12 Ways to Prevent Trauma in 2e Folks Now

Inspired by a similar listicle.

Photo by Chiara F on Unsplash

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In momentarily suspending belief regarding the excruciating semantic inadequacy of the term “2e”, here are some ideas to help pave the way for future generations. Note that my perspective may unintentionally color some things here, so feel free to add your contribution to the metaphorical pot if you think I’ve missed something.

0. Remember that there’s room for everyone to win.

Just because someone looks “smart” or “articulate” doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling or aren’t struggling immensely. Even someone entering college at 12 might also have very substantial disability-related support needs that entail such a person requiring lots of assistance with daily tasks as an adult, and/or might have have had a very different disability presentation as a very young child.

Keep in mind that politicians and government agencies are who make the policies around service allocation and eligibility and that any of your complaints and grievances should be aimed at them rather than other disabled people you don’t think are “disabled enough”.

Since I have never held office or worked for the government, it is literally impossible for me to have kept someone with intellectual disability from receiving services, and even with the state funding I do receive, a huge portion of it goes unused by me every year due to the sheer difficulty in even finding services to pay for that effectively serve a developmentally disabled person with an advanced degree, who not only skipped grades as a kid, but has ongoing entrepreneurial and academic aspirations.

Trust me, I’m not taking anyone’s adult daycare spot, and nobody wants to see the kind of person I would turn into in that kind of environment.

1. Don’t use exceptional performance to justify harsh punishments.

In the present day, I fly into a full-blown shame-infused panic when I can’t find something immediately, accidentally drop a piece of glassware, or miss an appointment. As a young child, my nervous system learned that no mistake was ever safe to make around people who thought I was a genius.

I was supposed to always have known better. Suspicions of laziness could strike at any moment. A teacher could decide to allow everyone else in the class a calculator except for me and then make a spectacle out of any and all of my arithmetic errors. Failing to tidy my room occasionally led to refusal to transport me to the few friends I had. Poking holes in a window screen in my bedroom lost me a performance opportunity. I’ve even been kicked out of private viola lessons over an off week.

We are not machines.

2. Nurture strengths unconditionally.

Someone’s disability should never be used to deny strengths. This goes especially for those whose disabilities fundamentally alter how they socialize.

Being socially “mature” or verbally inclined should never be prerequisites for adequate academic challenge or access to appropriate spaces for one’s areas of interest, particularly if this social “immaturity” isn’t causing someone to endanger the safety or well being of others.

Appropriate support, scaffolding, and accommodation should exist alongside the nurturing of strengths.

3. Give grace for inconsistency.

Just because we’re good at one thing doesn’t mean we’ll be good at everything, or even be good at the same things every day. It doesn’t matter how superhuman any given talent of ours is.

4. Forget almost everything you were taught about age.

Various different people in the field of gifted and 2e education describe us as being “many ages at once”. And while mental age theory as a whole is absolute bunk, the “many ages at once” idea isn’t completely without merit to describe the experience.

Almost since I can remember, I have felt simultaneously 8 and 80 and everything in between.

5. Allow us to push ourselves on our own terms.

When we’re allowed to pursue our passions without judgement, amazing things can happen. The worst case scenario is an adult who isn’t depressed and burnt out.

6. Reconsider some of your praise.

As is recommended for everyone, focus praise on effort, progress, and character, rather than your ideas of innate brilliance. Over 25 years later, I’m still getting over the self-esteem issues that came from being told I’m some kind of earth shattering genius who will save the world on a regular basis starting when people noticed I could read at the age of three.

7. Steer clear of parentification and triangulation.

It should go without saying, but we should never be our parents’ therapists or our classmates’ babysitters just because we sometimes have huge vocabularies, are “well-behaved”, or seem like “old souls”.

In some situations, it might be temptingly convenient to make your 10-year-old student learning calculus an unpaid teaching assistant, but this only teaches them that they matter less than everybody else, must make themselves smaller for the sake of others, and ought to work without compensation to appease authority figures.

Even now, I’m still working through the trauma of playing marriage counselor for my parents to make up for how the actual marriage counselors they went to were incompetent, as well as that of being forced to regularly skip class to actually make math tests for the entire school and tutor older classmates who sexually harassed me.

8. Exercise more benefit of the doubt.

Whenever you are thinking of calling someone “lazy”, heavily scrutinize your assumptions. Ask yourself what might cause someone to appear this way without actually wanting to. A lot of “lazy” people are actually trying very hard and dealing with problems you may not be privy to.

9. Avoid judging us by a single number.

I was always rejected from my elementary school’s gifted program because it only ever used a single data point; a single timed test with a single unwavering cutoff score.

Later on, my chances at the most prestigious universities were hindered by the fact that my reading/writing scores on standardized admissions tests like the SAT significantly trailed my math scores, which were near-perfect even two years before I was “supposed” to take these exams, leading to an overall mediocre, barely above average composite score.

Similarly, someone’s full-scale IQ might not tell the whole story. My overall IQ comes out at about the 95th-ish percentile (depending on the day), but the subtest scores are far more telling. About a hand-full of subtests in working memory, visuospatial reasoning, and verbal reasoning score at the 98th to 99.7th percentile (with me never hitting the discontinuation criteria for certain subtests), whereas others, such as visual scanning-oriented subtests sit as low as the 37th percentile, and some are somewhere in between the two extremes.

This also goes for those who may have average measured IQs or even those who may have an intellectual disability diagnosis in some cases, particularly if tested very young and/or nonspeaking without access to appropriate AAC support.

There are 2e folks sitting right now in self-contained special education classrooms, group homes, psychiatric wards, prisons, and adult day programs, whose styles of communication and reactions to a lack of intellectual stimulation have been uncharitably reduced to mere signs of innate “aggression” in need of sedation, isolation, and restraint.

When determining how to best support someone, always look at as many different data points as you can and explore unconventional ways to look for strengths.

10. Study the full social context of 2e identity.

Many psychometric instruments have a dark past rooted in white supremacy and eugenics that still influences how these measures are used today.

Accordingly, the 2e label has suffered from severe whitewashing and access to identification is frequently only available to people and/or families who have the financial means to pursue expensive neuropsychological evaluations with the top experts and possibly even hire specialized legal services to secure appropriate educational placement and/or sue institutions over violations of discrimination laws.

11. Scrutinize your beliefs about schooling.

Traditional Prussian model schooling is a complete mismatch for 2e folks. While some of us, such as myself, manage to tough it out, and some of us might, for whatever reason, seek out the kind of social environment it provides, the bottom line is that it’s simply too inflexible.

Mixed age environments with ample opportunity for independent study small class sizes, and many ways to demonstrate mastery, as well as keeping accessibility from being siloed off and gate kept are all things that we need to thrive.

Conclusion

Is there anything you would add? Let us know in the comments.