Did you know that the single most important thing you can give a twice-exceptional child is a sense of who she is before who she struggles to be? In meetings, in reports, in intervention plans, and even sometimes at home, the conversation around a 2e child gradually tilts toward what isn’t working. The missing assignment. The executive function. The reading level. The emotional regulation. Each deficit gets named, studied, and planned for — and over time, the child begins to see herself through the language the adults keep using. She becomes, in her own mind, the list of things she can’t quite do.
This is one of the most damaging byproducts of even well-meaning support. A child who is surrounded by deficit language, year after year, eventually internalizes it. She stops seeing her mind as an asset. She starts experiencing her struggles as the main event and her gifts as a small, footnoted asterisk. Her identity quietly shifts. And once that shift happens, even excellent interventions have a harder time reaching her, because the child they are trying to help no longer believes she is worth the effort.
The reframe that changes everything is this: your child is gifted first. Her challenges are real. They deserve real support, real accommodation, real strategy. But they do not define her. They do not outweigh her. They are one dimension of a complex, capable, fully-human kid whose primary story is not deficit. It is brilliance — sometimes messy, sometimes asynchronous, sometimes unrecognized, but primary. When the adults around her hold that truth steadily, she starts to hold it too.
This is not denial. It is not positive thinking. It is a deliberate order of operations. Start with strengths. Name them out loud. Protect access to challenge, even when the struggles make it tempting to lower the bar. Make sure that the plans, the paperwork, and the everyday conversation at home all reflect that your child is a gifted learner who also needs support — not a struggling learner who happens to have some strengths. That ordering is not cosmetic. It shapes what she believes about herself, and what she believes about herself shapes everything that comes next.
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
