Miriam:
Hey Neurofeedback Moms! I am Miriam Bellamy. I am the mom who started this group. I am an LMFT, and I am the director of Whole Family Neurofeedback. One of the benefits as many of you know of being a part of this group is that we offer access to speakers and writers who know about and who are experts in issues that you care about, in addition to all the information about neurofeedback.
So today, I have with me Debbie Reber, who is the author of many books. But before I introduce her, I want to just make sure, as you’re listening, please feel free to put your questions in the comments. I will be monitoring that, and Debbie’s happy to take those questions live as they come in.
So Debbie is an author of many books. Her most recent book is called Differently Wired. She is a parenting activist, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and founder of what she calls “tilt parenting,” which we’re gonna learn about. Differently Wired, the subtitle is “A Parent’s Guide to Raising an Atypical Child with Confidence and Hope,” and that came out in June 2018.
She lived in the Netherlands, which is interesting, for five years. And she and her husband and 17-year-old moved back to Brooklyn, and they’ve been there since 2019. So for you East Coasters, y’all are on the same time. I know it’s 6′:00 there. It’s just 4:00 out in Colorado.
Welcome Debbie. Thanks for being with us today.
Debbie:
Thanks so much Miriam. I’m happy to be here.
Miriam:
So in me talking about this interview we were going to be doing, we were talking about “twice exceptional children.” What is that, and how did you get started doing this work?
Debbie:
So twice exceptionality is actually a phrase that I discovered when I heard it used in reference to my child when they were about 5. What it is is when someone is gifted—sometimes that means a high IQ, it could be gifted in other ways—but gifted and there is some sort of neurodevelopment difference, so a learning disability or often a child may be gifted and autistic, or gifted and ADHD, or gifted and dyslexic. It’s also known as “2e” sometimes, so the number two and the letter “e” you’ll see it that way. But it’s really tricky because it’s hard to identify for reasons I can go into.
But I got into this work because I realized I was raising a twice exceptional kid. When I heard the phrase it really just resonated. I was like, “Okay, that explains a lot.” And it’s a really complicated code file because—I call these kids tricky because they’re so asynchronous in the way they learn, and their gifts sometimes mask their challenges and vice versa.
Miriam:
What do you mean by asynchronous in the way that they learn?
Debbie:
So asynchronous is such a hallmark of… twice exceptional. So you may have a child who at the age of 6 is reading philosophy or might be able to explain to you the theory of relativity. Socially and emotionally they may be operating at the level of a 3-year-old. So you often have these vast disconnects between their cognitive development and their social/emotional development, and that disconnect, like the gap there, is so pronounced that it is actually what creates so many challenges.
You might think… I was talking with a peer when Asher was like 10 because we could have these really in-depth conversations. Yet socially and emotionally, something that I would think would be really small could completely disregulate him, so it’s complicated.
Miriam:
So what makes them hard to identify?
Debbie:
First of all, think of a kid who maybe has dyslexia. Dyslexia by itself is often undiagnosed. All kids are not necessarily screened for learning disabilities, so if a child isn’t performing with their reading or maybe they’re really struggling with their math facts, we might not think “dyscalculia.” We may think, “This child maybe isn’t as bright, or they have challenges.”
And so these kids can be held back. They’re often given remediation to focus on these things, but we’re not diagnosing the learning disability. Meanwhile, they’ve got a brain that can do so much if they are able to learn the way their brain is wired to learn. And so oftentimes the learning disability just masks the giftedness.
And these kids—I’ve heard from so many adults who were in special ed, who were held back, who kind of internally knew, “I don’t belong here. I know that I’m really smart.” But because of the way that our educational system, at least in the US, is structured, oftentimes those gifts are just not recognized.
Miriam:
And then I’m also sort of wondering too… because when you and I just spoke I started thinking, “Huh, I wonder if [my daughter] sort of fits in this.” And one of the ways we sort of missed her diagnosis for so long is because she’s so smart, and I think she developed strategies that… she got through just fine. I mean I think it was a struggle for her but—
Debbie:
That’s exactly it. That’s the flip side. So these kids can be really adaptable, and they can hack themselves, and they can overcompensate and figure out their own systems. And we may not know that they’re struggling at all.
They may be wondering, “Why is this so much harder for me than everybody else?” So they may internalize, “There’s something wrong with me.” And so often these kids can mask or hide their learning disabilities, often until they’re middle school or high school or beyond. And then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, there’s a reason why this has been so hard for me.”
So that’s really complicated because a lot of those kids are able to find ways around their challenges.
Miriam:
And I’m thinking too… there are ways that it’s not going to be picked up because of standardized testing. Right? Because these kids may not necessarily do very well on that kind of testing, even though that intelligence is there.
Debbie:
Yeah, I mean processing speed is often something we see in twice exceptional kids, or just gifted kids. We often see kids who might have a big disconnect in their intellect in terms of the way that they can process information or recognize patterns, but that processing speed… getting thoughts out in a way that we’ve deemed as a whole to demonstrate knowledge… there’s a disconnect there. It’s like things get backed up in a big dam. So writing can be really difficult, and so essay tests can be a crash-and-burn scenario for these kids.
Many kids who have learning disabilities, they need extra time on tests. But if they haven’t been diagnosed, they’re not going to get those accommodations, and therefore they perform terribly on these standardized tests. There’s “do these number of questions in this amount of time”… filling in the bubbles can be really difficult for some kids because of the distraction.
Unfortunately, the way that our school systems are set up, they work for a pretty narrow, I think… they’re just fine for a pretty narrow population of students, or students can just kind of make their way… but there’s so many kids who don’t thrive with that modality of demonstrating their mastery or their knowledge about any subject.
Miriam:
So now I’m wondering… is it genetic?
Debbie:
Well, I do not think the apple falls far from the tree… It’s really interesting in my community, so many parents are discovering their own neurodivergence as a result of going through this process of really understanding who their kids are. I’ve never been formally diagnosed with what I now know is my own ADHD, but so many pieces have come together. Like, “Oh my gosh.” And it’s taken me awhile to figure that out.
So yes, there’s very often a genetic component. And it’s really fascinating to these generation of people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s discovering, “Oh my gosh, I’m on the spectrum. I have overcompensated for this learning disability my whole life.”
Miriam:
So I had… do you know Dr. Ned Hallowell?
Debbie:
Oh yes. He’s amazing.
Miriam:
He was on a couple of months ago, and as we were talking backstage, I said, “Yeah both my daughters have this diagnosis.” And he was like, “So you have ADHD?” And I was like, “What? No!”
I listed off my accomplished, and he was like, “The most under-diagnosed group for ADHD are high-achieving women.” And he was like, “Let’s end 5 or 10 minutes early. We’ll spend some time, and I’ll let you know.” And he was like, “Yeah, you’re ADHD.” [laughs]
So I just got my diagnosis a couple months ago, and it made so many things make sense. Because it’s a struggle. There’s a lot of work that goes into all that I do.
Debbie:
Exactly. I am so good at systems now… people come to me to organize projects, so on paper I’m executive functioning skills like nobody’s business. But I now recognize that I didn’t develop those till my late 20s, that I had to develop my own systems because I couldn’t cope. I was a terrible student in high school and undergrad.
Miriam:
And for many of us, when you have children, it sort of pushes all those things you can get by with… and then the kids come along, and it’s this whole other world.
Will you tell us some more about your “tilt community.” Why tilt? Why’d you come up with that name?
Debbie:
Well I’ll just say upfront, it’s not an acronym. I can tell you the story as quickly as possible. So before we moved abroad, we moved to the Netherlands… we were just struggling so much as a family, and we decided to throw all the rules out the window, and do homeschooling and like make this major life change.
We went to the Jersey Shore right before the move. And Asher and I rode on the tilt-a-whirl… that ride in the amusement park, that ride that kind of whips you around… You’re seated, and you never know when the next turn’s gonna happen, and my husband captured a photo of a us kind of mid-whirl. And we’re holding on for dear life. And our hair is flying back, and we had these huge grins on our face. I posted that picture on my wall, because to me it just captured so much of what we were going through. We were just holding on. We never knew what was going to happen next, and we were just kind of throwing everything upside down.
And so this word “tilt” is what I eventually created for the community… it just represented so much. But really the way I use it now is also that we need to tilt our ideas about what it means to educate, what it means to parent. We need to always be tilting our perspective to really be able to show up for who these kids are and kind of get off this path that we thought we were on and really open up to the path we actually are on.
Miriam:
So with these kiddos, you have developed strategies and done a lot of thinking… I know you have a lot of experience with how to support these kids. So if somebody’s listening and they’re like, “Huh, I wonder if that’s one of my kids, or me?” Talking about the kids, how do we support them? Where would a person start?
Debbie:
Well I think—because these kids, especially these twice exceptional kids, they do have so many incredible strengths. I think that’s where we want to start is really getting curious about their strengths. Because so often when we recognize our kids are not doing well… they’re not thriving in this area or that area… that’s where we put all of our resources and we often ignore the gifts.
Not that we don’t want to support and work on areas of relative weakness, but I think we can do so much while we kind of go all in on the strengths and those deep areas of interests, and really lean in and use those as a foundation for all of these other things… for the executive function and for the planning and organizing and building confidence.
So I think really that’s where you want to start is maybe kind of put the breaks on and make sure… take a look at where you’re spending your energy, if you’re doing therapy, what you’re spending your money on, and make sure that you are promoting their strengths as much if not more as the areas of challenges.
Miriam:
And how do you involve the kids in that? I know you have some thoughts on talking to these kids and letting them know about their differently wired brains. Can you talk about that?
Debbie:
First, I think we want to normalize difference. We as adults often have a lot of ideas about what it means to have this label. I hear from parents all the time who are like, “I don’t want my kids to have this label. I don’t want it to hurt their self-esteem.” And we know from talking with adults about their neurodivergence how much that label has empowered them to be able to really step in to who they are and make sense of their experience.
So I think normalizing difference is something we want to do from day one, and talk about these things at the dinner table… talk about these things that we’re all working on… explore this from a brain science perspective. I think, especially with 2e kids, they’re curious. They like to learn about things. It’s not one conversation. It’s kind of like a culture that we have in our family that we care about self-knowledge. We care about self-discovery. We care about understanding what we need in the world.
And we as parents model that within ourselves. We model our own struggles and how we hack ourselves, and we talk openly about… we use the word. We use the label. And we help our kids lean into their own identity without feeling like there’s something wrong with them or they’re broken.
So it’s not easy to do, because we live in a society where there is stigma. More and more high-profile people are talking openly about their mental health or their neurodivergence, but we have a long way to go. And so I think it’s really important for us to first of all understand that we are holding on to some unhealthy beliefs about what it means to have this or that label associated with our kids… kind of do our work around that.
And really make sure that we are always talking about these things… matter of fact, strengths-based, “isn’t this interesting.” Or, “That’s so interesting. I bet this is why you think that way, and that is pretty cool because I would never have approached that problem that way.” So we can always be talking about things with our kids from that lens.
Miriam:
And I think there’s some importance in the label too. “Twice exceptional”? I like that. And how inaccurate “ADHD” is… the title. I mean the ability to hyperfocus is huge.
Debbie:
Absolutely. I think that’s one of the reasons why I really anchored in with this phrase “differently wired” when I launched tilt parenting is that so much of the language surrounding neurodivergence is pathologized, is disorder based.
I was having a conversation with Asher when Asher was maybe 10. And I said, “Oh I read this study about during pregnancy if a woman does this the risk of the child being autistic…” And Asher stopped me and said, “What do you mean the risk? Is autism a disease?” And I was like, “Oh no. Thank you for calling me on that.” That’s what the… I think “chances” would have been a better word… So it’s just such a part of our culture, you know, to use the word “epidemic of this and that.”
So yes. There’s a lot of challenges of labels in general. And there is a lot of neurodivergent affirming language that’s coming out, and I think it’s just becoming more a part of the lexicon and that’s exciting.
Miriam:
And the more we can be dynamically focused… I’m a Bowenian family systems therapist, so it’s the most non-pathologizing theory of human behavior that’s out there in my opinion. And we think about things as in motion always. And so when you think about it like that, it’s not a problem that’s chiseled in stone.
Yes, we have brain wiring. It’s real. It can be very challenging. But when you think about it dynamically, especially in terms of a relationship, I just there’s so much hope in thinking about like. So yes, the labeling, and the talking about it in a way that is a process…
Say a little about the Differently Wired book. I know we’re going to be talking in a minute about a free book club that you’re offering about the book, but what would somebody get out of reading this book?
Debbie:
When I wrote the book, I in part wanted it to be a manifesto, because I really believe so deeply… when I launched tilt parenting, this was a core foundation for it is that we need to shift the whole paradigm. We need to change the way that these kids experience the world… the way that they are respected and supported and seen in schools and in the world.
And so the first chunk of Differently Wired is really a manifesto. I really spent a lot of time looking at what I think systemically is broken and what the cost of that is for all of us, not just for kids and families like mine, but for all of us. We need these disruptors to fix the world.
So it’s part manifesto, then the majority of the book is… they are briefings. They are things not that your kids can do or to try to start to do with your kids, but rather what can we do… how can we reframe our thinking and change our experience in this or that area, so that we can show up with respect, with confidence… so that we can find more peace in this.
So many parents I find—and I was this parent—we find out there’s a problem, and we go into fix-it mode. We want solutions. We want a plan. We want to get back on the path that we wanted to be on. And so that’s a lot of energy, and it doesn’t really support anybody. It just feels frustrating, and it doesn’t really kind of ultimately help our kids grow up to be the self-actualized adults that we want for them.
So the rest of the book is really about how to find acceptance with what’s going on, how to lean into who your child is, how to throw out these arbitrary timelines and start recognizing every child is on their unique path… how to find your people and stop caring about what other people think. So it’s really touching on the parent’s emotional journey so that we can show up for these kids in a much better way.
Miriam:
So it sounds like a pretty significant reframe to… these kids are here to change the world? Could you say something about that? How we need them to change the world?
Debbie:
Yeah, right before I moved back from Amsterdam, I got to speak at TedX Amsterdam, and that was the focus of my talk is… I do believe—I had the kid who was highly disruption, and notes home, and starting a side business in second grade that kind of got the whole class in factions. Interesting, fascinating kids.
And when they’re younger there’s such a priority on compliance, and not asking questions but doing as you’re told. And not coloring outside the lines, yet as a culture we celebrate adults who are innovators, who are disrupting industries, who are coming up with those incredibly creative solutions. Well our differently wired kids are those people. And so we need them to grow up and launch… we need them to understand what those gifts are so they can grow up and share them with the rest of us.
And so many of these kids don’t make it to feeling that way. They experience trauma in schools. They get bullied. They just really struggle. If parents don’t have the resources, or wherever this child is they get that message reenforced every day that you’re broken… that you’re not smart, that there’s something wrong with you. So there is a lot at stake.
Miriam:
Disruptors. Yeah I like that.
Debbie:
Yeah, we need them.
Miriam:
So talk to us about the free book club that’s coming up.
Debbie:
When I first came up with Differently Wired, which was… gosh, almost four years ago… I ran a book club two times where I just met live over four weeks over Zoom to just go through the book. I created a workbook to go along with it, so that parents can really work through, “How do I actually apply this to my own life?”
I haven’t done it in a couple years, and I just have a lot of new listeners on my podcast, and I just thought, “I want to do this again.” I really love… it’s my favorite thing. Just to connect with other parents and get into it, get into it all. And help parents realize that you can feel so much better in this. You did not draw the short straw. Your kid’s amazing. You’re the exact parent that they need. And just getting to support parents in that way is just incredible.
So I’m offering this book club again. It starts at the end of April. And just the cost of entry is purchasing the book.
Miriam:
So, like I wish I’d found neurofeedback a very long time ago, I wish I’d found your thinking on this a long time ago too. So I’ll put a link in the comments about the book club, but you also have a Facebook group that I joined that’s very active, tons of resources… lots of parents posting in there about resources they’ve found, and getting help and so forth. What’s the name of that Facebook community so I can put it in the comments too?
Debbie:
It’s called “Tilt Together,” and it’s really… I mean I hang out in there, but it’s really driven by the community. It’s a place to get anything from a recommendation for an occupational therapist in Missoula or… “I have an IEP meeting tomorrow. What should I be asking for?” Very specific challenges, and there’s always a ton of parents that know exactly what that parent is going through and can kind of mentor them through that situation.
Miriam:
Thank you Debbie for being with us today, and I hope that some of these moms that have been listening can take advantage of these resources.
Debbie:
Thank you Miriam.