In an ideal world, school would be a wonderful place full of exciting opportunities for learning and growth, a place that nurtures talents, cultivates interests, and helps students understand and manage their particular pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, many classrooms are of the one-size-fits-all variety. Lessons are apt to be taught to all children in the same way, with student evaluations primarily contingent upon written products. In schools across the nation, exciting curriculum is often reserved for those precious few moments when all students have mastered basic skills.

There are some students who suffer considerably from this type of classroom because they cannot conform to particular kinds of learning. Students who are gifted, but who struggle with a learning disability or attention deficit, are a strange paradox‹they have special intellectual gifts, but are unsuccessful with certain basic learning tasks. These students' potential are at great risk of going untapped and undeveloped because the major focus of educational intervention is on what these students do not know and cannot do rather than on nurturing their talents. These students present wild patterns of accomplishment and failure that require special attention, and it is vital that schools pay attention to the gifts as well as the learning difficulties.

To help these students, their parents, and the educators and other school staff with whom these students interact, we present both theory and practical strategies. In Part I, we explore the unique characteristics of gifted, learning-disabled (GLD) children and provide background information essential for understanding the GLD youngster. We describe several pioneering studies of GLD students and use those results to forge a clearer approach to educational intervention. Finally, we examine the confusion in diagnoses between learning disabilities and ADHD, especially with gifted students.

In Part II, we discuss the contemporary psychological theory and research that steers educational applications for GLD students. Before we can suggest specific ideas or strategies to use with gifted students with learning or attention difficulties, it is essential to consider how they learn and why particular learning strategies are sometimes successful and sometimes not. We first discuss intellectual profiles using a traditional definition of intelligence as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the most common measure given to identify GLD students. An examination of two intellectual patterns‹Dispersive and Integrative‹provides insight into why GLD students tend to have inconsistent learning behaviors. Next we apply Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to understand why students with extraordinary strengths in some of the eight intelligences but not in others (such as linguistic) struggle in school. Finally, we extend this discussion of intelligence by examining attention and memory function and where problems may occur.

In Part II, we also examine several theories of motivation to explain how GLD students can be motivated for some kinds of activities and not others. Further, we explore why GLD children have difficulty using efficient learning strategies, especially when the task requires memory of unrelated facts or the organization of ideas, projects, or time.

While the previous sections provided important research and theoretical information about GLD students' need for effective learning, Part III presents practical strategies for meeting these needs. We offer guidelines for developing a comprehensive individual education plan (IEP) that assures gifted students with disabilities a free appropriate public education (FAPE); effective strategies for identifying GLD students; ideas for programs that nurture gifts and talents in students with gifts and disabilities; curricular strategies, modifications, accommodations, and compensation strategies that will enhance the learning and self-efficacy of the students; and finally, strategies for meeting the social and emotional needs of students with gifts and disabilities.

When we began to update To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled, we realized that many things that were simple in 1991 have become much more complicated a decade later, especially in terms of diagnosis and intervention. Since the first edition appeared, many students who may have been classified as learning disabled are now being diagnosed as having attention deficits. As the frequency of school disabilities attributed to attention deficits grows, it is becoming increasing clear that many bright children claimed to suffer from ADHD and other problems of concentration and behavior may be misdiagnosed. Often these gifted youngsters have learning disabilities causing some of the behaviors associated with both syndromes (ADHD and LD), or their restlessness and inattentiveness is a result of their giftedness being left unattended. The effects of treating one circumstance as if it were another or of neglecting the gift in lieu of remediating the weakness is producing greater academic, social, and emotional issues than those present at the onset of the problem. To explain the deterioration in student performance and school adjustment, many professionals are looking for additional diagnoses. As a result, we may see gifted (GT) learning-disabled (LD) students diagnosed with a multitude of conditions such as attention deficits (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), general anxiety disorder (GAD), and more. These youngsters wind up with more letters after their names than do professionals with advanced degrees. We call these youngsters Alphabet Children. All these disorders with contradictory and often overlapping symptoms create a serious dilemma for those seeking to provide an appropriate education.

Recognizing that gifted learning-disabled students may be burdened with a ball and chain of cumbersome diagnoses, we have renamed this edition of the book To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled: Strategies for Helping Bright Students with LD, ADHD, and More and will use the terms Alphabet Children, gifted, learning-disabled students (GLD), and gifted students with learning and attention deficits interchangeably throughout the book. To provide a more in depth discussion of the alphabet issue we have included a chapter on gifted students with attention deficits (see Chapter 4) in which we explore appropriate diagnosis and classroom intervention approaches. This edition also contains three other new chapters on self-regulation, developing comprehensive individual educational programs, and sources of support and as well as greatly expanded chapter on classroom practices. We hope you find this new expanded edition helpful as you wrestle with finding innovative and effective ways to meet the needs of these special Alphabet Children.