Growing up, I was that student whom teachers absolutely loved. I could pick up most things with ease, I was usually the first to raise my hand, and I could be counted on to help tutor the other students when they struggled. If the class was covering something I already knew, I was allowed to read in the corner, and it didn’t take long at all to acquire the gifted label. I was a MENSA kid, I went to the Centre for Talented Youth summer camp, I was in the National Honour Society, you name it. Basically, I was Hermione Granger.
I was also the student who would write a paper, toss the disk it was on into my backpack (this was the 1990s, which will play into the story), and not notice the tear in the bottom of said backpack that was big enough for the disk to fall through. I’d do my homework, but forget to bring it on the day it was due. I needed music playing while studying or doing homework to be able to focus, which my parents brushed off because they didn’t know any better. I was easily distracted a lot of the time, but could then spend four hours practising the piano without a break. I could rattle off a thousand obscure facts and multitask like a pro, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put a book I needed. We won’t even talk about how socially-awkward I am.
For a special education teacher training to be a clinical psychologist, I was shockingly slow to realise that I have ADHD. My brother’s teacher had suggested to my parents that he might have it, but based on what was known about ADHD at the time (you guessed it! the 90s), my parents were quick to disagree because like me, my brother might be easily distracted, but he could spend hours creating drawings of planes and trains and space shuttles that were so detailed, they could have been schematics. Surely a kid with ADHD couldn’t do that? No, he was just bored and needed more of a challenge. I even bought into the argument, and it turns out I was far from being the only one: until the last two decades, even the experts believed that a high IQ argued against the presence of ADHD, the student was merely…wait for it…’bored’. (Antshel et al, 2007) And then things started to change and the inattentive type of ADHD started getting attention and thus research, and the existing knowledge of ADHD exploded. A new label was even created: twice-exceptional (2e), meaning students who were academically gifted and had at least one learning-related disability.
That was how I came to be sitting in my neurologist’s office at 39 getting tested for ADHD, inattentive type. People often assume getting a diagnosis like that is a negative experience, but what I felt was the last puzzle piece falling into place. I finally knew why my brain worked the way it did, and better yet, there were things I could do to help. It meant having to learn how my brain worked all over again as well as confront all the ways I’d been self-sabotaging without realising, like sleep habits and managing my stimulation levels. My first day on Adderall, I broke down and cried because I realised just how bad my ‘normal’ had been. The way I describe it to people is like having my brain defragmented for the first time, that it’s no longer a browser window with 50 tabs open that’s always on the verge of crashing. Then because I had a better understanding myself, I was able to look at the rest of my family and see that 76% heritability at work. (Antshel et al, 2007) Getting those family members on-board…well, that’s been more complicated. The original understanding of ADHD from the 80s and 90s has proven difficult to eradicate when it comes to my parents, as I still don’t think they’re convinced I have it, and this is something I’ve seen in parents of my students as well.
Twice-exceptional students are more likely to go undiagnosed and because of the added expectations that come with being a gifted student, struggles are usually perceived as ‘boredom’ or ‘laziness’. It’s no accident that these students thrive in gifted classrooms: the smaller class size, the additional stimulation, and the less-rigid environment are perfect for a neurodivergent mind. With that access, however, comes the burden of being expected to excel without acknowledgement of the challenges 2e students face. The twice-exceptional label truly is a double-edged sword.
References:
Antshel, K. M., Faraone, S. V., Stallone, K., Nave, A., Kaufmann, F. A., Doyle, A., Fried, R., Seidman, L., & Biederman, J. (2007). Is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder a valid diagnosis in the presence of high IQ? results from the MGH longitudinal family studies of ADHD. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(7), 687–694. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01735.x
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Your blog adequately depicts one of the essential concepts we covered in this week’s lesson. I have learned a lot about how social psychology theories help explain individuals’ behaviors related to learning and behaviors in the classroom. Specifically, I also agree that academic self-concept plays a significant role in students’ academic performance. Despite students’ cognitive capacity in learning, the belief that one has in one’s academic ability matters more than we think. I also used to believe that science was boring and challenging; later, however, I discovered that I actually enjoyed and excelled at learning science-related subjects more than other subjects. Additionally, academic self-concept affects students’ motivation toward learning (self-enhancement effect), and successful academic achievements lead to a more positive academic self-concept (skill development effect) (Gruman et al., 2017). For example, when a student scores 100% on a math exam, he will develop a more positive self-concept of his or her math skills. Therefore, he will be likelier to be motivated to study for the next math exam. In contrast, when a student finds that he has failed his math exam, this will negatively impact his academic self-concept, thus leading to self-handicapping or procrastination to avoid potential failure and minimize its consequences.
References
Gruman, J., Schneider, F., & Coutts, L. (Eds.) (2017). Applied social psychology. SAGE Publications, Inc, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781071800591