By Jacqui Byrne

By the time September gives way to October, it can feel like every other household has started to find its rhythm. So why not ours? 

If you’re raising a twice-exceptional (2e) child, this probably sounds familiar; I know it rings true for me and my family.

But what I’ve learned over the years, as both a parent and an educator, is that for 2e kids, sometimes going off track is exactly on point.

That definitely turned out to be the case one memorable time when my child was assigned to learn how the Lenape people of the Northeast lived. While the other sixth-graders dutifully began to collect and assemble facts into essays, dioramas, or posters, mine disappeared into the woods. Hours later, my kid (them/them) returned—with fresh dirt in the treads of their sneakers, a handful of berries, and the unmistakable glint of curiosity in their eyes. 

That little excursion sparked something much bigger. Day after day, my kid researched, collected, experimented, and created. They learned to combine ingredients, invented recipes, and even sculpted an entire community of little figures out of cheese wax. 

Part of me wanted to nudge them back on track, to produce what had been assigned. But if I had pressed the issue, I suspect all we’d have had to show for it were some half-hearted responses on a worksheet—if that. So I bit my tongue and resisted the impulse. And by stepping back instead of stepping in, I allowed my pre-teen to embark on a self-driven, immersive learning adventure. What could have been a brief unit in social studies stretched into an entire season of exploration.

You might conclude from this story that I had discovered some secret to how my kid learned best; that as long as they could do hands-on projects with outdoor time, they’d be successful at school. At first, I thought so, too. But even after my child began attending FlexSchool, where experiential learning is the norm, I soon learned that this was no guarantee that they would engage with a given assignment.

In fact, if they had been assigned to collect berries in the woods, they might never have picked a single one, no matter where they went to school or who was doing the assigning. 

And maybe that’s the real lesson: For our 2e kids, it may not be about the specific task at all; it’s about claiming the time, space, and freedom to forge a path that’s completely their own.

For free tools and resources to improve your 2e child’s experience, visit 2e 101. 

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Jacqui Byrne, FlexSchool Founder

Jacqui Byrne is the visionary behind FlexSchool – a network of small schools specifically designed to engage and support the creative, quirky, asynchronous minds of gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) students. An acknowledged expert and sought-after speaker on education, Jacqui is a member of the Bridges Graduate School Advisory Council and holds a degree from Yale University. She is also the parent of twice-exceptional kids.