Did you know that some of the most consistently disruptive children in a classroom are not acting out because they are defiant — they are acting out because they are bored, frustrated, or drowning? For twice-exceptional children especially, what gets written up as a behavior problem is often a perfectly rational response to an unmet need. A child who has mastered the material three grade levels ago and is being asked to do it again today may well tap the desk, wander the room, or distract the kid next to him. A child whose processing speed is slow and whose verbal ability is high may refuse to start a worksheet because he has no idea how to bridge that gap without everyone seeing him struggle.
This is not an excuse for disrespectful behavior. It is a reframing of where the behavior is coming from. When the adults in a child’s life see defiance, they tend to respond with consequences — detentions, time-outs, behavior charts, the whole apparatus of compliance management. Those responses work moderately well with children whose behavior is a simple will-based choice. They work poorly, and sometimes catastrophically, with children whose behavior is a signal about a mismatch between who they are and what they are being asked to do.
For 2e children, this matters enormously. A child who is treated as a behavior problem starts to believe he is one. He builds his identity around the narrative the adults keep reinforcing — that he is defiant, difficult, lazy, disruptive, the reason things go wrong in the classroom. Underneath that narrative is almost always something else: a bored mind, a struggling skill, an emotional need no one paused to ask about. When we skip the diagnostic step and go straight to punishment, we harden the wrong story about who the child is.
The more useful question is almost always: what is this behavior solving for? What is the child trying to communicate that he doesn’t yet have the words or safety to say directly? When adults get curious about the function of the behavior rather than just the form, entirely new paths open up. Challenge gets added. Scaffolding gets added. Conversations get different. And a child who had been spiraling into a bad-kid identity often turns out to be, underneath all of it, a remarkable learner who was simply waiting for someone to notice what the behavior was actually about.
If any of this resonates, you’re not imagining it — and you’re not alone. My book, Supporting Your Twice-Exceptional Child: Nurturing Strengths While Navigating Challenges, is a practical guide for parents and educators learning to hold both truths at once. Inside, you’ll find frameworks for recognizing 2e profiles, strategies for advocacy that doesn’t burn you out, and tools for protecting your child’s identity along the way.
— Adam C. Laningham, M.Ed.
Available now on Amazon and at BrightChildBooks.com
