Can a child be gifted and have a learning difficulty?
Updated: Aug 25
In brief
A child can be highly able or gifted and also have dyslexia, ADHD, autism or another disability or barrier to learning. This is often called twice-exceptionality (2e).
High ability can hide difficulties, because a child may compensate well enough to appear to be coping.
Difficulties can also hide strengths, so average attainment does not necessarily mean average ability.
Look for unexpected differences, such as advanced reasoning alongside weaker reading, writing, organisation, attention or processing.
Attainment and a single overall IQ score may not show the whole picture. The pattern across strengths, difficulties and contexts matters.
A strengths-based approach supports barriers to learning while still developing the child’s strongest abilities.
Assessment can help when a child seems much more capable than their school performance suggests, or when strengths and difficulties appear to be masking each other.
The answer to question is “Yes”. A child can have very high cognitive ability and also have dyslexia, ADHD, autism, developmental coordination difficulties or another disability or barrier to learning.
These children are often described as twice-exceptional (2e). You may also come across the terms dual exceptional or dual or multiple exceptional (DME). The terminology varies, but the important idea is the same: high ability and difficulty can exist in the same child at the same time.
Recognising both matters. If we focus only on the difficulty, we can underestimate what the child is capable of. If we focus only on their ability, we can overlook genuine barriers to learning and the support they need.
Twice-exceptionality can be difficult to recognise
We often expect children's abilities and difficulties to produce an obvious pattern. A very able child is expected to achieve highly. A child with a learning difficulty is expected to struggle.
Twice-exceptional children can challenge both assumptions. Their profile may be markedly uneven. A child might reason exceptionally well but find reading unexpectedly difficult. They might have sophisticated ideas but struggle to organise them on paper. They may understand complex mathematical concepts while finding it difficult to remember basic number facts, sustain attention or work quickly.
Research increasingly describes twice-exceptionality as an interaction between strengths, difficulties and the environment rather than as a single, uniform profile.
Strengths can hide difficulties
High ability can sometimes allow a child to compensate for an area of difficulty.
For example, a child with very strong vocabulary, reasoning and general knowledge may use context extremely effectively when reading. Their reading may therefore look broadly age-appropriate even though decoding, spelling or reading fluency is much weaker than would be expected from their wider abilities.
They may not appear to be “struggling” because they have developed ways around the problem.
This has been demonstrated particularly clearly in research on children who are both gifted and dyslexic. Strong oral language and other cognitive strengths can compensate sufficiently for weaknesses in literacy that difficulties are harder to identify through conventional attainment measures alone.
The child may nevertheless be working much harder than their classmates to achieve similar results, which can be exhausting.
Difficulties can also hide strengths
The reverse can happen.
A child may have exceptional ideas but struggle to write them down. ADHD may affect their ability to organise work, complete tasks or sustain attention (although they can hyperfocus on activities of their choice). Dyslexia may limit how effectively they can demonstrate knowledge through reading and writing. Motor difficulties may make written production slow and demanding. What adults see is, therefore, the output, rather than the thinking behind it.
A child whose attainment is average might consequently be assumed to have average ability, when their attainment actually represents the combined effect of very substantial strengths and significant barriers to learning.
This interaction is sometimes called the masking effect. Research describes three possibilities: the difficulty masks the high ability, high ability masks the difficulty, or the two partially mask each other.
Why attainment alone may not tell us enough
School attainment, while relevant, answers a particular question: what is this child currently demonstrating in this area of learning? It does not necessarily tell us why they are performing at that level or what they could learn under different circumstances.
Consider two children who both achieve an age-expected score in writing.
For one child, this might accurately reflect their current overall level. The other might have exceptionally advanced verbal reasoning and ideas but substantial difficulties with spelling, handwriting, organisation or working memory. The same attainment score means something quite different for that child.
This is why an apparently satisfactory result should not automatically end the investigation when there is good reason to expect substantially more.
Research comparing twice-exceptional and highly able or gifted children also shows why relying heavily on one overall IQ score can be misleading. Important differences between the subtests (i.e. reasoning, working memory, processing speed and other areas) can disappear when they are combined into a single composite score.
What might twice-exceptionality look like?
There is no checklist that can identify a twice-exceptional child. Different combinations of strengths and barriers produce very different children.
However, it may be worth exploring the possibility when you repeatedly notice unexpected discrepancies, such as:
sophisticated ideas but difficulty getting them onto paper
advanced reasoning alongside unexpectedly weak literacy or numeracy skills
excellent understanding when discussing something verbally but much weaker written work
exceptional knowledge or problem-solving in areas of interest alongside significant difficulties with everyday classroom tasks
very rapid understanding of complex concepts but difficulty remembering instructions or organising work
attainment that looks average despite evidence of unusually advanced thinking
highly inconsistent performance, particularly when the demands of tasks change
much stronger performance when barriers such as handwriting, time pressure or sustained attention are reduced
a child who can compensate successfully but at the cost of considerable time, effort, frustration or exhaustion
a persistent sense from parents, teachers or the child that their school performance does not reflect what they actually understand.
None of these on its own demonstrates twice-exceptionality. They are reasons to look more closely at the pattern.
Looking at the whole profile
For a twice-exceptional child, averages can sometimes obscure more than they reveal.
A useful assessment therefore needs to ask more than “How able is this child?” or “Does this child have a difficulty?”
It may need to consider:
cognitive strengths and differences
attainment in relevant areas of learning
discrepancies within and between these areas
how efficiently the child approaches different types of task
information from parents and school
the child's own experience
what changes when demands or support change
the impact of the learning environment.
Current reviews of twice-exceptional identification similarly recommend combining formal assessment with wider sources of information rather than expecting any single test or score to identify these children reliably.
Why a strengths-based approach matters
Identifying a difficulty is important because children should receive appropriate support and reasonable adjustments where these are needed. However, support should not begin and end with remediation.
A child who finds writing difficult still needs opportunities to develop exceptional scientific thinking. A dyslexic child who reasons mathematically several years beyond age expectations should not have access to advanced mathematics restricted because literacy is weaker. A child with ADHD may need substantial support with organisation while also needing work that genuinely stretches their reasoning.
A strengths-based approach asks two questions at the same time:
What is getting in the way?
What is this child capable of developing?
This does not mean minimising difficulties or presenting disability as a hidden “gift”. It means avoiding the equally damaging assumption that an area of difficulty defines the child's overall potential.
Recent research into the school experiences of twice-exceptional learners has identified better experiences where provision addressed both exceptionalities, included opportunities to develop strengths and offered flexibility, appropriate support and understanding of the learner's individual profile.
What about famous examples?
Well-known adults can provide useful reminders that significant difficulties and exceptional strengths are not mutually exclusive.
Space scientist and science communicator Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, for example, has spoken openly about her dyslexia and the difficulties she experienced at school, as well as the curiosity and determination that contributed to her successful scientific career.
Award-winning author Elle McNicoll is autistic and draws on her lived experience to create authentic neurodivergent characters in children’s and young-adult fiction.
Therefore, a learning or neurodivergence tells us very little about the upper limits of a person's abilities.
When might assessment help?
Assessment may be useful when a child's pattern does not make sense from attainment alone, particularly where there appear to be significant strengths alongside barriers to learning.
The aim should not simply be to collect labels. A useful assessment can help clarify:
where the child's strongest abilities lie
which skills or processes are creating difficulties
whether strengths may have been compensating for those difficulties
whether difficulties may be obscuring higher-level ability
how these factors interact in everyday learning
what support and level of challenge are likely to be appropriate.
For some children, understanding this pattern can fundamentally change the question from “Why are they not doing better?” to “What is preventing them from showing and developing what they can do?”
Taking the next step
If your child seems extremely capable in some situations but struggles unexpectedly in others, it is worth taking both sides of the picture seriously.
Do not assume that strong abilities mean they cannot have a genuine difficulty. Equally, do not allow a difficulty to become a ceiling on expectations for what they can understand, learn or achieve.
Our cognitive and learning assessments take a strengths-based approach, looking at the whole profile to understand both a child's abilities and any barriers that may be preventing those abilities from being fully expressed.
Sources and further reading
Abrahama (2025), The School Experiences of Twice Exceptional Students: A Review of Recent Research.
Ozturk & Tan (2025), Identifying Twice-Exceptional Students: A Systematic Research Review.
Rizzo, Pinneli & Minnaert (2025), Twice-exceptional students: a systematic review to outline the distinctive characteristics through a multidimensional lens.
Kranz, Serry & Snow (2024), Twice-exceptionality unmasked: A systematic narrative review of the literature on identifying dyslexia in the gifted child.
Atmaca & Baloğlu (2022), The Two Sides of Cognitive Masking: A Three-Level Bayesian Meta-Analysis on Twice-Exceptionality.