Giftedness and ADHD: What Twice-Exceptional Means and How Parents Can Support Their 2e Kids

Twice-exceptional children often show remarkable strengths alongside uneven development

The boy with a vocabulary larger than kids twice their age who struggles to write. 

The little girl, rattling off multidigit multiplication facts, who can’t seem to focus on her homework for more than five minutes.

The curious child who reassembles household electronics and can’t tie his shoes.  

Say hello to twice-exceptional children. More and more parents and educators today are discovering the term “twice exceptional,” thanks to a growing social awareness of how vastly different people’s brains can be and, importantly, how those brain differences can affect people’s lives. 

Helping individuals with brain differences is a big part of what I do. 

So, for parents of 2e children, I’d like to share some observations as a 2e consultant to 2e adults. In my practice, I help individuals reorient themselves with any late-identified neurological differences. I also have the privilege of working closely with Dr. Patty Gently, a developmental psychologist and clinician whose research explores how twice-exceptional teens become well-transitioned adults. I’m part of a growing community of 2,400 gifted or twice-exceptional adults, people in their 20s, 40s, 60s, 80s, etc., who discovered late what your child knows now. 

And there is so much these adults wish they had known at your child’s age, and that they wish their teachers and parents had known. 

What’s Twice Exceptional? Giftedness Plus Any Learning Difference

Twice exceptional or 2e refers to intellectually gifted individuals (who may or may not have a high IQ score) who also have learning or developmental differences, such as ADHD. You also may have heard “uneven cognitive discrepancy” or “a spikey profile.” 

These students’ capabilities challenge many of our school systems’ presuppositions for how minds develop. (And yowza, do the fireworks fly when that happens.) 

Twice-exceptional has a complex definition to address a complex reality: IQ tests fail to identify every gifted individual. 

Some have learning differences. 

Wait, What’s Giftedness? How Does It Fit With 2e?  

Giftedness, also sometimes referred to as intellectual giftedness, is a neurobiological difference associated with rapid learning, early developmental milestones, proficiency in abstract reasoning and creativity, heightened sensitivity, and social asynchrony. The biological markers — thicker gray matter in the cortex, stronger signaling in the nervous system’s white matter, and significantly reduced synaptic pruning — lead to differences in behaviors. 

However, schools don’t break out rulers to measure a child’s cortical thickness. Instead, to be considered gifted, a child may score 130 or higher on a full-scale IQ test or be in the 95th percentile or higher on the CogAT (Cognitive Abilities Test). School districts can have their own definitions, too. They might be looking for “superior scores” or certain percentiles. (What complicates matters is how fragile such tests are. Bad sleep or no breakfast can affect an IQ score, misdirecting observers from the neurobiological reality.)

Even so, what happens if a kid scores extremely high in some areas of the IQ test and extremely low in others? 

Spikey profiles. Incomplete cognitive assessments. Difficult-to-interpret results. 

The signs of a twice-exceptional child. 

How Common Is Twice-Exceptionality?

Some estimates suggest 3 in 50 kids have ADHD. Giftedness is rarer still, occurring in 1 in 44 kids, according to Miraca Gross’s longitudinal study, Exceptionally Gifted Children. 

The same brain exhibiting traits of both ADHD and giftedness? Truly rare. 

Dr. Patty Gently calls them the outliers of outliers. A 2023 study from the University of Padua in Italy found twice as many gifted children in a sample of 948 ADHD children. However, the 2e-ADHDers still made up just 8.6% of the total study. That suggests that, for every 100 ADHDers you meet, maybe one of them is 2e. 

Deep focus and curiosity often coexist with executive function challenges in twice-exceptional children

How Might Giftedness Affect ADHD or Other Developmental Differences?

Does ADHD hold back giftedness? (Not exactly …)

Does giftedness solve ADHD challenges? (Solve …?)

Do they balance each other out, making an average individual experience? (No, not even close.) 

Insisting on label-first explanations may create more questions than answers. ADHD and giftedness aren’t duking it out in some mental boxing ring. It’s one brain with one unique wiring. Your child is a wonder, a miracle, a unique spark of stardust who happens to have fallen in the in-between space of how psychology categorizes brains. 

A twice-exceptional person’s neurology challenges the boxes we use to understand neurology. 

Their performance on an IQ test challenges social and scientific presuppositions about what “smart”, “optimal”, or even what “gifted” should look like. For example, gifted ADHDers may outperform non-gifted ADHDers on working memory and processing speed, categories most often associated with ADHD. That’s fertile ground for missed diagnoses or misidentification. 

So, let’s reframe our questions about giftedness + ADHD. 

What strengths tend to emerge for gifted ADHDers?

When a twice-exceptional individual’s neurology combines traits of giftedness and ADHD, they may show 

• High creativity

• High concentration

• Divergent thinking 

Their interest-driven attention has enough bandwidth to develop extraordinary talent across a variety of fields. Gifted ADHDers may show a high capacity for drawing panoramic connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. Some may express it as creativity, convergent thinking (problem-solving toward a single answer), or even as a global trait, such as open-mindedness. 

What kinds of struggles do twice-exceptional ADHDers tend to face?

From what I’ve seen, it comes down to two groups of struggles: 

• Mismatches to systems: Before supporting 2e kids, adults should be familiar with the social model of disability. It’s a concept that suggests social systems define what disability is or isn’t. Children aren’t problems to be fixed. When we have access to ramps and illustrations, using a wheelchair or dyslexia are just personal differences, not disabilities. In general, the more rigid the social expectations, the more pronounced 2e differences can seem, whatever their age. Underachievement and executive function issues, struggles with organization, time management, etc. — these absent-minded professor-like challenges occur when you hold vibrant, fast-paced minds to standards/systems designed for a mind waiting and ready to deliver a moderate level of effort. These minds are active. While gifted children may crave challenge and ADHDers may crave variety, 2e ADHDers may struggle with boredom due to skill mastery. Ironically, “underachieving” may be exactly the label they receive because the school system measures only certain, specific behaviors, not mastery itself.

• Self-stigma & shame: One typical experience for 2e individuals is struggling to fit in with groups for only ADHDers or only gifted folks. Observant children catch on, and they may think it means something’s wrong with them. Internalizing correction into shame can lead to new layers of difficulty and coping mechanisms. Remember that problem-solving strength? If a twice-exceptional student struggles in an area, they may devise ingenious solutions to compensate or cover it up, making it even harder for professionals to identify and offer support. 

  
  

What happens when twice-exceptional children grow up? 

Spikey profiles don’t round out with time. Underachievement (a value judgment in itself) can evolve into value judgments of underemployment. Divergent thinking (socially acceptable or not) may evolve into an unconventional career path (only to face the same social scrutiny). Self-stigma about executive functioning may linger, turning into an unwillingness to ask for help. 

In short, what made twice-exceptional children stand out in a school system can make them stand out in workplaces and social settings. 

Fortunately, something else may happen, too: identity development. 

According to Dr. Gently’s study of how 2e adults navigated adolescence, these youngsters draw together awareness of their own social asynchrony, their struggles and strengths, and strive to find ways to meet their unique needs while making their social worlds work. Support and resources can make a world of difference. This process, described in a five-part model, Gear Theory, involves 2e individuals developing personal agency, competency/efficacy, and an integrated identity, i.e., the elements of well-transitioned adults (Nagaoka et al., 2015). 

Awareness drives and fuels this process. Awareness of their differences, of their obstacles, of how to fulfill their needs objectively. 

How Do I Help My Twice-Exceptional Child Thrive? 

I suggest that any support for 2e students should have three characteristics: 

Individualized. As a parent or educator of a 2e child, be skeptical of any advice that doesn’t involve directly talking to, observing, or engaging with the student themselves. As adults, it’s up to us to become students of our students. Pay extra attention to what interests them and what calms or soothes them. (After all, stressed brains don’t learn as well as relaxed minds.) 

Watch for whether they’re hiding struggles behind clever tricks or workarounds. Listen for what excites their minds and relaxes their bodies. Furthermore, listen for it to change as the child grows, and enlist them in communicating about what matters in their experience. By doing that, you’re starting off the lifelong discipline of learning what you need.

Creative. What might be all the ways schools can listen for outcomes (such as demonstrated arithmetic fluency) instead of enforcing the most common route to it (such as worksheets)? What might be all the ways a 2e student can meet an outcome? Engage the student and empower them to be part of a solution, no matter how inventive yet inefficient it may seem. 

The greatest issue many twice-exceptional individuals face across their lifetimes may be their unique asynchrony to systems, such as schools or workplaces. Want to prepare a 2e child for the world? Equip them to advocate for themselves in systems not designed for them. 

Practical. Support for a 2e child will likely need physical components, beyond fidget spinners. One clear-cut example is the color communication badges first devised by the autism community. Here are a few more: 

• Clear diagrams instead of written instructions

• Externalized tracking tools

• Duct tape on the floor to signal safe zones or work stations

• Access to sensory supports (including fidget toys)

Importantly, there’s an implicit message being conveyed whenever effective support can be externalized and accepted: “Your needs are worth shaping your world for.” That’s neurodiversity-affirming care. 

Have you heard Aesop’s fable about the fox and the stork? The fox invites the stork to dinner. The tricky fox serves a thin frog stew on a shallow plate, and at dinner, the stork struggles. His beak can’t pick up the stew. The next day, the stork invites the fox over for dinner. The fox comes over, and dinner (frog stew) is served in tall, long-necked bottles, and the fox struggles. His snout and tongue can’t reach the stew. 

The moral is “Serve others the way they need it.” Twice-exceptional children have a different road than most. Different doesn’t have to mean difficult. 

That’s where parents, educators, and organizations like Spark Launch come in.

References

Gently, P. (2024). Intersection of Intensity: Exploring Giftedness and Trauma. Gifted Unlimited, LLC.

Silberman, S. (2016). Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. Avery. 

Nagaoka, J., Farrington, C. A., Ehrlich, S. B., & Heath, R. D. (2015). Foundations for young adult success: A developmental framework. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. 

Gross, M. U. M. (2000). Exceptionally Gifted Children. New York: Routledge.