In the spring of 2018, I applied to the Vancouver School Board’s summer Gifted/Challenge Program for my twins, Jeannie and Robin, who had just finished kindergarten and were, in different ways, already outpacing the curriculum.
Robin was already captivated by the ancient world—particularly Egypt, with its pyramids, its rituals, its mythologies of death and continuity, its symbols of power and transformation, its dusty maps and delicate truths. He studied the process of embalming in-depth and would love to explain it to peers and was learning how to read hieroglyphs.
Jeannie, too, was clever and creative, bubbly and social, eager to please adults and generally able to tolerate the rhythms and demands of school, even when she found it boring, grating, or absurd.
They were intelligent, curious, children with an enthusiasm for learning.
A quiet rejection—and the logic behind it
The email came back as a form letter—Jeannie had been accepted to the program, Robin had not—and the reasoning was as telling as it was vague: Robin “did not meet the academic requirements” for gifted summer school.
The explanation noted that “gifted/challenge classes proceed at an accelerated pace and may not necessarily benefit all students who apply,” adding that students are usually accepted if they are “fully meeting/fully applying or exceeding/extending expectations.”
No mention of divergent profiles, asynchronous development, twice-exceptionality, or autistic intelligence. Robin used words like exceptionally, fortunately, and however when he first started speaking. He loved to talk about Carl Sagan and black holes and other kids were still eating paste at school. I was flabbergasted.
No effort to understand why a child might struggle in a mainstream classroom and still be profoundly capable—especially when their distress, disruption, or noncompliance is itself a signal that the environment is not working for them.
Asking the obvious questions, and getting nothing back
I wrote back, gently but directly, asking whether the program was in fact designed only for “competent, conscientious” children without disabilities, rather than those who met a technical or psychological definition of giftedness.
I asked whether there was any pathway into the program for twice-exceptional learners—children whose intelligence does not come wrapped in neat printing, attentive posture, and a compliant smile.
I explained that Robin, while not formally designated, was clearly exhibiting advanced abilities in verbal reasoning, logic, spatial manipulation, and topic-specific memory, even if those capacities didn’t translate smoothly into classroom behaviour or conventional grades.
I told them that Jeannie was bright and lovely, but that Robin was the one whose mind moved in quantum leaps, who built his understanding in constellations, who asked questions I couldn’t answer without research.
A half-offer, a deflection, and a decision
They offered him a space in “Wacky World of Science,” a general kindergarten class.
They also offered me a phone call, which I took, and then another, which I didn’t—because by that point I had already seen behind the curtain, had already felt the sharp edge of their sorting logic, had already understood that in their eyes, Robin wasn’t the right kind of gifted.
There was an Egypt class that summer. A course designed for curious children to immerse themselves in mythology and archaeology, history and language, symbolism and storytelling—themes Robin could have capably taught. But that class, they said, could not accommodate support. No EAs would be present in that class.
The class was, in effect, not available to disabled children. In a public system. Let that sink in.
What kind of public education system offers a course on ancient Egypt—and then tells a five-year-old autistic child who lives and breathes that subject that there is no place for him?
What kind of institution builds its “gifted” programming around the assumption that brilliance must look like behaved and controlled?
We didn’t go. Neither of them did.
We didn’t send Jeannie either.
Partly because it didn’t make sense to have one in a paid program while a parent used up sick time to be home—but mostly because, after that experience, we didn’t want to subject our children to the narrow-mindedness.
We were asked to be gracious about the rejection, to talk to another coordinator, to work with someone who might “understand,” to wait on the chance that Robin could be added later if someone dropped out.
But by then I was on to the next thing, because being a parent of twin neurodivergent kids and working full time is a scramble and summers with few appropriate childcare options are difficult.
The testing that confirmed what I already knew
A year later, Robin underwent a full psycho-educational assessment, which we had to pay for, of course.
It showed that his verbal comprehension, visual-spatial reasoning, and fluid problem-solving were very high.
It also showed that his processing speed and working memory were lower—typical of autistic children, and especially those with demand avoidant profiles—but that when supported with choice, breaks, and structure, he was persistent, capable, and insightful.
Jeannie was assessed four years later, and though her profile was different—more consistent, more compliant, more internalised—she too was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and a learning disability in math. I suspect now that’s she’s unmasked more, she would test higher, but at that time she masked hard, even for the psychologist.
It said her cognitive profile was high average, with a general ability index slightly higher than Robin’s, but he had far more high and lows on his testing. Moments of brilliance and more pronounced struggles in daily living, adaptive functioning, and executive regulation.
She had been accepted into the gifted program. He had not.
Because compliance was rewarded. Because masking worked. Because it was more a neurotypical high end of average program, than a gifted program.
This is about more than one child
This isn’t just a story about my children.
It’s a story about what we refuse to see when brilliance comes dressed in dysregulation, or when a child’s capacity to think, create, and question arrives in a body that cannot sit still or follow arbitrary rules.
It’s a story about how systems fail twice-exceptional learners—not because we lack the knowledge, the frameworks, or even the resources, but because we cling to outdated ideals of what giftedness should look like and refuse to confront the ableist assumptions that shape our definitions of success.
Every summer, somewhere in British Columbia, another autistic child is told—explicitly or not—that their mind is not welcome unless it comes with a body that behaves a specific way.
