, this gifted young mind is running ahead of a writing or reading difference, such as dysgraphia or dyslexia.
Download a Parent’s Guide to Advocating at School
You do not need a confrontation or to memorize the perfect script. It is more about showing up informed and staying with it, even when progress is slow. You can do this!