Post by anon4now on May 6, 2009 12:00:11 GMT -5
Hi everyone.
I've been looking into this subject, Gifted Children with LD's and other disabilities, including ADHD, OCD, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar and others. There is a great book called, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults, that I have been reading.
Here's an excerpt on LD's in gifted children:
There are three types of dyslexia that are more obvious “language-based” problems. The first is held by individuals who can read words correctly, although they seem unaware of their meaning. The connection between the printed letters and their significance is impaired. Sometimes the problem is a failure to understand how language is constructed. These children have often coasted through school relying on their excellent memory. They have learned sight words, but they have a poor sense of the underlying structure of language (for example “What word remains when you take the “r” sound from broom? Boom). Given “fake” words like “plish” or “knoist”, they find that they cannot derive how the word should be pronounced.
The second type, “surface dyslexia,” is a variant in which individuals can read regular words but not irregular ones, such as yacht or buoy. These words, which break many of the conventions of phonological rules, baffle them.
Third, what has been called “deep dyslexia” seems to be a misfiling of words. Children read the word and retrieve the right general concept, but they produce the wrong word. They will say “car” when the printed word is “automobile” or say “shoe” when the text says “sneaker.”
One thing they mentioned, was a common scenario when a gifted child has a learning disability, they 'mask' eachother. Take a 4th grader, who is reading at a 5th grade level, but seems to be struggling with something. To a teacher, or even a doctor that doesn't work with gifted children, they look at this child and feel they are above grade level so there's no problem. But this child may have the potential of reading at a 7th or 8th grade level, but the LD is keeping them back from their potential. The doctors will not consider gifted-ness, because they aren't that far ahead, and they won't consider a learning disability because they are reading at or above grade level. So they start to look into ADHD, ODD and other mental disorders.
I was fortunate to join a group of professionals to discuss this issue. They call these children Twice Exceptional, or 2E for short. One of the doctors I spoke to, told me a little bit about these kids that are 2E. There were a group of kids in a study with reading LD's given a reading assignment to complete. Most of them "failed" because of the learning disability. When asked about how they felt, the children with 'just' LD's were not surprised or bothered by the fact that they couldn't complete the assignment. They knew they would need the extra help and they accepted that. The 2E kids on the other hand, felt like they were stupid and had a horrible self image and self esteem. They were beating themselves up for failing. And some even deducted that if they couldn't do this assignment, they couldn't do anything.
These children are going through a lot of emotional turmoil. One of the professionals stated that a lot of her 2E kids would come to her with a mental disorder diagnosis. After she tested the kids, she found they were asynchronous. This means they test very well in one area (ie: Math) and significantly lower in another area (ie: Reading Comprehension). (And when I say lower, I mean lower than the Math results, not lower than the age level.) She went as far to say, the more sever the mental disorder, the more asynchronous the test results.
If you have any questions, let me know and I can seek the answer. It has been very eye opening to me.
Anon
I've been looking into this subject, Gifted Children with LD's and other disabilities, including ADHD, OCD, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar and others. There is a great book called, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults, that I have been reading.
Here's an excerpt on LD's in gifted children:
There are three types of dyslexia that are more obvious “language-based” problems. The first is held by individuals who can read words correctly, although they seem unaware of their meaning. The connection between the printed letters and their significance is impaired. Sometimes the problem is a failure to understand how language is constructed. These children have often coasted through school relying on their excellent memory. They have learned sight words, but they have a poor sense of the underlying structure of language (for example “What word remains when you take the “r” sound from broom? Boom). Given “fake” words like “plish” or “knoist”, they find that they cannot derive how the word should be pronounced.
The second type, “surface dyslexia,” is a variant in which individuals can read regular words but not irregular ones, such as yacht or buoy. These words, which break many of the conventions of phonological rules, baffle them.
Third, what has been called “deep dyslexia” seems to be a misfiling of words. Children read the word and retrieve the right general concept, but they produce the wrong word. They will say “car” when the printed word is “automobile” or say “shoe” when the text says “sneaker.”
One thing they mentioned, was a common scenario when a gifted child has a learning disability, they 'mask' eachother. Take a 4th grader, who is reading at a 5th grade level, but seems to be struggling with something. To a teacher, or even a doctor that doesn't work with gifted children, they look at this child and feel they are above grade level so there's no problem. But this child may have the potential of reading at a 7th or 8th grade level, but the LD is keeping them back from their potential. The doctors will not consider gifted-ness, because they aren't that far ahead, and they won't consider a learning disability because they are reading at or above grade level. So they start to look into ADHD, ODD and other mental disorders.
I was fortunate to join a group of professionals to discuss this issue. They call these children Twice Exceptional, or 2E for short. One of the doctors I spoke to, told me a little bit about these kids that are 2E. There were a group of kids in a study with reading LD's given a reading assignment to complete. Most of them "failed" because of the learning disability. When asked about how they felt, the children with 'just' LD's were not surprised or bothered by the fact that they couldn't complete the assignment. They knew they would need the extra help and they accepted that. The 2E kids on the other hand, felt like they were stupid and had a horrible self image and self esteem. They were beating themselves up for failing. And some even deducted that if they couldn't do this assignment, they couldn't do anything.
These children are going through a lot of emotional turmoil. One of the professionals stated that a lot of her 2E kids would come to her with a mental disorder diagnosis. After she tested the kids, she found they were asynchronous. This means they test very well in one area (ie: Math) and significantly lower in another area (ie: Reading Comprehension). (And when I say lower, I mean lower than the Math results, not lower than the age level.) She went as far to say, the more sever the mental disorder, the more asynchronous the test results.
If you have any questions, let me know and I can seek the answer. It has been very eye opening to me.
Anon
