Has anyone read _The Prodigy's Cousin_? (Ruthsatz and Stephens)I am about halfway through it. It's a collection of largely-anecdotal evidence regarding the presumed-genetic links between child prodigy and child autism. Some of the stories in the book describe situations much like the family I grew up in (allowing for differences between that era and the current one.) Although generally a globally-gifted PG, I had prodigy characteristics and my little brother had autistic behaviors (Asperger's, we know now), while my sister was a very bright and social NT. This set up a kind of family dynamic that I see echoed in some of the stories in the book.
The book is not really patronizing, even though there is a lot of ooh-ing and ah-ing language over prodigy characteristics and implicit judgment of the undesirability of some milder autistic behaviors that are simply more weird (by NT standards) than they are problematic. Both of these sets of characteristics are stuff that in my family we were taught to deny and hide, as often as not. The families in the book don't deny or hide them, or they come to stop doing so. That's what I've really found interesting in reading their stories. It's like alternate history to me.
