What I Learned on Summer Vacation: A Powerful Advocacy Tool You May Be Overlooking
In this issue, we explore how you can use your experiences this summer to inform the advocacy goals and support strategies you implement in the fall!
Hello Gifted Guides!
We’re so glad you’re here!
If you’re a new friend from ASCA 2024, welcome! We’re glad you’re here with us.
How are you doing?
As July begins to near its end, many of us are getting ready for the 2024-2025 school year. The start of a new school year is a transition that often comes with a lot of big emotions—for adults and students.
While the allure of bright, fresh, new school supplies can do a lot of heavy lifting to get us excited for the school year, it is natural if there is some anxiety, resistance, or even dread when it comes to the new school year.
For many gifted guides—whether parents or teachers—the start of a school year is challenging because this time can be especially fraught for neurodivergent learners who may be transitioning to the new routines, rhythms, and expectations of a new school year.
Many gifted guides feel braced for conflict at the start of the year, because they know there is a good chance they’ll have to start their advocacy efforts all over again—perhaps with a new team or folks who don’t fully understand how to support a gifted or twice-exceptional (2e) learner.
While we can’t save you from meetings where you might have to re-explain a student’s profile or accommodation needs or school policies or procedures, we can explore ways to make your start of the year advocacy efforts more effective and perhaps a bit less stressful.
In this issue of Guiding Gifted, we’ll be talking about how to take what you’ve been doing this summer into your advocacy work this fall.
What have you actually been doing this summer?
In the May and June issues, we talked about different ways to recognize and track growth, as well as ways to support yourself and your learner this summer.
So, if you look back over the last few weeks, what stands out to you? What have you enjoyed? What has been challenging?
What experiences from the summer can help to inform your advocacy efforts for your gifted learners this fall?
Perhaps nothing jumps out as an obvious answer to these questions. That’s ok.
Let’s break it down and see what we can find.
What have you been doing this summer for yourself?
The school year—particularly the start of school—can be a hectic and stressful time. During stressful times of transition, it can be easy to let self-care slip in favor of just buckling down and trying to muscle your way through the difficult moment.
This approach can seem like you’re taking the most effective road forward—just get through this tough spot, and then, you'll have a break, and everything will be easier.
Are you laughing at that?
If so, that’s fair!
So often we say, “If I can just get through this [week, month, quarter, semester, etc.], things will get easier,” only to be confronted by the fact that things have only piled up more or intensified—not gotten easier.
When we keep pushing like this, going from one crisis or stressor to the next, our nervous systems don’t get a break. In situations like this, we can find ourselves in a stress cycle that is not actually reaching a point of resolution. As Amelia and Emily Nagoski write in their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, when we don’t complete the stress cycle it can have negative impacts on our bodies and other areas of our life.
Staying in a state of fight, flight, freeze, and/or fawn for the duration of the school year is not a great option. It can lead to burnout, which can make all the stressors you're juggling even more frustrating or overwhelming.
In preparation for the busyness and stress of the school year, it might be useful to take an inventory of strategies or activities that have been helping you to take care of yourself this summer.
If this doesn’t seem like a mission critical part of back-to-school planning, just consider the alternative of suffering through the school year with a consistently stressed-out nervous system, with little reprieve or rest. That doesn’t sound fun.
Start by asking yourself: What have you been able to do this summer that has felt restorative?
Maybe you took a vacation that left you feeling rested and restored. Now, you might be thinking that you can’t just simply take vacations whenever you’re stressed. That’s fair. Most of us can’t do that!
We won’t suggest a staycation either, because we know that even staycations take time, planning, and money that many gifted guides don’t have, especially during the hecticness of the school year.
Instead, take some time to consider what about your restorative experiences you can bring into your daily life.
Building on this example of a summer vacation, here are some potential ways to bring more restorative practice into your back-to-school preparations—in meaningful, non-performative ways:
Have you gotten more sleep this summer?
Can you go to bed 15 minutes early or sleep 15 minutes later during the school year?
When you’re stressed, is it hard to quiet your mind so you can sleep? Can you start trying an end of day routine that helps you wind down? It can be important to start your wind down routine well before it is bedtime. With so much on your mind, you and your nervous system might need some extra time to relax. This could look something like:
Reading for at least 10-20 minutes.
Watching a comfort show.
Listening to music that comforts you (not necessarily “calming” music!).
Take a shower or bath to wash off the day.
Stretch.
Dance the day away with a quick dance party in your living room or kitchen.
Take a short walk in your neighborhood.
None of these suggestions will provide perfect sleep or remove all your stress, but they can help you find some comfort and ease at the end of a long day.
Have you been able to see your favorite people more this summer?
As adults, we often tell our friends (and ourselves) that we’ll meet up when things are less busy. Then, time passes. We never quite get less busy, but we may end up distancing ourselves from our community, which can add to stress, loneliness, and burnout.
Maybe a weekly or monthly meal or meet-up can help with this.
Maybe simply sending funny memes or gifs can help you stay connected.
Remember, you don’t need to make a grand gesture to stay connected. If you find social connection is restorative for you, remember that even a short phone call on your nightly stroll around the block or a short “thinking of you” text can help to bridge gaps in connection.
Have you been able to engage with your hobbies more this summer?
You might not have hours a week to engage with your hobbies, but you may have 20 minutes here and there. When we are stressed, one of the first things to drop off our schedule are the things that bring us enjoyment—in favor of the things that are stressing us out and need to be resolved.
When you are more regulated, you’ll be better able to address your never-ending to-do list. There is a reason that recess is an important part of the school day. There is certainly work that can be done during recess, but movement and an opportunity to play is crucial for kids to be able to be in a good emotional and mental state for learning. Even as students get older and may not have recess, they likely have a free period for clubs, socializing, or working in their own way. Again, some free time to work on what’s important to you or to socialize is crucial.
Have you been eating better this summer?
Food prep can be yet another overwhelming, frustrating chore. But can you incorporate some of the eating strategies you’ve used this summer into your school year routine?
When we’re stressed, there can be an instinct to skip meals or skip the time it takes to make the meal we want to have.
Even packing a stash of snacks can help to leave you feeling more nourished and regulated during those busy days.
None of these suggested strategies will leave you feeling like the epitome of emotional regulation and self-care. These will not defeat your to-do list all on their own. However, even the smallest action from this list of suggestions can help you to approach your responsibilities and obligations from a more regulated, productive space.
If you can help yourself to be more regulated, then you’ll be in a better position to support your gifted and 2e learners. Remember: put your mask on first!
What has your learner been doing this summer?
The common question of, “What did you do on summer vacation?” can be a hard one for gifted and 2e learners to answer. As a time that tends to have less routine—or at least a different routine—summer can leave a lot of gifted and 2e learners feeling overstimulated, dysregulated, and overwhelmed.
Moving from the rhythms of summer into the routines of the school year can be a hard transition for learners.
The start of the school year may feel novel and fun, as learners explore their new classes and catch up with old friends. However, it can also feel overwhelming and scary, as students have to meet new teachers, new classmates, and perhaps new expectations.
Knowing that gifted and 2e learners can struggle with the back-to-school transition, along with all the executive functioning skills that start of the school year tends to require, it can be helpful to consider what strategies worked for your learner over the summer and how they can be integrated into the transition back to school.
This is one place where the relationship between home and school is important. Discussing what new skills a student learned or explored this summer can help gifted guides recognize the growth this student has made. This recognition and understanding can help gifted guides adjust any support strategies or accommodations that were previously in place for this student, as needed
A common concern we hear, as educators and parents head back to school, is that advocacy has to start all over again each year. The conversations that were had last year about neurodivergent profiles, learning needs, and accommodations need to be had all over again.
While there is a bureaucratic side to this that is inevitably frustrating to parents and educators alike, revisiting these topics and conversations can be useful, as they can acknowledge the asynchronous nature of your learner’s development.
Understanding what worked over the summer and what has been a challenge can help parents and educators come together to support their learners in a more productive and responsive way.
You might even start thinking that you’d like to revisit your advocacy goals that you started work on in the May issue of Guiding Gifted, to give yourself more language and examples to use as you begin your back-to-school advocacy efforts.
Remember: Terms like gifted, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, dyscalculia, or anxiety, among many others, can be interpreted in myriad ways. The way these or any other diagnoses present in one learner can vary significantly from how they present in another learner. As we always say: If you’ve met one gifted kid, you’ve met exactly one gifted kid.
If you’ve got new folks on your education team this year, who might not be familiar with your learner, simply sharing your learner’s diagnosis information is likely not enough to get the advocacy results you’re looking for.
Be sure to share examples. Share examples of your learner’s strengths, challenges, and dislikes. Share examples of how they might act when overwhelmed and dysregulated. Share examples of what can help support them in challenging moments of dysregulation, disconnection, or disagreement.
Saying that a learner is 2e is different than saying a learner is gifted and autistic with sensory sensitivities. And both of those descriptions are different than saying a learner tends to get overwhelmed if the classroom is too noisy and can benefit from wearing noise cancelling headphones.
All of the descriptions above are true of our fictional, example learner. However, the last description that highlights behaviors and support strategies gives us more information about how to meaningfully interact with and support this learner.
Labels and correct diagnostic terms can be incredibly helpful in understanding your learner and advocating for them. Sometimes, a label or diagnostic term alone can cause confusion or miscommunications. For this reason, sharing specific examples about support needs and strategies can help support clearer and more effective advocacy communication.
As you perhaps think about circling back to the advocacy goals you started outlining in May, it may also be helpful to consider the areas where your learner currently needs support and what strategies have been effective for them this summer. The questions you thought through earlier in this issue for yourself can be useful here as well.
Conclusion
As you inch closer to the back-to-school transition, remember all the tools you already have in your toolbox to help you and your learner navigate this sometimes tough transition.
Everything you’ve been doing this summer can provide insights into what may or may not work for the fall. Keep those examples in mind as you move through the last few weeks of summer.
Your day-to-day life, the things you do out of habit and out of necessity, can be incredibly informative in your advocacy conversations. It can be easy to dismiss these types of experiences and examples, as they aren’t linked to a diagnostic report or an official observation. However, this information can also help guide you to the advocacy decisions that are right for you and your learner, which is always our end goal.
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