Do you feel that your child is gifted but distractible or you're thinking things like my child is so smart he's supposed to know this already but why doesn't he just do it? And today, I am so, so thrilled to have the author of the book, Gifted and Distractible. So here on the Discerning Parenting podcast today, we're going to have a wonderful time with our listeners and with our guests today.
Are there days you feel you've had it with the sleepless nights, the temper tantrums, the constant fatigue of trying to keep up with an active baby? Does it feel like you're always working so hard as a parent, trying to do everything for your kids and family, and yet it never feels enough? We get it. You love your child more than anything, and yet parenting is also exhausting and challenging.
Especially when you're bombarded with criticism and pressure to be the perfect parent. Which, spoiler alert, does not exist. That's why we created Discerning Parenting, the podcast that helps you cut through the noise and focus on what truly matters in your parenting journey. This podcast is jam packed with valuable insights and practical tips specifically tailored for parents of kids age 5 and below.
So join us and discover how you can use the combined power of science, knowing your child, and your own intuition in making the best parenting decisions for you and your family.
Today we have a very special guest with us, and I'm so honored to have Julie Skolnick. She's the founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, and she passionately guides parents of gifted and distractible children. And she also mentors adults who call themselves twice exceptional.
Now, if this is the first time you're hearing this term, don't worry, we'll be talking about it today. We need to raise awareness about this thing that we, as child development professionals, are seeing quite often. And I feel that these are the kids who are most often misunderstood. And she... She is a graduate of Colgate University, Boston College, and Cornell Law School, and her training allowed her to take a deep dive into sociology and why people do what they do, and because of this, her advocacy Orient her towards seeking what someone needs based on who they are and how they show up in the world.
Wow. This is so amazing. And she just launched her book, gifted and Distractible, and Julie and her husband are parents of three, twice exceptional children who keep them on their toes and also who keep them aply laughing. And what I love about. This one, Julie, in your description is that your therapist is a Red Standard Food Donate Tigger.
So it's so nice to have you here today, Julie. Thank you. Thank you so much, Victoria, for having me on your wonderful podcast. I'm delighted to be here. Oh, thank you so much. Oh, and I'd also like to say that she has a wonderful advocacy. That really helps kids who are gifted and twice exceptional. She serves as secretary to the Maryland Superintendent's Gifted and Talented Advisory Council, advisor for the Masters of Educational Program for the Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity, the Maryland Liaison for Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted, committee member for the National Association for Gifted Children, and advisor to...
The G word feature documentary currently in production and. If there's one thing that I hope our listeners take away from the episode is that gifted kids, gifted individuals, do need support as well, and I love to see how you're advocating for the needs and the rights of the people in our community who are gifted.
Yeah, thank you. It's so important. And what you talked about at the very beginning of the misunderstanding is why that's so important. All those assumptions and myths about giftedness, let alone twice exceptionality. Yeah, that's so true. So we've been mentioning twice exceptionality. So could you tell us what does it mean to be twice exceptional?
Sure. So twice exceptional very simply means to be identified as gifted with a learning difference or what many people say learning disability, but I, I prefer to say learning difference or learning differences and really most people are not just to either usually three, four, five, 10 E, but we, for simplicity, we say two E and really, E.
The confusing part of that twice exceptional or the number two and lowercase e known as 2e is not actually the distractible part so that's I cast my net quite widely and I say gifted and distractible that distractible term actually comes from the pediatric guide when I 10 years ago, I was searching for a tag.
a tag name for my, for my business. And it ended up becoming supporting parents of gifted and distractible kids. Now, of course that's blossomed into a whole bunch of other things, but distractible was meant to be a moniker to cover all those. conditions or diagnoses from ADHD to autism with processing speed, anxiety, social, emotional, executive functioning visual auditory processing, all of, all of those conditions.
But the real challenge is actually to get people to understand what gifted means. That is so true. And thank you for that insight. So, maybe we can talk a bit about that. What does gifted mean? That is actually one of the most common questions that I get. They will say, oh, my child learned to read early, but may have some difficulties with social skills.
So, is it because he's gifted, or... I do see a lot of parents who would also say something like I think my child seems to be able to do more than other kids his age. How do I nurture this without? Her later on getting bored in school. So maybe it would it would be great also to define what gifted means.
Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for asking Victoria, because really when you were saying your first vignette, I thought you were going to go in a direction of my kid learned to read really early, but crashing and burning in school must not be gifted. Right. A lot of people say that. So. First of all, gifted is a special need.
There's no, no doubt it is a special need. And most people, if we ask them, what does gifted mean? The highest rate of synonym that they might use would be smart. Smart. Yeah, that is so true. Right? Potential. So that is part of giftedness and most countries of the world who identify giftedness identify it using an IQ test or an intelligent quotient test on the bell curve of intelligence.
So in many ways it is identified in that way. And that's a whole other conversation about identification of gifted people. Yeah, that's true. We can actually go into a rabbit hole here. It can be based on a developmental evaluation and then them scoring way above their age group. So it's actually an entire chapter in several different researches.
Yeah, totally. And the only thing that I will say about it is that we say this, we see the same percentage of giftedness across all cultures. races and economic status. So if, if, you know, when people call giftedness racist, it's because unfortunately the identification process is breaking down, but what is gifted?
So gifted, I have what's called the three layer cake of giftedness that I've developed. It's in, it's described in my book gifted and distractible. And so if you can all imagine a three layer cake, you get to choose whatever flavor you want and it needs to have frosting. So mine is chocolate with chocolate.
So I've got. frosting above, around, and between, or icing above, around, and between all the layers. And it's a thin layer, but that's the assumption of giftedness, bright, smart potential. Then you have these three layers that are thick pieces of cake. They are the three characteristics of giftedness, and they include asynchronous development, perfectionism, and intensity, or what's known as over excitabilities.
in gifted parlance. A synchronous development you might think of as a three ring Venn diagram where you have your physical self, your social emotional self and your intellectual self. So when I put this up on a screen, when I'm talking to an audience, I always say, there's Julie's drawing of a human, right?
Those three spheres. Physical, social, emotional, and intellectual all during the day. We're calling upon those spheres to help us be where we are in the environment we're in. So right now you're sitting or walking or driving or whatever you're doing physically, you need to be able to be doing that while you are processing intellectually, what we're saying, and maybe you're emotionally reacting to what we're saying as well.
And you might be better or. struggling in one of those areas during the day, depending on whether you're in math class or you're in music class or you're wherever you are. So our 2e kids are gifted kids actually, because this is the three layer cake of giftedness. Our gifted kids may demonstrate superpowers in one area while struggling in the other areas depending on the environment.
So where they are. And we know that we have superpowers and then we have struggles at the same time. Often asynchronous development, this developing causes people to say to our 2E kids, or even 2E adults, because we don't outgrow our 2E ness, why can you do this? But you can't do that. Yeah.
And I'd just like to pause a bit to talk more about asynchronous development. This is something that we also explain to whether it's our medical students or to parents that we have different domains in development. And in general, at a certain age, for example, we expect them to develop, to have these motor skills, these language skills, these social and these self help skills, but very often we have kids who have what we call splinter skills in one or more of these domains, which means that they may not have attained the skills that So I think that's They're supposed to have for their age, but in one particular domain, they have, they're like really, really good at one thing.
So whether it's exceptional art ability or Learning to read early when they might not have mastered the language skills for their age. So this can be also a type of what we call asynchronous development. That means in the different domains of development the development in these stages are not equal.
Right. They're uneven. Yeah. Yeah. It's an even development in the different domains. But in a gifted child, and then when we talk about a 2e child, very often it's a social emotional or a learning difference that we are witnessing. So we say for 2e kids easy things are hard and hard things are easy. So my parent clients, almost all of them talk to me about.
How to encourage their kids to brush their teeth, get with the morning you know, the morning schedule and getting out the door and doing chores or things that are rote and boring that they could do easily if they would just do it. Right. And how do we How do we handle that? So yes, that's the asynchronous, that first layer of the layer.
Sometimes it's interpreted as them refusing to do it or they're lazy or they're, yeah, or oppositional. Yeah. When really it has something to do with the wiring of the brain. It has to do with the wiring of the brain, neurologically, perhaps the fact that they are more in tune existentially with what's going, what's going on in the world, and therefore it's hard to attend or something should be meaningful.
And if it's not meaningful or relatable, why am I wasting my time? Because I have way better things to do. I love to give the example of my client who had a little nine year old who came downstairs one day, stomped his foot and shouted. Why is life so hard? And his parents were like, Oh my gosh, what's the matter?
What's the matter? And he said, why do I have to get dressed? He was in the middle of making like the most epic Lego. He was so concentrating. And to him, it was earth shattering that he had to actually disrupt his creative flow to attend to something rote and boring, like getting dressed.
I can imagine right now maybe some of our listeners are nodding their heads and they can relate with what you just said, and I'd love to hear more about your story. Tell us more about yourself and how you came to advocate for 2e individuals. So thank you for asking that question. It's like most gifted and two way people, I've had quite the journey of doing all sorts of different things.
You mentioned, I have a law degree and I have a master's in sociology and I've worked in lots of different places doing lots of different things. And then I have these three awesome kiddos and they turned out to be twice exceptional. And I found that the. World of learning differences was unfortunately very glass half empty.
And when I landed on a really wonderful organization called saying, or supporting the emotional needs of the gifted saying gifted. org, I started to learn about a strength based approach about talent development. And I really learned everything I could. about the gifted profile and all of the psychology and neurology that goes into being twice exceptional.
So whereas I was advocating, it felt like 24 seven for my, one of my children. The school reached out to me at one point and said, would you mind talking with other parents about how to advocate? Because I was really trying to educate. I was trying to educate what was going on. I was trying to collaborate.
And so this all started because of a clear understanding of how much parents don't have the language to describe and request what their child needs. And therefore the child. Doesn't have the language or the ability to self advocate and wanting to really help the world. This is why it's called with understanding comes calm, help the world truly understand the profile so that all of the grownups could start with this understanding so that then the children who don't have the power.
Could begin to start understanding in a positive strength based atmosphere. That is so beautiful, Julie. And I'm glad you talked about being strengths based because it is true that let's say if a child is able to do 80 percent of the things that they're asked to do, and maybe between five to 20%, they may have difficulty with, we may tend to focus on the things that they have difficulty with, and we can hone in on that.
And sometimes if a child behaves most of the time and then sometimes they have behavior challenges, these challenging behaviors can be what will stand out for everybody, for society, and it's difficult to Enjoy it. Advocate for a strengths based mindset also in the growth mindset and sometimes the thrust can be more towards how do we get these kids to be like everybody else when that's not necessarily what, what we want.
We want to see their strengths and we want to advocate for that. So it's amazing what you're doing. Well, thank you. Yeah. Unfortunately, we're really a very diagnose and fix globe. And what I, my favorite thing in the world to do Victoria is to reframe. And so when parents say to me, Oh, he just doesn't work as hard as his sibling.
I say, actually, he's working way harder than his sibling or her sibling or their sibling to do half as much. Twice as well, or however, however it presents. And I frequently will say, you know, behavior is communication. We need to not look at the behavior, but what underlies the behavior? What is the trigger?
What does the environment look like? When, when is your child succeeding, thriving, engaged? And how, how do we get some of that into the other areas where it's challenging for them? Yeah, that is so true. And we've just had two huge mindset shifts there. The idea of how 2E kids actually work very, very hard, and sometimes we don't see all of that hard work.
I do see kids coming into my clinic where they see that the child is barely passing, and for them to barely pass, I see how many hours they have to spend studying, all the hours of tutoring, and sleepless nights, and sometimes all of that doesn't get... Recognize they just see that he's not meeting the grades he's supposed to get.
And the second thing, yeah, which is behavior as communication, two huge mindset shifts that I hope everybody listening here will appreciate. It's so important to focus on effort more than outcome. That's the really the crux of it because when you notice your child's efforts, if, if my I have a 14 year old, if he comes home and he's done well, I'm going to say if he's, if he's been assessed and it demonstrates that he has understood everything rather than me focusing and saying he got an A, instead I say that he demonstrated that he, he learned and digested what the teacher was sharing.
I will say to my 14 year old, wow, you clearly were listening in class. You looked over your notes. You were really thinking very hard about what you were learning. And rather than saying, Wow, you did a great job, or I'm proud of you, I'm just going to notice on all of his efforts. And every time I do that, he thanks me.
Because it's so lovely to have somebody recognize your efforts because we know that neurodiverse kids are redirected 40 times more in a classroom situation than neurotypical kids. It's the why won't you, why can't you, when will you, why don't you song that they hear. And so when we notice their efforts, it's sort of like salve to that wound.
Thank you for sharing that. So, aside from that, you said that they're redirected more in the classroom and a lot of people around them don't understand them, why they are like that they're being labeled as oppositional, or all of these negative labels are slapped onto them. Are they lazy? They're, and I guess the kindest but not so helpful word that they hear is they're underachieving.
So, What unique challenges do they face? And especially for gifted kids, I guess we also have to talk about why they need support. Sometimes people think that, well, the child is so smart, they should be able to figure all of this out by themselves. So if you think about the intelligence bell curve and you go and where, where intellect diminishes as you go to the left, as you go to the left and your standard deviations away from norm in the middle, everybody agrees that those folks need support, right?
They're leaving the norm in the middle and their standard deviations away. When you go standard deviations away on the right, you're also farther and farther and farther from norm. So we know the Columbus group definition of giftedness actually talks about how the asynchrony increases with intellectual capacity.
So what happens is. There's so many things that happen, like even if there isn't a learning difference, let's just talk about being gifted. So you're gifted in math, and then now everybody thinks you should be gifted everywhere, so obviously you're just not paying attention, or you're lazy, or I actually don't believe in the diagnosis oppositional defiant disorder, I actually think it's impossible for a child to be oppositional defiant as a disorder.
I think it's environmental. But you'll, you know, so once you go through life and you have these labels put on you, that's another reason why you're not successful. You have layers and layers and layers of mud, I call it. And so if I'm going to enter into a classroom and I know I'm super great at math, but man, when it comes to reading or it comes to written expression, I really struggle.
And I know I always get in trouble in that class and I haven't really put it together that it actually has to do with a learning difference or a learning disability or, or that I'm so in touch with what's happening in the world and I'm very, very affected by it. If I know that I just, people don't like me and I'm annoying and I've self defined that way, then I'm going to rip the band aid off very fast.
I'm going to enter that situation and I'm going to be as obnoxious as I can be because it's so much, it's easier to do that. Then to try and fail again, it's actually heartbreaking when we see kids who have had years of being labeled as lazy or bad or simply won't try. And then that is why we're having this episode.
Actually, I hope this reaches more parents of young kids who may see some of these signs. We want to be able to help your child before they get to that point, because when they get to that point, it's really, really tough. And, and, you know, it's not only just younger kids. I have clients with kids from two to 17.
And then at 18, they become adult clients from mine. So, and I have adult clients from 18 to 80, some who are just finding out that they're too easy. So it's never, I always say it's never, ever, ever too late, but I have two mantras that I like to say, Victoria one is find the hardest kid to love and love him the hardest.
That's usually for teachers because. You know, these kids know teachers are like, okay, let me just try to get through the day. Let me just try to stay under the radar. Let me just try to keep the class together. And I say, actually be proactive, find the hardest kid to love and love them the hardest, sit down and find out what makes this kid tick, what ticks this kid off.
And who is this kid so that he. He, she, they can feel seen and heard and understood. And then the other mantra is to make meaningful connections and make connections meaningful. It's so important for it to be meaningful to the 2E human, to the child or the adult who you are friends, colleagues, peers, a teacher, 2E provider.
It's so important to make things meaningful because that's where the secret sauce lies for 2E and gifted people is where things are meaningful. That is so true. We see that these kids who are 2E they're really very thoughtful and they are creative. They are the ones that think out of the box.
And these are all things that we need to nurture. We don't want to stifle these things because Without to eat, where would the world's greatest inventors be like a lot of the world's greatest people who made the most change in this world from Thomas Edison to Albert Einstein. They were to eat. Yeah. Oh yeah.
And Robin Williams and other people who bring all sorts of wonderful art to our, to our world. Absolutely. I think listening today, there might be some who are thinking that. Oh, could my child be 2E? So what would their next steps be? So I always talk about the now what, that's the most important thing.
And what is your goal and why does it matter? So I'm not so interested. Every once in a while parents will work with me and say, well, I'm not really sure that. My child is whatever. But if they're coming to me for parenting support and guidance for interventions that increase self awareness and self confidence, then those are really good goals.
But if you're, if you're wanting to have to find out and you suspect there's a learning difference or something that is standing in the way of your child being able to feel successful and notice, I did not say meet. has heard their potential, because I really dislike that phrase, because I'm not really sure what that means, potential.
But if your child isn't finding joy in life, that I can get behind. So if you, if you want to learn more, and I think it's so important for everybody to understand how their brain works, then you want to have what's called a neuropsychological evaluation. The rub here is that not just anybody can do a neuropsychological evaluation of a gifted or 2E kid.
It has to be somebody who really has experience in and deep understanding of the profile. Because very often the gift can mask the challenge and the challenge can mask the gift. And it's very important to be in tune of that and to be able to assess subtests to actually get an accurate understanding.
And as well of the learning difference, ADHD and gifted look almost identical. So somebody has to really know what they're looking at. Exactly. Thank you for pointing that out. So I know there are some parents who have asked me, they were tempted to do these apps that's supposed to score your child. So please, it has to be a person who gets to know you and your child.
It's extraordinarily complex and nuanced. Yes, exactly. And then there are also these other nuances in parenting a child who might be 2E, including advocating for them in society, in school. Typically, these are the parents who will face a lot of criticism because other parents will see them like, for example, their child is having a tantrum or like the nine year old you talked about, the one who stopped her, you know, somebody looking on is going to say, you know, that's probably a spoiled child.
So and then the parent is going to start to question themselves. Like, did I do something wrong? Why is my child doing this when another child of the same age can handle the same kind of frustration. So how do they deal with I guess the lack of recognition, the lack of understanding that brings calm that they find whether in their own families or in society or everywhere.
So it's a great question. And, and actually I have what's called the cycle for success. And that's how my new book gifted and distractible is organized. It's three parts, which mirror that cycle for success. It starts with understanding. We need to have a deep understanding of gifted. And any of the 2E ness, that's a part of the profile in general, but then we need to understand the person in front of us.
So when somebody says, I'm a 2E school or I'm a 2E practitioner, we always have to dig deep because that can mean a bazillion different things. I mean, there's so many ways you can be 2E. So we need to really understand the general, but then the specific what and why does it matter? The now what, what are the goals that you have that aren't being met?
So that's that understanding piece. Then we have strategies and I teach the, the book has 200 pages of implementable commonsensical strategies on how to, what I say is bring out the best and raise self confidence. That's the most important thing to me. And so how do we. Really like what you said, Victoria, about parents hearing what we're talking about and feeling relief and like, Oh my gosh, why sometimes I think, why can't my kid do this?
What's wrong with my kid? When we should really reframe and say that kid can really concentrate. That kid is really loyal to his project. That kid is really interested in doing very well and not being disrupted. Right. That focus is incredible. When most of the time we're talking about how they can't focus.
Right. So strategies of how to do that. And then last but not least is advocacy. How do we craft our child's story? So when I work with parents, it's really, it's so, it builds on it itself because once they get this understanding and they realize, like you just said, I don't need to look at my kid and say, he's different than everybody.
I can actually look at my kid and look at how remarkable he, she, or they are in the world that they're given. Right. That this world is not set up for neurodiversity. Yes, it's getting better, but it's not set up for neurodiversity. So let me recognize that. Let me, let me validate that. for my child. Let me rather than telling my child what to do, let me ask questions to help lead my child to critically think about how to solve that problem.
So there's a whole approach that really is explained. That's so important to help parents. The last chapter of the book basically talks about how you are the just right parent for your child. Because parents are looking around and feeling like, Oh my gosh, if it's not their fault, it must be my fault.
And we're all looking for fault. And instead we need to focus on what is it that brings this person joy? How can we recognize the struggles and use the strengths to sort of support those struggles and then just feel good in the world because we're living this life. that is so powerful and so beautiful, Julie.
Thank you so much for sharing that. So, can you tell us more about your book and then who it is for? So, I imagine this is not just for parents, but also for the two individuals themselves and even for a concerned family member, a teacher, and then Where can our listeners get your book? I love that you, you come back all the time to like family members.
And actually I, I started doing sort of a multi generational session with clients where we have grandparents, parents siblings, aunts and uncles all together to really understand the profile. So it's really important. So the book is called gifted and distractible. Understanding, supporting, and advocating for your twice exceptional child.
So it really is very organized and structured according to that cycle for success. Tons of anecdotes in there. I am actually talking to the reader, so it's very conversational. It, it's not a novel, but it almost reads like one because it's so specific to the experience of parenting, teaching, being. 2E.
So the book specifically was written for parents. However, we're finding that adults and of course teachers are using this. They're using it in graduate schools now for 2E certificates. It's a very, it's an eye opening approach of how do I change how I see Respond and share about this to e profile. So that's really, and there are 25 worksheets at the end.
We're going to launch a course in February to go along with the book. You can get the book as an audio version with me reading it, which is, was really fun and wonderful to do. And I'm going to share a secret. I actually, we had to take many takes for the last. that last chapter about you being the just right parent because I kept crying.
So so it's a really it's a really inspirational and informational book for anybody. The book is sold everywhere. You can find it on Amazon and Barnes Noble and Penguin Random House, my publisher. You can find it on their site. You can find it on my site with understanding comes calm dot com at gifted and distractible dot com.
And if you're really. If you're hearing about this and learning about this for the first time, please go to withunderstandingcomescom. com. I always say bring a snack because you'll be there a while. There's so much stuff, but we have a free newsletter called Gifted and Distractible. I've been writing a blog a month since 2014.
So search any topic you want. You're probably going to find a blog. There are articles and videos. I produce conferences that are on demand. There's just a wealth of information. I just launched a 2e adult group. Called the Haystack for all my 2E adult needles to find themselves in the Haystack. That's a really awesome monthly membership.
So if you're teachers, if you're parents, if you're medical professionals or 2E service providers, if you are a 2E adult, it's all there. It's all there for everybody. Thank you so much for sharing that. And we'll also have links to that on our show notes. And I love how you take such a holistic view on helping 2e families and individuals.
Because I notice sometimes these are things that can get lost on social media. Because it's a bite sized post, so you will focus on only one thing or only one aspect. So I love how the book takes such a holistic perspective. And for parents of young kids who are listening to this and would also like a holistic perspective on behavior you check out also discerningparenting.
com, which is my site. And I also have a book about understanding behavior. And I also go into understanding all of these nuances and into looking at their strengths and viewing their behavior challenges as
And it's about how to help them with their behavior in a way that does not kill their own individuality and does not force them to conform and fit a mold that society thinks all kids should behave like that. So I love how our values and our aspirations for society, I guess, in a way align. Yeah. Me too.
That's so great. Victoria. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank Oh, and thank you also for all the awesome work that you've been doing for almost a decade now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My passion. Thank you. Anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners today? So no matter what stage you're at, As a parent, as a teacher, as a clinician, as a twice exceptional adult, and by the way, this is all genetic, so if you have two kids, likely one or both parents, even if you've adopted your kid, actually, by the way, it's fascinating, we're drawn to this population, you are not too late, you are not To look in your rear view mirror.
I always say we don't even use rear view mirrors in a car anymore. We use backup cameras. So the rear view mirror looking back and regretting there's no place for it. It's only looking forward. And every day from now on, if you feel like you made a quote mistake, actually it's the greatest learning moment for you to role model for your child and for yourself, how you learn from making a mistake and how you can.
📍 Come back from emotion dysregulation or you can come back from what you think is burning a bridge. You can actually have greater growth in those moments. Thank you so much for sharing that, Julie. It's truly a privilege to have you here with us and that this parenting podcast. Thank you. Okay. Bye.