Special challenges of being gifted and "disabled"?

Rose Immortal

Rose Immortal

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I was wondering if any of you can offer perspectives on this: would you say there are any special challenges for a kid who grows up both intellectually gifted, and "disabled" in the eyes of the world, that are unique to the combination of the two? Maybe some of you have experienced this? Does this tend to make education (and social life) harder if you need accomodations for physical things and also advanced academic lessons that the other kids your age might not be into yet?
 
Being intellectually gifted and then getting ahead in school is always a problem because I keep taking on more responsiblity which is great but then social life suffers because I am with older people while the younger ones finish short homework and go out to party. I want to say Hey I want to have fun too !!!! and I already graduated from Deaf H.S. now going to go to G.U. or N.T.I.D.
 
*raises hand*
I'm disabled and gifted. (physical issues as well as learning disabilties)
The trouble with being disabled and gifted in school, is that they expect you to do WICKED well under minmal or no accomondations. Also, there's an attitude that special ed kids won't really achieve and are just lazy.
I got lumped in with the dumbass slacker types, when all I really needed was some real accomondations (like a notetaker or C-Print) to really acheive.
 
Uh huh, well let me put it this way...

I was mainstreamed all through school with no accommodations at all. They just expected me to compensate for multiple disabilities by finding unique coping strategies of my own, using my intellectual giftedness. (I was assessed as being Exceptionally-Profoundly gifted.) I attended gifted classes, with no accommodations made in either the regular or gifted classes, and still came top of the class in both... but I was exhausted from having to work harder to get the same sort of access to information that other kids took for granted. Every now and then, people would try to say it was easy for me to do well, because of my disabilities, like they gave me some edge over the other kids, instead of my being at a comparative disadvantage, as was more the case. There was one woman who said that being HoH/Deaf should disqualify kids from gifted programs because it's an advantage not to hear distractions! It's not an advantage to be unable to hear a teacher in a mainsteam school, which is more to the point, trust me. Talk about taking all the fun out of achievement for a kid. Now the same story again, my daughter is accelerated 2 years ahead at school, and has no accommodations at school for her hearing loss (she is HoH, I'm Deaf) She is less than 7 years old and has just read the entire Narnia series, writes penpal letters in 4 languages, and is doing high school math for fun at home... It is the school holidays here!
 
There have been times, when I was growing up as gifted but hearing...when I wondered if sometimes teachers were afraid of me. I had an English teacher in 7th grade that I'm pretty sure was, and my mom agrees that this teacher went out of her way to hold me back whenever she could. Our theory is that she rarely saw kids my age (and I was a year younger than everybody else) doing the kinds of things I did, and perhaps felt intimidated even though I would've never meant to do that to anybody. It also happened that I was having some personal difficulties at the time, and this teacher used that to try to get an edge over me.

So I wonder, do you think it's possible that teachers you know have acted like this, trying to intentionally hold you or your daughter back from the absolute furthest they could go to?

Oh, and congrats on having a kid so intelligent--and well-rounded! I'm pretty much strictly liberal arts myself...I love languages, and while I can do math if I MAKE myself do it, the truth is I just can't stand it. ;)
 
This is just my opinion as a hearing observer. I have interpreted for all grade levels, although my "specialty" is two-year college level.

I have seen some teachers (and sadly, some terps) make too many "accommodations" for Deaf students. They spoon feed and carry the students thru school, thinking they are "helping" them. Then the kids graduate with good grades, and get POW! hit in the face with real world expectations.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to see schools go back to the "good old days" as HoneyShot described where a Deaf student had to sink or swim totally on his/her own with no accommodations.

Actually, I don't even like the word "accommodation". That sounds like begrudingly giving into someone's whining. I prefer the concept of offering "support services". Here's the difference:

"Oh, your child is Deaf? What must we do (to meet legal requirements) to accommodate (silence your whining about) your needs?"

or

"Oh, your child is Deaf? What can we do (to meet educational goals) to provide services that will support (make possible) your access to equal education?

Schools should provide technology/equipment (especially for notetaking), captioned video materials, tutoring services for vocabulary building and other language skills, and interpreters or oral facilitators.

Schools should NOT let Deaf students "skip" assignments, ignore deadlines, let terps "help" with the school work, or get extra credit just for "trying" or showing up.

Just some random observations by "the fly on the wall" in the classroom. :)
 
Thanks Rose Immortal, she's a great kid! :) She loves reading, and science best of all, but is very into math at the moment because it's so useful in understanding the science she's interested in. She hates math at school, but then they only cover roughly age appropriate work. (Though she is accelerated, so it's not really her age, but still isn't challenging enough.) You know I'm not sure if they deliberately try to hold her back, maybe subconsciously though? I know I felt really sabotaged by certain teachers when I was at school, though. It's weird eh?

Reba, I agree totally. :) I also don't like the term 'accommodations' either, and ideally they should be providing better than that. This is something I am pretty passionate about advocating for locally. What I was saying was that neither my daughter or myself had even the basic/standard accommodations that people might expect, let alone anything more likely to encourage or embrace our unique strengths while providing a good level of support in the area's where the disability was/is hindering us reaching our full potential. KWIM? :) Gifted programs weren't available until high school for me, so I have made sure to make my daughter's school very aware of her abilities and limitations. They are sort of trying, but really don't have much of an idea of what is appropriate in this variation of a 'twice exceptional' child, as they put it. I really have to b a constant advocate for her, or things aren't addressed. There is precious little material out there on giftedness in deaf/hoh students, so those trying to support these kids are really having to work it out from scratch... which is a shame when they aren't that interested in doing so, as happened with me.
 
HoneyShot said:
... I really have to b a constant advocate for her, or things aren't addressed. ..
Click to expand...
That's the key, parental involvement.
 
I think Reba is absolutely correct. Deaf (or disabled) students often get "special treatment" and are thereby not challenged.

In general, brilliant children often find ways to navigate systems, they learn the nuances of social control, and they use this extra knowledge to slide out of hard work. The lack of challenges "spoils" these children and then when real life comes knocking on the door, they have to learn what everyone else did. There's a catch up period. It's not an infrequent occurrence for high-IQ people to be emotionally and socially underdeveloped during the early parts of their lives. There are many instances of brilliant people flunking out of high school and college for a period, then returning and pursuing stellar careers.

This problem seems to be magnified in gifted deaf children, since they not only can do things easily, but they are also encouraged to follow the easy path by adults who only mean to be helpful.

This doesn't mean that deaf gifted children can't succeed, there are even quite a few deaf alumni of the top three: Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. These people have gone on to lead amazing lives (and so have many other deaf people from all walks of life).
 
Reba said:
That's the key, parental involvement.
Click to expand...

Yes...while I know ADHD is not at all the same as being deaf or hard of hearing, I did kinda get to see just how important it is to have a parent willing to stick up for you and spend the time with you, if you are gifted and also have some sort of "disability". Some call ADHD a learning disability...not sure if that's true or not. I just know I misbehaved a lot in class even though I felt bad afterwards. ;)

Anyway, my point with that is my mom had to do a LOT because the school system was really confused about me when I was little and hadn't learned a lot of the coping mechanisms I have now. A lot of the teachers either didn't believe ADHD was real, or thought I should either a) be medicated so I would be out of their hair or b) be sent to special ed classes where, back then, there wasn't the chance for the academic lessons I needed. So my mom really was my advocate, and since she was a full-time mother, she was even able to devote the time to go on field trips with me, help me stay on topic with homework (not help me DO it, just keep me on-subject), and even be a room-mother in my first few years so that the teacher wasn't the only one to help keep me in line. I owe a LOT to her dedicated help because the schools didn't know what to do.

The reason I posted this thread was because I was preparing to write a story where one of the characters was extremely intelligent and also disabled (blind, in his case), and I wanted to see if the things I experienced could be applied to others or not. From the looks of it, it seems like some of your experiences are kind of similar.

HoneyShot--That's very cool that your kid wants to get into the math that makes science work! I loved science too (and still do), but usually preferred a narrative that explains the same thing the equations describe. I did do accelerated math, but I really didn't like it and by 11th grade my workload with honors classes got so bad that I finally had to quit taking advanced math and just take a "regular" course. To put that into perspective, though, the school wouldn't have required me to take ANY math course if I hadn't wanted to, by that point. I already had enough hours.

About the deliberate sabotage, I really wonder if some teachers that don't have a lot of self-esteem themselves (and maybe not the best academic records, either, some of them) get freaked out by kids who are high achievers--especially if at some point the kid comes up with something they wouldn't have thought of or wouldn't have had the means to do. It's almost like animals in a dominance contest...they think they're threatened and react to the perceived threat. Which means an adult picking on a kid--something wrong there! This link has lyrics to a song by Pink Floyd, that really fit the topic: http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/the-happiest-days-wall-lyrics.html
 
I heard that ADD and ADHD can be said to be context disorders, like how a short man has a context disorder when he plays in the NBA. The disorder may actually be an advantage in the right context. The thinking patterns of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD and various other types of challenges often tend to be very different.

The reclusive genius Howard Huges made millions on millions behind his very many ideas, but he is said to have suffered from many different mental disorders. As far as his success is considered, he had a contextual advantage.
 
Endymion said:
I heard that ADD and ADHD can be said to be context disorders, like how a short man has a context disorder when he plays in the NBA. The disorder may actually be an advantage in the right context. The thinking patterns of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD and various other types of challenges often tend to be very different.
Click to expand...

This reminds me of one theory I heard about ADHD that the people with the disorder would've been the "hunters" in man's primitive days (because they needed to process a lot of stimuli very quickly), and the ones without would've been the "gatherers". But in today's society, it can be harder for those high-strung, easily distractible "hunters" to function considering what it takes to be properly educated or hold down a job in our economy. I would also imagine that sometimes when this behavior becomes exaggerated, it can get people into a lot of honest to goodness trouble, especially when people with ADHD engage in really high-risk stuff (especially boys).

The reclusive genius Howard Huges made millions on millions behind his very many ideas, but he is said to have suffered from many different mental disorders. As far as his success is considered, he had a contextual advantage.
Click to expand...

Had to look up who that was, so I'll post the link for any other curious minds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes
 
If this was back in the days of Grok the Caveman, I'd pay you twenty funny-shaped rocks (accounting for inflation and the exchange rate, that's about forty seven euroasian magma bits) for a hunted wild boar. We hunter-challenged people need to pay a premium for quality meat, darnit.

If you can't get a boar and instead spear L. Ron Hubbard or Deepak Chopra by accident, that's okay. I'll still pay twenty funny-shaped rocks.
 
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