Supporting Twice-Exceptional Students With Dyslexia

If you’re a parent of a child who is both highly intelligent and dyslexic, you already know the emotional whiplash. Your child may go from debating big ideas, and absorbing science videos at lightning speed to melting down over a short reading passage or a written response that you expect to take ten minutes.

These children are often referred to as twice exceptional (2e), because they possess an advanced cognitive ability alongside a learning difference. In the upper elementary and early middle school grades, the gap between what they can think and what school demands they produce starts to widen. Reading becomes denser, writing expectations increase significantly, and teachers often assume that a bright child should be able to figure things out. As an ALTA-certified Orton-Gillingham clinician, this post discusses three common issues seen among 2e dyslexic learners and shares what you can do to support them.

#1: Masking Trap

Twice-exceptional children are masters of compensation. They use context clues, memorization, humor, avoidance, or perfectionism to hide what’s hard. In fact, bright children may believe if sustained effort is required, they are not good at it. The ability to compensate often delays identification and support. You may notice:

• Strong verbal skills, curiosity, and reasoning
• Large spoken vocabulary but weak spelling
• A tendency to shut down when something feels threatening to their self-image

Strategy for Parents

Replace “smart” praise with “strategy”praise. As a parent, you may want to refocus praise from “intelligence” to “perseverance.” Instead of saying: “You’re so smart” switch to “I’m proud that you stayed with it when it got hard.” In order to emphasize the strategy that your child used ask questions such as:

• What helped you solve that?
• Which part was tricky and what did you try?
• What’s one tool we can use next time?

Asking these types of questions help your child build an identity around problem-solving instead of performance.

#2 Written Output Doesn’t Match Their Oral Skills

Your child might have sophisticated ideas when discussing them verbally but be unable to express the concepts when writing. You may see:

• Slow writing speed, messy handwriting
• Short vague sentences and poor spelling
• Difficulty organizing multi-step assignments

Why it matters: In grades 4–7, school becomes increasingly “prove what you know through writing.” If writing is painful, kids start underperforming in every subject—even the ones they love.

Strategy for Parents

Separate “composition” from “transcription.”
Writing is a complex process with multiple skill layers: (1) idea generation, (2) organization, (3) sentence construction, (4) spelling/encoding, (5) handwriting/typing mechanics, and (6) editing.
When dyslexia is present, the skills may become jumbled. Your child can benefit from breaking the assignment into smaller tasks:

• Let your child share their ideas verbally first (voice note, talk it out, or speech-to-text).
• Help them build a simple structure: Beginning / Middle / End or Claim / Evidence /Explanation.

Select one focus at a time. For example, initially focus on writing clear sentences. The next time you’ll concentrate on spelling.This approach builds skills while protecting your child’s intellect and maintaining high standards.

#3 Reading Is Draining Despite Comprehension

A 2e dyslexic child might comprehend advanced information when it’s read aloud, but struggle to decode grade-level text efficiently. Your child may understand ideas far above grade level, but reading can still be slow, inaccurate, and most importantly exhausting. This is important because when reading is hard, a child doesn’t want to practice, so they don’t improve. You may
notice:

• They avoid reading even if they enjoy stories
• They read below grade level but discuss above grade level
• Homework takes forever because reading eats all their energy

Strategy for Parents

Switch to “access and practice.” Your child needs to access rich content materials to build vocabulary and background knowledge and in parallel, practice reading at the appropriate level. Allow your child to use audiobooks paired with print, text-to-speech, and video-based learning for complex topics. At the same time, have them:

• Practice decodable text for 10-15 minutes a day.
• Repeated readings of short passages for fluency
• Learn morphology and target explicit spelling patterns

This ensures that your child continues to build advanced literacy skills alongside improving decoding skills.

Summary

Having a high IQ doesn’t eliminate dyslexia. Often it will mask, complicate and intensify the emotional impact. As a parent, you want to instill a love of learning while remediating reading and spelling issues. Contact Strategies for Learning to discuss how we can be of assistance.

Written by Tracy Young, MBA, CALT, Orton-Gillingham Reading Therapist

Tracy Young holds an MBA from Boston University. She has completed over 220 hours of Orton-Gillingham training and holds her Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA) Certification. She is passionate about Dyslexia Advocacy and Intervention and currently serves in the screening subcommittee of the New York State Dyslexia and Dysgraphia Task Force.