Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Atlantic piece about 1 in 68 autism rate

The map thing is often mentioned on gifted checklists, especially in regards to kids recognizing shapes of countries out of context (DD did this--Dora's hair looked like some country, an odd wooden salad implement looked like another, toast and pancakes often looked like countries...)

+1 for this. She's clearly having a blast! My son seems to remember anything you tell him once. I think some children just gasp for knowledge like air.

I don't necessarily think this has to link to autism, either. DS2.5 is about as opposite the ASD red flags as is humanly possible.

DD at that age definitely made way out there spatial/verbal connections. They went over most peoples' heads, thankfully.


What I mean by that is that my 3yo should probably not actually have been remarking on how such-and-such illustration in a children's book reminded her so much of WTC North Tower, nor that prominent citizen arrestee on the front page of the paper looked an awful lot like The Wizard of Oz. Or "Mama, what does {adult full sentence overheard at the library two weeks ago} mean?" Honestly, if I weren't HG+ and also highly attuned to my surroundings and the visual/verbal landscape around me, I would not have known where she picked the stuff up, and then she REALLY would have looked amazing, coming up with full sentences like that and us thinking that they were de novo. Well, they weren't. But the sheer SIZE of the 'bits' that she wanted labels and definitions for, and wanted to categorize or create mental Venn diagrams for was very very different from other children her age. It was the same exact behavior, ultimately, as a child pointing and asking "what's that?" but on a scale that was orders of magnitude away from it. She wasn't selective-- it's just that nobody else really anticipated that a sound-bite from CNN would be the subject of an information grab as much as a sentence from Elmo or Mr. Rogers, and she definitely wasn't just a parrot-- she understood context and knew if you made something up, or didn't understand her questions, and she'd get MAD at us over that. I often had to really flex my own brain to know WHY she wanted to know something so that I'd know WHAT she wanted to know. Yeah, prescription drug adverts on the tv were a real treat during those years, and my DH loves to watch sports.



She has almost no memory-- NOW-- of those years, but she very clearly did remember them until she was 8 or 9 years old. It is also interesting that much of it has clearly been internalized and used to build her vocabulary and understanding of how the world works.

DD is not at all on the spectrum-- she's probably the polar opposite.

When dd was younger (between 21 months and 3 years) She used to memorize entire books after just a couple of readings and would recite them without looking at the books. She had also memorized all the lines from the jungle book movie and could enact any scene verbatim with proper intonation and expression. Now at 4.5 yo, she seems to have lost that talent, though not completely. She did recently learn the let it go song in both English and the 25 languages one after listening to both songs maybe 5 times each. So it is there but it is no longer jaw dropping.

Thinking about it a bit, I realized that recognizing shapes out of context is an skill that would help kids learn to read. So I'm guessing that for those of us who have really early readers we saw our kids do similar things at not quite 2. One part of learning to read is learning recognize a particular shape (the letters) even when you see it out of context. And if the kid thinks picking out countries on a map is fun and has a good memory for this type of thing, all it takes is playing this game multiple times.

Fairly sure this thread has gone a bit off topic as I don't think it has much to do with autism, but I'm finding it interesting.

It's not far off topic. Children who show certain highly precocious early skills are often accused of having "splinter skills", are therefore placed under suspicion of being autistic, and may even be subjected to "treatment" including being deprived of intellectual stimulation (since it's obviously a bad influence) so that they can develop more normally.

Yikes that happens? I guess being gifted is fairly normal in my family and I don't know anyone who would consider depriving a kid of intellectual stimulation. Even if they were diagnosed with autism. But perhaps it's why I get so defensive when autism is closely tied to certain gifted traits. And the idea that we need to 'cure' autism is so offensive.

Yes; my DD was certainly a kid who was verbally precocious, and my mom was the one that forbade us to teach her decoding skills at 2-3yo, which I now wonder about-- being an elementary educator, was she afraid of DD seeming hyperlexic? Maybe.

She toe-walked, memorized dialogue, had sensory quirks, was a picky eater, had unusual obsessive interests, was anxious about strangers or breaks in her routine, and talked incessantly... so sure-- that all sounds like an ASD, right?

There was no way to encapsulate the things that made her very much NOT like a kid on the spectrum when looking at checklists and racking up "signs" of ASD's.

(Which DD is very profoundly NOT-- and it's not that I would have trouble mentally with the idea, it's just that it simply doesn't fit what I know.)

She almost certainly could have been "found" with early childhood screenings that weren't thorough enough, though.

I remember a boy next door who knew everything there is ever to know about trains. I don't think he was on the spectrum although he was not exactly friendly with me or my siblings. I don't think it's uncommon for young children to get into a subject and become an "expert" or a collector of facts at a young age.

That to me is a different skill set than your DD's ability to make connections as a toddler.That divergent thinking skill seems more indicative of advanced cognitive abilities and creativity to me although having an excellent memory always helps in the learning process and two skill sets are definitely not mutually exclusive.

It makes sense that school work comes very easily to your DD. She probably has the memory and critical thinking skills to learn whatever she sets her mind upon.

Yes, this is like both of my kids (although DD is the only one who would have made anyone worry about ASD).


I see your point. It's the kind of skill that would help kids crack the code without instruction, perhaps (and both of my kids did that).


yeah, yeah. This is also like DD. She would spout back whole phrases and reuse them in perfect context. You had to be her mom to know that she was "chunking" that. She also talked nonstop, all the time. (Do you know that scene in Austin Powers--"How do I tell them I have no inner monologue?") She freaked people out in her ones and twos, though she was tall, so I think she passed as older.

DS wasn't like this at all, though--his language learning curve was slower and much more typical in its development. However, he read a full year earlier. (shrug)