With a GT label firmly established I got approving pats on the head and big proud smiles when I capped the reading with Homer's Illyad and Odyssey (unabridged). Without one... he gets AS and I get lectures on redirecting his interests (apparently asking me to look up information/videos on animals on Wikipedia is a red flag).
See, I don't know what I think about this! To some extent that sounds like pathologizing a natural behavior of the gifted.
My DS3 has never inspired even a moment of worry in me that he has an ASD (which is another check in the column of "something is up with DD") but he is currently OBSESSED with deep-sea life. His interest is more all-consuming than DD's have ever been. But really--that kid is not not not ASD. He's just not. He's pretty damn smart, though! So...why is the behavior okay when the child doesn't have other flags and not okay if the child does? How sure are we, really, that these behaviors are part of the problem?
(Some of this is just philosophical musings on my part. I find myself very interested in the question of when brain/behavior differences are pathological and when they're just interesting differences.)
