The ultimate goal is to empower your child with a positive self-identity, an exercise crucial to a healthy and centered child. Indeed, with and through this foundation, the child can develop social skills, learn emotional regulation, develop an expressive vocabulary to communicate deep thoughts and emotions, and learn executive functioning skills necessary for lifelong success.

In more than two decades working within the field of both gifted education and gifted advocacy, I have worked with hundreds of students and families (and teachers) who are struggling to support the diverse needs of the gifted and/or twice-exceptional child. Given the scads of research, both qualitative and quantitative, available on the developmental needs of the G/2e child and, more recently, the new revelations on atypical neurological growth, asynchrony remains as one of the principal issues. The fact is that G/2e children have divergent growth patterns within the areas of social/emotional regulation and intellectual development. In a sense, they embody two very different people— one with extreme intellectual potential, intimately accompanied by another that struggles to cope with negative (and sometimes, positive) external stimuli. In essence, with the gifted or 2e child, we find a puzzling paradox of brilliance and dysfunction. This does not have to be. If, at an early age, we institute a balanced approach to both intellectual and social/emotional instruction or guidance, we can equip our children to accommodate regulatory shortfalls that impede optimal growth patterns.