Twice-Exceptionality Archives - Classical Education Books

The Intenso Family Goes to a New School

sarah — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 21:02:55 +0000

The five Intenso family has just moved to a new city, and the five children are anxious about their first day at school. They each represent one of the five intensities—also known as overexcitabilities—that are common among gifted children, and they display their hopes and fears in five very different ways. Children who have one or more of the overexcitabilities will recognize themselves in the characters and will learn strategies to help alleviate some of the problems associated with having such intense feelings.

The Intensos march bravely into their new school, where they meet their new teacher. She explains to them that she understands how they feel and that she will do everything she can to make their experience exciting and rewarding. The quintuplets are reassured and enter their new classroom together with the confidence that comes from being accepted as they are.

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My Twice-Exceptional Murphy

sarah — Mon, 30 May 2022 21:50:48 +0000

Sample

Murphy was a special dog from the beginning. He was a happy puppy, and incredibly smart. Yet at about the age of five, he began exhibiting pervasive symptoms of anxiety and fear that rapidly took over his life. His story is one of struggle against unknown terrors and of the love and patient care that his dog mom (a.k.a. owner) provided to bring him back to health. It is a tale of love, determination, resilience, and inspiration.

The book is exceptionally emotionally rich, yet it also offers clear explanations of giftedness and twice-exceptionality for people who may be new to those topics. It presents a portrait of what being 2e can look like, but it does so through the figure of a dog. Murphy’s journey was not easy, and his mom’s journey alongside him was at times frustrating and discouraging, but no matter how challenging Murphy’s problems were, one thing never changed: he and his mom loved each other deeply.

Murphy’s story presents parents and other adults with insight into some of the ways in which real people must deal with twice-exceptionality in all its complexities, but it also offers 2e children the chance to see aspects of themselves in the nonthreatening context of an animal story. Among the lessons they will learn is that, no matter how much they may struggle, no matter how exasperated their parents may feel sometimes, they are still beautiful, valuable individuals who can be the light of someone’s life. There is no better lesson than that.

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The Inconvenient Student

sarah — Mon, 30 May 2022 21:43:27 +0000

Sample

Twice-exceptional children are those who are both gifted and have a learning disability or an attentional or behavioral disorder. Because they have exceptionalities at both ends of the spectrum, their needs tend to go unmet. Often they are able to compensate for their disability with their giftedness, and their disability typically masks their giftedness, leaving them struggling enormously to perform at average levels, unnoticed by school systems.

The Inconvenient Student, by Dr. Michael Postma, tackles the problem of identifying gifted kids who have dyslexia, dysgraphia, sensory processing disorder, auditory and visual processing disorders, ADD, autism or Asperger’s, ODD, OCD, anxiety, and depression. Dr. Postma explains in detail what these children are like and how to accommodate their needs in the regular classroom so that they can strengthen their weaknesses and maximize their strengths.

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“Mellow Out,” They Say. If I Only Could

sarah — Wed, 25 May 2022 21:49:01 +0000

Sample

This highly acclaimed and valued book is intended for parents and teachers of intense and sensitive young people and to serve the young people as a friendly mirror in which they can recognize themselves for who they are.

Gifted children and adults tend to be intense, and this intensity often makes them seem strange to others. Their reactions are often viewed by others as overreactions, when in fact these individuals are simply responding to the environment (both without and within) with the overexcitability that is a fundamental trait of giftedness. Mellow Out explores that intensity and sensitivity, giving voice to gifted youth in numerous excerpts throughout the book.

In this updated edition, Piechowski introduces the concept of openness to experience that, together with intuition and overexcitability, forms the blend of personality characteristics typical of the great majority of gifted children. He expands on the topic of visual-spatial, picture, and non-visual alternative thinkers, and he introduces the concept of emotional style and its six dimensions that have specific activation areas in the brain. In addition, he expands on the topic of spiritual giftedness, an often-neglected area of study within gifted populations.

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