Lois Letchford's son Nicholas failed first grade and scored low on IQ tests, but intensive parental teaching reversed his trajectory. He went on to earn a PhD from Oxford. Letchford argues that twice-exceptional children's strengths don't mask their weaknesses, and parents of struggling kids need concrete reading plans and extra effort.
Chapters
Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, talking about debunking myths of the twice exceptional child. One of the myths is that these children will look average in the classroom. Their strengths will tailor their weaknesses to make them look average. I'm here to say that any child who fails may also be twice exceptional, and we don't know that Until we have taught this child to read and we have allowed them to succeed in the classroom. And my story and my basis for this comes from my twice exceptional son Nicholas, who failed first grade. I wrote the whole story of Reversed about it because he failed so dramatically in first grade. The testing showed he had a low IQ. And when a child has such test results, you as a parent have no leg to stand on. What can you say? The school has all of the data. They come back and say he can't learn or he's not learning because— and they have the testing to show why. So when you have twice exceptional children and they failed school, We as parents really have to work incredibly hard to teach these children to read and allow them to be successful. And if your child is failing now, we need to work out a plan to say, what are we going to do to teach the child to read and have them be successful in the classroom? Twice exceptional children are challenging to teach. It takes more effort. It takes more thinking. There's much more involved. In making sure they are successful, but it's critical, critical that we teach them to read and allow them to be successful. And if you haven't seen my video which drives me for this, it's in my— the story is in Reversed: A Memoir, and the video is Nicholas Letchford, From Outsider to Oxford, or Low IQ to PhD, either way. My son at six had a prognosis that was utterly dire, and we turned it around. So, in debunking myths of a twice exceptional child, I go back to his story, and I look at how I can pass on my message to other parents to say, when your child is failing, there's so much we can do. Hit like, hit subscribe, and enjoy my videos. Thank you very much.
