Talking with Your Child About Their Giftedness, Strengths, and Twice-Exceptionality

Talking with Your Child About Their Giftedness, Strengths, and Twice-Exceptionality The conversations we have with our children about their giftedness, strengths, and challenges become the foundation for how they understand themselves. Whether your child is just beginning to recognize they learn differently or is asking deeper questions about being gifted, neurodivergent, or twice-exceptional (2e), the language we choose can nurture confidence, resilience, and self-advocacy, or unintentionally reinforce shame, pressure, or limiting beliefs. In this interactive session, we'll explore how to have meaningful, age-appropriate conversations that help children understand their unique brains through a strengths-based lens. Together, we'll discuss practical ways to talk about giftedness and twice-exceptionality with honesty, hope, and compassion while helping children develop the self-awareness and self-understanding they need to advocate for themselves throughout life. Parents will leave with practical language, conversation starters, and a framework for supporting a healthy, authentic sense of identity that grows with their child from the early years through young adulthood.

Teresa Nair, M.Ed., is the Program Manager of Parent Community & Services at REEL and brings nearly three decades of experience across education, nonprofits, and leadership. A former classroom teacher, neurodivergent parent, and advocate, she combines research-informed guidance with lived experience to help families better understand giftedness, twice-exceptionality (2e), and neurodivergence through a strengths-based lens. Having taught in the classroom and guided her own children through homeschooling, private schools, public schools, and other learning environments, Teresa believes there is no single "right" educational path. Her passion is helping parents develop a deeper understanding of their children so they can build confidence, connection, and self-advocacy through the language they use, the relationships they cultivate, and the environments they create.

Learn more at reel2e.org