Emotionally, Socially, and Learning Disabled Gifted Children

This book presents the reader with the main inherent problems of double-exceptionality, namely, the difficulties educators and mental health professionals must deal with when working with gifted disabled children and youths. The first chapter describes ten of these problems; on the one hand, some have been caused by unfamiliarity of the basic terms and definitions of giftedness and on the other, learning or other disabilities; some by treatment failures of gifted disabled children and youths. The main part of the book, chapters 2-5, include six detailed case studies of gifted children and adolescents who were dealing, in some cases, with learning disabilities, but in all cases with social, emotional, psychological and familial issues that jeopardized not only their educational and professional future, but also their well-being and even their mental health. These chapters include also shorter vignettes of gifted disabled young and older children whom I have met in the last thirty years. Some of these cases-both the longer and the shorter case studies-are of students who had considered dropping out of school. This book challenges the assumption that dropping out is necessarily also an educational failure. Some of the cases described did not have a "happy ending": they describe young people who unsuccessfully tried to be "like everybody else," an attempt that has always been hard to live with. The last chapter shows that only when all components in the child's or adolescent's life, the family, the education system, and the social circle she or he belonged to encouraged and nurtured the child, materializing one's giftedness while maintaining a high level of well-being and social acceptability can be accomplished. The chapter of the book analyzes these factors while showing how misunderstanding of the child's needs, along with inability to provide her or him with the proper educational and psychological help might cause "giving up" one's giftedness, deterioration in the social/emotional situation or both.