Raising a 2E Child – My Journey
On Becoming a Mom
Nothing prepares you for motherhood. And everyone who has been there tells you this when you are expecting for the first time, but somehow, you believe you have it all under control. Fast forward even a few months, and there you are, telling expectant mothers that they have no idea what they are in for.
Don’t misunderstand. There is nothing more incredible than hearing your baby cry for the first time. How I wish I could have reached out to the 24-year-old version of me and whispered some of the wisdom that I now have 18 years later. That the sleepless nights will pass. That the days are long, but the years are short, and before she knows it, she will have an incredible young man at her side.
The Broken Mould
I remember seeing James’ face for the first time. I had a cesarean and was fully conscious. It was surreal seeing his little face appear from my body. The peace was shattered by the wail of one ripped from cosy slumber. A robust and beautiful boy who made his presence known in a way I would soon learn was par for the course.
I wanted to be a mom since I could walk. I lived my whole life for that moment, so it was ironic that I was plagued with severe postpartum depression for the first year of his life. When he was six months old, I was hospitalised for two weeks. I had so much guilt, feeling I was not emotionally present during those precious early days. But James was happy, healthy, and thriving, and I have since learned to forgive myself.
As I healed, I still had a lot of self-loathing to deal with. How could I be such a disastrous failure at the one job I was biologically designed to do? When I looked at other moms, they seemed to have it all under control, yet I was a duck, gliding on the surface while my legs were treading water at 100mph.
In retrospect, it makes more sense. James did not sleep. I was perpetually exhausted and had to deal with all his needs on my own (his father was physically present but left all the child-rearing to me).
Even as a newborn, James would catnap for only twenty minutes at a time, all through the day and night. At a few months old, he would take hours to settle at night and then wake up every hour, feeding for up to forty minutes until the morning. From eighteen months, he didn’t sleep at all during the day. I now realise it was because that incredible mind was already working overtime. He was a delighted baby and a beauty to boot. But he never slowed down, and I felt alone in my perpetual exhaustion.
After nine months, James went to daycare, and I returned to teaching. Existing in the real world went a long way towards restoring my mental health. While James met his developmental milestones, I was becoming more and more concerned that his speech wasn’t developing.
He was incredibly vocal, but it was as if he was developing his own language.
Everyone had their advice and reasons for this. I would hear, “Some kids are just slower than others,” or “He is an only child and has no sibling to mimic,” and so I left it for a while. He did improve and was a little more coherent but remained significantly behind. I made a more forceful inquiry as he was nearing four years old. James was beginning to act out with frustration, and I was learning how traumatic and isolating it is when your child goes into full meltdown mode. I knew that he was different, and it was time to figure out why.
I contacted a speech therapist, who did an assessment. She was incredible and intrigued by James but told me that he was almost impossible to assess. He has a dramatic speech delay. She couldn’t complete her tasks because James was unfocused and utterly obsessed with dragons. Regardless of which path she took, he would always take her back there. She took him on as a patient, but she recommended that James see a specialist to determine the cause of his delay.
The First Diagnosis
When I took James to a developmental paediatrician, she was dumbfounded, as he was a whirling dervish. He all but swung from the light fittings, trying to climb the walls and jump all over her furniture. I remember her words, said with a mix of compassion, empathy, and pity. She said, “This is tough parenting.” I just put my head in my hands and sobbed. It was the first time someone had verbalised that what I was experiencing was not the norm.
I was struggling because it was hard, not because I was inept. It seemed so much easier for many other moms, and they happily planned their second or third baby, knowing it would be challenging but manageable.
James was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Risperidone to calm him, aid his focus, and help him sleep. It certainly helped in the sleep department, and James and I slept longer than two hours in a stretch for the first time since his birth.
The Emerging Genius
As a mom, I recognised that James was exceptionally bright despite these hurdles. And his preschool teachers saw this too. They embraced his quirks and allowed him some space to be himself. His imagination was off the charts, and he removed himself from his peers, choosing to get lost in his fantasy world.
His pre-reading skills and early numeracy were not developing, which made me sleepless nights. Still, he enjoyed school, and he was happy. He still struggled to communicate. However, his vocabulary for advanced words grew immensely despite his limited basic vocabulary.
At the age of six, James started his formal schooling career, and our lives descended into chaos. He felt like a fish out of water, and his anxiety levels went through the roof. He would kick and scream when I tried to get him onto the school grounds and would physically attack me when we were driving home in the afternoons, biting me and ripping my hair.
Trips to the grocery store often involved a lot of gawking from strangers, who were keen to share advice on how I should discipline my child. Parents would whisper on the school grounds, and birthday invitations would be handed out discreetly, avoiding having to deal with this unruly creature and his incapable mother.
He would disappear from class, sending teachers on a frantic search. Ironically, he was usually found in the school library, as books had a calming effect. Finally, his teacher referred us to an educational psychologist, who advised that we place him in a remedial school.
It wasn’t long before I was called in again. A panel of serious faces told me that my child was unteachable. He could not sit still and did not want to conform. He was slipping into that fantasy realm where he could be anything. There was no judgment, and he was king. He wanted to be a bee in a tree, or he would become a T-Rex with short arms because “You can’t write with short arms.” This was the perfect avoidance tactic for him. The other kids just thought he was “weird”.
Teachers acknowledged his exceptional intelligence, however, and it appeared that he was learning to read. But I quickly realised that he had just memorised the pages from what he heard in class and faked it to avoid appearing stupid.
James’ anxiety was reaching critical levels. I had to fetch him because he was throwing desks and chairs around his classroom, caught in the grip of an earth-shattering meltdown. This behaviour was mirrored at home, and even family began to avoid interacting with us. He was uninvited from my sister’s wedding in case he “destroyed” their day, and his cousin’s grandmother refused to allow him to attend their birthday celebrations.
I was spiraling too. I felt so helpless. I loved this little boy with all my heart and seeing him rejected by the world over and over was breaking my heart in two. Then, I sat across from his educators and principal and heard what I had feared. They no longer felt that they could cater to his needs. I needed to consider alternate schooling.
The Second Diagnosis
I am tenacious and never stopped looking for answers. Through my research, I learned more about what was then known as Asperger Syndrome and high-functioning autism. The school referred us to a child psychiatrist who agreed and gave an official diagnosis. I felt empowered; not because he had been assigned a label and not because I had an excuse for his challenges, but because I now knew what I was dealing with. I could educate myself to support and understand him and educate others so they would not be so quick to make assumptions and write a child off as badly behaved.
I began the search for our next option, and James moved to a special school for kids with autism. He had a phenomenal young male teacher who recognised his intellect and incredible mind here. James adored him, and his emotional healing began with their bond.
But reading would not happen, and he could only recognise his name at eight years old.
Ultimately, a new label was added – Dyslexia! I felt so defeated. The system struggles to find a place for a child who reads below first grade but needs the intellectual stimulation offered by college-level courses. I was so grateful for technology because I could feed that side of him with audiobooks and documentaries. He was a sponge who rattled off details about the Russian Revolution and dictated constitutions for me to write down, inventing countries that could run off the best parts of capitalism, socialism, and communism. He was eight!
Discovering the Gifted
At around this time, I accepted a post at Radford House School. Radford House is my country’s only official school for gifted children, and I was very excited and terrified. What on Earth could I possibly teach these children?
I very quickly learned that my instincts about James were spot on. So many of the children in my care shared his quirks and way of thinking. It was also the first time I learned that 2E was a thing and that not all geniuses could read at age three and write like Neil Gaiman. I ended up thriving in my new role. The empathy I brought to the table, fostered by my personal experience, helped me form deep bonds with my students and their families.
The parents gained immense comfort knowing that the teacher saw things from a parent’s perspective and that I didn’t sweat the small stuff. I understood that trouble with spelling, lousy handwriting, and understanding new math concepts did not detract from their exceptional gifts. If you want to see gifted in action, have a debate, extract opinions, and tell stories. That is where they get noticed.
Because of our rocky start, Radford House wasn’t the place for James yet, but it certainly changed our trajectory. I became close to a mom who ran a reading centre and asked if she could help me get to the bottom of James’ reading struggles. She could tell that his issues were beyond the scope of her programs, but she had begun researching The Davis Dyslexia Correction Program. A four-day training workshop was coming up in Cape Town, and she felt we needed to go together. It was a life-changing event because I managed to get James 10 days of one-on-one training with the country’s lead facilitator.
It was not cheap, and it took every resource we had available to make it happen. Many sceptics thought I was foolish to spend that much money – but sometimes, you have to trust that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.
The facilitator had his work cut out for him. He admitted that James was one of his most challenging students – essentially completely illiterate and autistic, albeit high-functioning. Fortunately, the Davis Program catered for autism as much as it did for dyslexia. The marriage of the two approaches completely changed James ‘life.
At this stage, James was almost 11. He had come a long way, and his challenges were not always apparent when I first met him. This is why 2E kids are so often misunderstood. James seemed like a regular kid, who talked way too much, was prone to overreacting, needed his mother to teach him some damn manners, was obsessed with DNA, said the most embarrassing things at the most inappropriate times, and seemed to have a factual answer for everything. It took two draining days and endless negotiations to get James to participate. By day three, the facilitator won James over, and they worked through the program.
The Shift
In no time at all, James could recognise and name the letters of the alphabet. And he was excited about making attempts to read words in his environment. But the most significant shift came with how he managed his autism traits. He became more aware of the consequences of his actions and could self-regulate more effectively. Autism doesn’t go away, and I wouldn’t want it to. It is a part of what makes my child unique and goes hand in hand with his gifted mind. However, the life skills he gained and working towards developing further have knocked down massive walls in terms of his future.
I had no unrealistic expectations. James has one of the most severe cases of dyslexia there is. So, I didn’t expect him to start reading novels and slipping into a mainstream environment. But we had made enough progress that he could finally enter the school system shortly before turning 12.
James was accepted at a small school support school. They placed him in what they referred to as the “skills class”. It was designed for children who couldn’t manage academic work but would still be educated on the broader aspects of life. It was a start, and I continued meeting with them to see how we could maximise James’ potential.
Fortunately, one of the teachers was a former Radford House teacher, and she recognised that James was 2E. Her own class was designed as an in-between – kids who were capable of more than those in the skills class but not at the academic level of the mainstream. So she and I approached the school with a plan. She agreed to take James on for 18 months and bridge him between skills and the mainstream classes. This would have him ready just in time for high school.
James received formal concessions, allowing a scribe to help him with written tests. His teacher encouraged and pushed him, and do you know what? My boy did it. He pretty much caught up in six years of school in the space of 18 months. He was coping in a classroom with other kids. He was no longer running away and screaming. The frequency of his meltdowns diminished considerably and was mainly limited to home after a particularly taxing day. I would never have thought it possible, but my boy was going to high school.
I owe so much to that school and his incredible teacher. James thrived and proliferated, and I soon attended swimming galas and public speaking competitions where he was not just competing but winning. We celebrated every success, no matter how big or small because we knew the road we had traveled to get there. I heard parents complaining that their child got a B-, but James and I had celebratory milkshakes for his C. He fought damn hard for that C.
A New Beginning
Last year, just after he turned 17, I was called in again. PTSD led me to expect the worst. But no, this was a meeting unlike any other. Because of his late start, James is a few years older than his peers. He is in the 10th grade. The nature of his school meant that they limited the subjects that they offered up to 12th grade, focusing on fewer academic areas that still met the minimum requirements.
This meeting was called to tell me they could no longer accommodate his needs, but for a reason unlike I had ever heard as the mom on the other side of the principal’s desk. They could no longer accommodate him because he had surpassed anything they could offer him. They would be doing him a disservice, limiting his potential and future options. They felt he needed to move to an environment that could challenge him more and offer him subjects like science, engineering, and business studies through graduation.
His new school was designed for children like my incredible son – bright, capable, often gifted kids who face challenges such as learning disabilities or just don’t fit the box that the world seems to have decided they should fit. He still has the support of a reader and a scribe, but eight months in, he has embraced his new environment and is thriving.
On top of this, my son is an exceptional human being. He has principles; he is justice-driven; he still hugs his mom many times a day. My son has a kind, compassionate heart and makes an impact wherever he goes. It is a privilege to be his mother, and I will walk this road a thousand times over if it means I get to hold his hand while doing it. My son will change the world for the better; in some ways, he has done so already.
Author Bio
Nicola Killops founded the NeuroParenting Hub, a dedicated platform offering support, resources, and advocacy for parents navigating the journey of raising neurodiverse children. With over 20 years of experience in education and a passionate advocate for neurodiversity, Nicola is committed to creating a world where every child’s unique strengths are recognised
