2E Reality

“A child can be exceptionally capable and still need exceptional support.”

by Dr. Michele Comer

Two Things Can Be True

I have twin 17-year-old sons, Luke and Henry, and they are amazing humans. They started taking piano lessons at five years old and have perfect pitch. They can draw a map of the world and label all the countries from memory. They taught themselves how to read at three.

When they were little, their grandmother used to tell me that they didn't talk much because I was asking them questions that were too simple. I was asking, "What does a cow say?" when apparently I should have been asking them to name the 50 states—which they did know.

At four years old, we got the official diagnosis: autistic. They have carried that label throughout their entire school careers. Then, after testing in third grade, they received another label: gifted.

Both labels describe my sons. Neither one tells their whole story.

Luke and Henry are incredibly book smart. There is no denying that. But they struggled with the other parts of being a kid. They weren't invited to playdates or birthday parties. For a long time, they didn't really have friends except for each other.

They don't naturally pick up on social cues. Things that other children seem to learn just by watching the people around them often have to be explicitly taught to my sons: Hold the door for the person behind you. If someone has their arms full, offer to help. If someone is trying to move past you, step out of the way.

Even everyday executive-function tasks can be difficult. Figuring out how to stack several things so they can all be carried at once doesn't come naturally. They rely on schedules and routines. We have chore charts, lunch-packing lists, and reminders to check whether the dishwasher needs to be unloaded—because opening the dishwasher to see if the dishes are clean simply isn't on their radar.

And then there is school.

They excelled when school meant memorizing facts and figures. But ask them to summarize a book in their own words? That's much harder. Why would you rewrite something when you already have the author's original words memorized?

As they got older and school required more independence, planning, organization, and open-ended thinking, their struggles with executive function became much more apparent. At the same time, something else happened.

Because they were gifted, people increasingly expected them not to need help. That is the complicated reality of raising twice-exceptional children: two things can be true. A child can be exceptionally capable and still need exceptional support.

"They're Too Smart to Need Help"

As the boys got older, their grades started to slip. Not because they didn't understand the material. They did.They lost points because they didn't turn in an assignment they had completed. Or because they didn't follow every part of a rubric. Or because a teacher gave them several different ways to demonstrate their understanding, and instead of experiencing that choice as freedom, they became so overwhelmed trying to decide which option to choose that they didn't complete the assignment at all.The obstacle wasn't always the academic content. Sometimes the obstacle was everything surrounding the academic content.

This is one of the contradictions of being twice exceptional. The very intelligence that allowed my sons to succeed academically also made it easier for people to overlook the areas in which they needed support.Having autistic students in high-achieving classes was new for many of their teachers. Some didn't know how to support students who could understand difficult academic concepts but struggled to organize a binder, interpret an open-ended assignment, initiate a conversation, or advocate for themselves.I spent much of my free time trying to fill those gaps.

I would email a teacher asking for clarification and receive a response that made me feel as though the teacher thought I was arguing about a grade. I wasn't. I didn't care about the two points. I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong so I could teach my sons how to handle it differently the next time.

I would tell one of my sons, "You need to go talk to your teacher about your test." Then I would email the teacher and say, "He is supposed to come talk to you. Please let me know if he does."

The response might be, "I talked to him."

But what did that mean?

Did my son initiate the conversation? Did the teacher? Did he know what question to ask? Did he just stand there waiting for the teacher to somehow know why he had come? Did he understand the answer? Did he leave knowing what to do differently next time?

Those details mattered because the goal wasn't for me to advocate for my sons forever. The goal was to teach them how to advocate for themselves.

But in the school's eyes, Luke and Henry were still A/B students. So they were doing fine.

Except they weren't.

Social Skills Have to Be Taught, Too

During middle school, I discovered that my sons weren't eating lunch.

Their school had more than 500 students in the cafeteria at one time. To say it was loud is an understatement. I started noticing after school that the boys had barely touched the lunches they had packed.Eventually, I learned what was happening. When the cafeteria became too overwhelming, they were allowed to go to the library. That sounded like a reasonable accommodation—except students weren't allowed to eat in the library.

So my sons simply weren't eating lunch.

When I contacted the school and asked if there could be a quiet place where they could eat, I was told that the school didn't want to separate them from their classmates and eliminate the possibility of social interaction.I understood the goal. My sons needed social interaction.But putting an autistic child into an overwhelming environment and hoping social interaction happens isn't teaching social skills.

My sons don't always learn the unwritten rules of social situations simply by being present for them.

Those rules need to be taught. They need opportunities to practice them in environments where they feel safe enough to try, make mistakes, and try again.

We would never put a student who doesn't understand algebra into an algebra classroom and assume that sitting near students who understand algebra will eventually teach them how to solve equations.

Why do we sometimes expect that to work with social skills?

When Academic Success Isn't Enough

I began talking with counselors at other middle schools in our district and discovered that some were doing exactly the kinds of things I had been hoping for.They would learn about students' interests and intentionally connect students who might have something in common. They would help facilitate those first conversations. If two students seemed to connect, the counselor could reach out to their parents and, with permission, help families exchange contact information so that a friendship had the opportunity to continue outside of school.

That was exactly what I wanted for my sons.

Not someone to magically give them friends. Not someone to eliminate every uncomfortable social interaction.I wanted someone to teach them how to build relationships and create opportunities for them to practice doing it.

I brought the idea back to my sons' school.I was told, "We don't do that here."

That was the last straw.

My sons were succeeding academically in a school system that wasn't working for them.

And I finally realized that academic success wasn't enough.

Finding a School That Saw the Whole Child

That was when we started looking for something different. Through an acquaintance, I heard about Wye River Upper School (WRUS). My husband and I attended an open house, and during that visit a parent talked about her family's experience.She said that, for the first time, she could put her son on the bus in the morning and not spend the entire day scared to death that the school was going to call.

My husband and I looked at each other.

We knew exactly what she meant.

We wanted our sons to go to WRUS.

And we made it happen.

We sold our house on the Western Shore and moved to Centreville so our sons could walk to school.

What we found at Wye River Upper School was not a school that expected less of Luke and Henry because they were autistic. We found a school that understood that challenging them academically and supporting their disabilities were not opposing goals.

Executive-function skills are incorporated into the students' day. Organization, planning, self-advocacy, and social-emotional growth aren't treated as things students should already know how to do before they walk through the doors. They are skills—and skills can be taught.

The school's small size also creates space for social growth. Teachers know the students. They can recognize when a student needs help navigating a situation and use that moment as an opportunity to teach rather than simply correct.

For my sons, that distinction has been enormous.

And somewhere along the way, Wye River became important enough to our whole family that I now teach there, too.

Seeing Both Exceptionalities

When people hear the word gifted, they often think about what a child can do.

When they hear autistic, they may think about what a child struggles to do.

Twice-exceptional children require us to hold both of those ideas at the same time.

Luke and Henry's autism does not make them less gifted. Their giftedness does not make them less autistic.Their perfect pitch doesn't teach them how to enter a conversation. Their remarkable memories don't remind them to turn in an assignment. Knowing every country on a map doesn't teach them how to recognize that someone needs help carrying something.

And an accommodation doesn't make an academic challenge less meaningful simply because the student receiving it is smart.

For too long, I felt as though my sons had to prove they were struggling enough to deserve support. Their grades became evidence that everything was fine, even when so many other parts of their school experience were telling us that it wasn't.

Twice-exceptional students don't need us to choose which part of them we see.

They need schools willing to recognize their gifts, challenge their minds, support their disabilities, explicitly teach the skills that don't come naturally, and give them safe opportunities to practice those skills.

Being smart doesn't mean a child doesn't need help.

Sometimes the smartest kid in the room still needs someone to teach him how to navigate the room.