I was one of the lucky ones.

I feel the need to share my twelve year journey. It hasn't been easy. It has been filled with tears, frustration, loneliness, defeat, road blocks, perceived dead ends, road diversions, loud voices, baby steps, inspired people, determined people, caring people, new roads taken, different options, tenacious behavior, and too many experiences to list.

I have an eighteen year old that is twice exceptional. That doesn't mean that he is twice 'as good' as the next child. It is a term that is unfamiliar to a lot of people, even educators. I chuckle at a memory I have of sitting in an IEP school meeting. (Individual Education Plan). I don't know if I will ever forget the blank stare of one teacher's face when I said 'my child is twice exceptional, or 2X, as it is often called. The look that I got felt like he was thinking 'oh, you are one of THOSE parents who think your child is SO great”. Yes, I do think my kids are pretty great but that is NOT what it means to be 2X or 2e.

Twice exceptional. The term twice exceptional, often abbreviated as 2e, has only recently entered educators' lexicon and refers to intellectually gifted children who have some form of disability. He has a vocabulary two levels above her peers, but cannot calculate 4 + 6. He can read a symphony but cannot hold a pencil to write his own name. Are they gifted or learning disabled? The answer is, both.

If I haven't lost you yet, I want to share with you a portion of an article from Eduction.com.

Gifted children with learning disabilities (GT/LD) are known as "twice exceptional." Contrary to popular belief, it’s actually a common issue. What is uncommon is recognizing that the child is twice exceptional in the first place.

Until fairly recently, finding a kid marked both “gifted” and “learning disabled” was extremely rare. Mostly because no one was looking for it. In the school environment, where kids are routinely put on a track marked “honors” or “remedial,” “special needs” or “college prep,” evaluators rarely looked for combination children. They didn’t expect a gifted child to have dyslexia, or realize the child with ADHD might also be brilliant at calculus.

Sally Reis, principal investigator for the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut, says that “identifying GT/LD children is very hard because they look to the rest of the world like average achievers. Their superior gifts may be compensating for and masking their learning disability.” And in turn, their disabilities may disguise their giftedness.

In fact, although estimates say that as many as 20 percent of students have some form of learning difference, most twice exceptional children are never identified. Parents and educators tend to throw all their strength at “curing” the disability, dismissing the hidden talents they discover along the way. When they do recognize giftedness, they expect kids to “work harder” or “pull it together.” Reis says, “It’s like saying to a blind person, if you really work hard at seeing, you’ll be able to see.”

So how can we help a child we suspect is twice exceptional? The first step is diagnosis. Qualities and symptoms will differ, depending on the disability holding them back, but here are a few signs common in GT/LD children:

An outstanding talent or ability
Discrepancy between expected and actual achievement
Difficulty getting along with peers
Low self-esteem
Evidence of underachieving
The appearance of laziness and an inability to focus or concentrate.

One of the main problems for twice exceptional children is the fact that today’s schools are very heavily focused on reading and writing. Unfortunately, these are two of the most common problematic areas for gifted children with learning disabilities. Quite often it is difficult for them to learn and excel in a heavily linguistic and auditory school environment.

(I have to get back on track and get off my soap box, but if you want to know more in this area, look up this other article too:

Dual Exceptionalities

By Colleen Willard-Holt — Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Division of Learning Disabilities (DLD)

Updated on Mar 8, 2010

Gifted students with disabling conditions remain a major group of underserved and understimulated youth (Cline, 1999). The focus on accommodations for their disabilities may preclude the recognition and development of their cognitive abilities. It is not unexpected, then, to find a significant discrepancy between the measured academic potential of these students and their actual performance in the classroom (Whitmore & Maker, 1985). In order for these children to reach their potential, it is imperative that their intellectual strengths be recognized and nurtured, at the same time as their disability is accommodated appropriately.

OK. Now if I haven't lost you....continue with me.

I have SO many memories swirling through my head, I don't know where to start. Most of them are not great ones, but filled with frustrations and uncertainty.

When my last son was born, all seemed to be normal. It was a normal pregnancy, normal delivery, normal everything. EXCEPT, he didn't start to talk until he was three years old. I thought this was due to continuous ear infections, with tubes in and tubes out, stays in the hospital because of contagious infections. He was in isolation for about four days during one hospital day. Tonsils out, adenoids, out....All the challenges of non-stop ear infections. We had early intervention specialist in our home, teaching us/him sign language so we could communicate, trying to relieve frustration from communication challenges.

We were in a program with other families of children, mostly boys, that weren't speaking. We tried every avenue that I could find. I remember I knew something was different when we were at a 'wet/dry table playing with different textures. This certain day was spaghetti. He was about 2 years old and would NOT touch that for any bribe I would try to give him. I recalled when he was about that same age, shopping at SAMS and I would place ground beef in my shopping cart. He would take one look at it and then lean over his seat and vomit on the floor. I knew he had a problem with textures. I couldn't get him to wear certain clothes because they 'bugged him'. I remember telling my husband to 'choose your battles', if he didn't want to wear a belt, or certain pants, or shirts that buttoned down, let's choose another battle to conquer.

Now, my brain is REALLY swirling with memories. I think I need an editor to help me put all this down properly. LOL.

Let me summarize some things to make this story go faster. By the age of three, he finally started to talk.....and started reading at the same time. I thought he was just able to memorize easily, but he was reading three grade levels above his age group. Elementary school was a challenge for us. I knew something was different but didn't know what it was.

I WAS ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES. He was placed with a Kindergarten teacher that knew about love and touch. She knew exactly how to calm him down when needed, how to start to direct me in getting some needed guidance. MARY ARNOW, I will be forever grateful for our paths crossing.

In third grade, I was ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES. Adam was placed with Melodie Larsen. She was a veteran school teacher with years of experiences. It was this year that we were able to set up our first IEP. She taught with such patience that I finally had hope for my son.

Sadly, that didn't last. The next year, we decided to move our family from South Ogden Utah to Hurricane Utah in Southern Utah.

New struggles started again. I was continually frustrated with the school principal and the teacher assigned to Adam. He had a great speech teacher but that is the ONLY thing I can say good about that school. I got absolutely no where with the school principal. I don't know why he ever went into teaching or administration because he was among the worse that I had ever ran across.

So, I tried home schooling. That lasted three years, two for both of my boys. Then I put my oldest one back into public school and continued on with Adam for another year alone at home.

Some things worked, some things didn't . The thing that worked was I was able to take him off all the medications the doctors and teachers seemed to think he needed. No medications were working. Diagnosis: Oh, he is ADD, or maybe ADHD, or maybe he has high functioning Aspergers, or...whatever they thought.

It took EVERY ounce of patience that I had to keep going. And, I admit, some days I didn't do too well. When I got to the point of screaming, I had to leave the room. Adam could not do the grade level work required of him and there was no way to customize the lesson plans to meet his educational needs. He hated math because he couldn't do it. His brain just could not compute where needed. However, he did pretty good with language and reading.

Let me insert a comment here. Adam went through a few IQ/Abilities testing. A Test called Woodcock and Johnson was one of them. Adam always scored 'off the charts' in the reading and language but hardly even 'made the chart' in math skills. He couldn't write physically. We tried the key board and head phones and dictation and me doing his writing. We had him tested for occupational therapy classes. We tried big pencils, and smaller pencils. We tried pens and markers. He just couldn't write/print well at all. It was a constant battle.

By his Freshman year, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I felt as if I had given it my all. I couldn't home school anymore. I was making myself physically sick. Without any options left, I put him back into public school. I felt as if I had failed him.

BUT, I am one of the lucky ones. His sophomore year, we were given a miracle in the form of a teacher name of Suzan Ort. And his Junior and Senior years, the second miracle was named Sarah Beth Gibbs. These teachers saved Adam's life. School was NOT easy for him. These two Special Ed-teachers were able to make accommodations that no other teacher even suggested. This is where I will say that the PUBLIC school system could have failed my son BUT these two teachers DID NOT. These teachers did not give up on him the years they had him.

They understood the term 'twice exceptional' and knew how to go about forming a team of support by communicating with other teachers, working on less stressful lesson plans, making adaptation of time schedules, test schedules, stress relief situations, and anything else they could think of that he needed during these years.

I have to say that Ms. Gibbs is totally responsible at seeing my son receive his high school diploma. At least, that is how I feel. Without her, Adam would have been lost in the system. He would have been overlooked in the general population.

For two years in public school, Adam did not have ONE friend, did not attend one activity, did not attend one dance, he was NOT included in anyone's activities nor did he get invited to join in anything. Why? Because he was 'a bit different'.

The ONE highlight of Adam's high school years was when he competed in the Christmas time talent show. When he asked me if he could participate, I hesitantly said yes and asked him what he would do. When he told me 'play the guitar' I responded with 'do you know how”. And he answered 'yes'. And when I asked him 'how', he told me that 'I taught myself'. I had no idea that he even had picked up my old guitar. I found out that he could listen to a song on you tube and he could pick out the notes and play them. He won the contest that year. The next day was the beginning of Christmas break.

His junior year, that was the only thing is participated in. After Christmas break, no one remembered that he had won and life went back to the lonely stage, where kids would push him in the hallways, bump into him and laugh, try to run him over in the parking lot. And the lists go on.

Ms Gibbs didn't forget however. She praised him and talked to him about his music and really cared about Adam. Adam,the person, Adam, a human being. Adam, himself. She understood what it meant to be 'twice exceptional'. Adam was.

The other life changing event that took place during this same time period was that Adam was hired on at our local movie theater. This is where he met his PUBLIC life saver. His new boss was/still is Rick Moser. He saw something in Adam. Adam blossomed when he walked into this theater. While at school, when Adam was getting bullied almost every day, he found refuge at work, where people treated him with respect. They talked to him. They included him. He was a person. He was a human being.

Again, I was one of the lucky ones having these two teachers and this one Boss enter into Adam's life.

Adam's senior year started out challenging, but by the second semester, Ms. Gibbs had a balance of online classes and a few in house classes that FINALLY were working for Adam.

Another challenge that Adam faced with courage and triumph, was in January (2018) his dad had to undergo a stem cell replacement for multiple myeloma cancer. Adam stayed alone for the 6 weeks that we were gone to Salt Lake City/Huntsman Cancer Institute for treatment. He did his own cooking, got himself up most of the days for school and got himself to work every shift assigned to him. He had Angel neighbors eyes watching out for him, his grandmother came for a week and stayed with him and his work was his safe refuge.

Last week,(thursday April 12th) Ms. Gibbs called me and said that Adam had almost all the credits needed to graduate. He now had two options. He could stay on the 'A' schedule classes and attend them the rest of the school year or he could finish up two online classes that he had already started. One was 70% complete, the other only 30% complete. I was sure that Adam would take the option A but to my surprise, he chose the online classes. One was a government class and the other an Health class. He told this to Ms. Gibbs on Friday, April 13^th.

On Monday , April 16^th, Adam put a certificate on top of my lap top. I am going to try to attach it at the end of this story. It was a certificate that he made the third quarter Honor Roll. This was mainly the 6 weeks we were gone for cancer treatments. He had a 3.7 GPA.

Yes, I was completely caught off guard. BUT, not as off guard as when he came to me Tuesday morning, April the 17^th and said...”I'm done'. I thought that he meant, he was done with school/ fed up. And he said, with this Cheshire looking smile on his face, “No, Mom, I'm done WITH SCHOOL'! I was in complete shock. SO much so, that I did not tell him, but I called his teacher to confirm this. ! Lol. Adam has worked almost non stop ALL weekend long completing his two online classes. Yes, He is done.

Twelve years of school, done. Twelve years of IEP's done. Twelve years of specialist and testings and everything else....he was done. His teacher did tell me that he needed to finish one more IQ/Competency testing, the Woodcock-Johnson testing.

He did that on Wednesday, April 18^th. She called me with the test results. I. WAS. STUNNED.

She said, I have to tell you about the results. He was 'off the charts' on everything except this one small section of math skills that he struggled with for 12 years. His reading, language skills, comprehensive were above two plus years of COLLEGE. She reminded me that his IQ was extremely high, that his scores were outstanding. You still can not read his writing, he still has terrible dexterity skills, except he can sure play a mean guitar.....all self taught, of course.

Yes, he is 'twice exceptional'. If you are reading this and this sounds like YOUR child, I encourage you to FIGHT with everything in your might for your child. DON”T give up. Work until YOU find the RIGHT thing for him/her. You will have to fight the school system in many areas!! MANY, MANY times I wanted to give up. I know this story is long in reading, but I have only SCRATCHED the surface of the amount of meetings, lectures, classes, articles, etc that I researched. I stuck my neck out. I was put down by some educators, Ignored by principals. Thought of as 'one of those mothers' who thought their child was the best. I can not even begin to tell you the amount of tears I shed, the sleeplessness nights I had, the weight I gained. The gray hairs, I have. I can't tell you how many times, I wanted to give up, to even run away, to escape, etc. BUT, I did not.......

Adam does not want to walk with his classmates at the formal graduation. He doesn't have good memories of his high school years. It is so sad to me, I wished that one classmate would have found a connection with him and included him, but not one did. He is done with those twelve years.

But.......

I was one of the lucky ones. I have had a few great adults that crossed paths with me and my son that have made all the difference in his life.

I will be forever grateful.

A card for Ms. Gibbs.