
Summer, by its nature, is a BIG TRANSITION. It also brings LOTS of little transitions with it – going from one activity to another. Each brings a mourning of what is being let go of, along with fear, anxiety, or excited angst about what unknowns lie ahead. With that understanding, invite in compassion to lead you and your child.
Relative to Gifted / 2E Living:
Transitions are especially intense for gifted and 2e children – whether the gifts are cognitive, emotional, sensory, imaginational, and/or physical. (Areas corresponding to Dambrowski’s “overexcitabilities”.) Their radars pick up small shifts, and their systems take notice. The extreme reactions during transitions may be related to twice exceptionalities – may be clues that learning/processing differences are making it especially difficult for your child – and you – to put extreme thoughts and feelings into a context that makes them manageable, safe, and secure. The transition to summer provides a great example: The change of seasons for some may bring up the existential life/death aspect of life – a deep knowing that endings and death always will be a part of life. That’s a hard “knowing” to have at a young age. In addition, given that all of us are wired to notice, learn, and feel the negative easily and quickly, but to allow the positives to slip by, the counter-point that birth is also (and always will be) a part of life – that is not weighty enough to offset the existential “negative” thought. That disparity can be felt and rationalized as reality more pervasively, deeply, acutely and lastingly by gifted/2E with existential thinking than it is for neuro-typical children. It’s no wonder that gifted/2E children’s disintegration is more extreme. With that understanding, invite compassion to lead you and your child.