Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum. I feel like, in some ways, I'm joining way too early. My son is not even four months old yet. But I was starting to feel bad about lurking and figured that I might be able to get advice and tips as he got older.

Plus I really wanted to use the brag thread.

So some background. I have a daughter from a previous marriage, "Bear," who is 11 and is probably MG (though never tested besides GATE - which she's in.). She seems very adept at acting and has always been obsessed with animals.

My son, "Boodle," will be 4 months old on the 18th and already seems really advanced. It's not clear how much is mimicry (probably all of it) but it seems like he already says "hi" and "I love you" in gurgly-pronunciation. He's very advanced in gross motor skills and is truly impressive in his problem solving skills.

I was HG+ as a child and was very similar as a baby. I was reading the newspaper before I was two - so we could expect anything from him. I'm worried about not doing enough for him since I was very bored as a child and had uninvolved parents. I'm also worried about pushing him too much though. I'm an aspie as well so there's potential for 2e also.

My husband is probably HG, so we weren't really surprised when Boodle came out so seemingly advanced.

Anyway - glad to finally introduce myself and I hope to be pretty active going forward.

Welcome, adhoc

I don't think it's ever too early (or too late!) to join the forum.

Welcome to the back of the white whale!!

I refer to my youngest as Bear, but he's a boy.

Nice to see you here.

Welcome!

Adhoc, Would you mind answering some questions about your experiences as an HG Aspie for me please??? I will send you a PM if you don't mind! And welcome! (Although I am new here, too...not sure how appropriate it is to say welcome!) Nan

Don't worry - just enjoy it.

Mary

Super appropriate!
Welcome Adhoc and NanRos!

It's hard for me to imagine a bored infant or toddler, particularly if you aren't leaving him in the playpen all day, but I'm curious if the AS makes it particularly hard to 'tune in' to your children and guess what parts of the world they might enjoy you bringing to them.

Are there parenting support groups for adult aspies? Were these traits part of what drove your parent's uninvolvement?

If you haven't bumped into the ideas of John Holt (UnSchooling)
I would strongly recommend you start there -
http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html
and see how you do in the role of 'learning facilitator' - particularly given your son's young age.

My hunch is that you have a tremendous amount of life experience and wisdom to off your children and this group - Welcome Aboard - so glad you found us!

Grinity

Thank you all for the very warm welcome. This seems like a great forum.

She did this growling thing as a baby whenever she greeted people and the name just kind of stuck.

Thank you for the welcome and all your questions.

I think I'm more just nervous than anything - my daughter seemed easy by comparison. I wish that a lot more had been done for me as a child and I want to be able to do that for my son, but I don't want to push too hard either. Finding that line with my daughter has been difficult - she reacts badly to being pushed at all, but doesn't really take advantage of her natural gifts. Hopefully it is just her age.

I actually find my AS makes it easier to tune into my children. I and many other aspies find the "no empathy" thing to be a myth. We tend to have so much empathy it can be overwhelming, so we show it differently or try to shut it down. I've learned to temper my response over the years and try to read when it is appropriate to express it, though not always successfully. My NT daughter would tell you that I know her better than anyone (including her NT dad).

But like anyone it is hard to think of everything that someone might enjoy, so it will be good to get some ideas moving forward (and thank you for the link - I'll check it out right now!)

As to my childhood - I was actually raised by my non-aspie parent (though I wouldn't describe her as NT) - my father left soon after I was born. I was left in a playpen for hours (and appeared content). The problem was more when I started school. My mom was an alcoholic and refused to work with school for appropriate opportunities for advancement. A few teachers gave me different work, but most didn't have the time. Regardless, I turned out okay - I have a successful career and a beautiful family - I would just like my children to have more opportunities to take advantage of their gifts.

My hunch is that you haven't done anything wrong with your DD, but that
1) Even MG kids may be seriously underchallenged in the regular classroom.
2) shy might be way more gifted that you or the schools think and is underachieving because she hasn't been offered as much academic challenge as she needs.
2) NT girls are famous for 'blending in' and over many years of not being pushed, has a lot of built up 'feelings to face' whenever she gets pushed at all. So the bad reaction might be a healthy venting of bottled up feelings - not fun, but perhaps necessary.


My impression is that some kids have natural drive, and don't need to be pushed. Other kids need to be in classrooms where they are given the old 'balanced push' - I picture it as the right hand there to support the sternum, and the left hand pushing firmly on the middle of the back. I usually see this as an 'Introvert' vs. 'Extrovert' thing.

We parents are quite reasonable in expecting the school to
1) assess what our children's 'readiness level' is
2) give them an education that fits what they need

unfortunately, the parents who end up here don't tend to have that experience, and we have to take on the triple role of parent, afterschool enrichment provider and advocate in the school.

Totally unfair, and a big waste for all the kids who need exactly what our kids need but don't have a parent able or willing to do what we do.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thank you - very lovely!
Grinity

I've been thinking about this a lot. I think she's challenged now, though in the past she definitely wasn't and it manifested itself in a 3 months of her making herself sick.

I do think we made some of the praise mistakes with her that were mentioned in Nuture Shock, and her academic career up till 5th grade practically mirrored the example in the book.

I had to actually pull her out of school entirely in 4th grade for the sake of her mental health. We did some unschooling and a little bit of homeschooling, but it was mostly a break year. She made up the lost time within 2 weeks in 5th grade. She had a great teacher in 5th grade though, so he started challenging her more as the year went on. She handled all of this well, but now that she's in 6th grade (in middle school), I don't think she's getting the support she needs from a couple of her teachers to rise up to the challenge. I'm not really blaming them - they aren't bad teachers -- just too busy with 6 classes a day to give that level of individual attention that she craves.

Because of this, she's struggling in math. I think she's actually one of the better math students in the class, but whenever there's a topic she actually has to work to understand, it results in a melt down. The other day she screamed about not needing to know how to calculate interest. She had the opportunity to do the assignment the next day instead and she did it really easily. It's like she needed to sleep on it. But obviously that's not always practical when the assignment is due the next day.

I think the other problem is that besides potentially trying to blend in (and I do believe she has done that because she's not the best at making friends in the first place - she's a little socially immature, though not aspie) she's now got the added issue of puberty and boys and all that. And she thinks about it a lot. She asks me every other week when I'm going to let her start dating (like my answer will ever change).

So it's a lot to think about. I'm still not sure what to do with her. She doesn't throw temper tantrums anymore, but she does have "teenage episodes." I'm thinking of just waiting those out before I try to push her much further. It just seems like her brain isn't ready for the challenge because she's so afraid of failure. We've done our best to work her through that, but I think she's also just at an age where failure means something more socially than it did before. She needs to feel good in her own skin first.

Sounds like your DD has had a very rough time of it.

If she hasn't taken the College Board's SATs, you might want to see if she's willing/interested. It's a great way to get an idea of LOG, and might open up the doors to a 'talent search's summer camp.' My son attended the summer he turned 13, and loved being with other bright kids, learning stuff that is 'fun and deep.'

I just saw this from Dr. Deb Ruf

Basically, when my son when through 'reversing his underachievement' and showed the 'Goldilocks syndrome' (This is all eihter too easy or too hard!) I would chant to myself, 'Better now than when he is away at college.' over and over. It made me feel better.

Glad to hear the 5th grade was so good. A wonderful teacher can make all the difference.

Hugs,
Grinity

I just wanted to let you know my DD does exactly this as well! I can't offer any advice, but I can empathize!

Hi everyone,

I thought I was way too early too, but adhoc made me think I should de-lurk. My daughter (I'll call her Hanni) is not quite 2.

I've been amazed at some of the abilities people describe on this forum! Hanni is a pretty advanced talker (5 word sentences, plurals, past tense, emotion words, counting, prepositions, even a dependent clause a couple of times), but she's not one of the super-prodigies who talk and do math at 18 months.

But what's really striking is her conceptual understanding. For example, we were outside, she had a jacket on, I asked her if she was cold, and she said, "No. Warm. Jacket on." The grammar was nothing to brag about, but she was giving me an explanation. Stuff like that. It's hard to describe or give convincing examples.

Anyway, I'm thrilled to be finding communities of people with gifted kids. I really want Hanni to have peers and not feel like a big freak.

Oh, and also I'm a university professor and my field is cognitive science. I've been absolutely fascinated on a professional level by how many different ways there are to be gifted. I have half a mind to start doing research on giftedness!

Meg

Don't feel bad that was actually about the time that we started thinking in this direction for DD! She did the mimicking "hi" thing, was very social, could sit unassisted at 3.5 months, and would push herself across the room if you would put your hands behind her feet. We even have a cool video of her at 3 months (I think?) when she was flipping through an electronic book and pushing all the buttons.

Very cool, what do you research? I'm also a scientist but keep thinking I should go back to school to study childhood development. I sometimes wish I would've had DD first before starting my Ph.d!

Just very briefly, I study things like working memory and perception. My interests also include the evolution of cognition (basically, how did the human species evolve to be as brainy as we are). Also, sign language and how fluent signers process it. I could tell you more off-list if you like. What's your field?

I'm sending you a pm.

Hi everyone.

Sorry I introduced myself and then promptly stopped. Right after I got the courage to sign up and post, I had to go back to work. Doing so was very emotionally hard for me and very draining. I became considerably more withdrawn when not at home. When I was home, I was trying to spend as much time as possible with Boodle since he was falling asleep so early in the evening.

Recently though, I found a job where I can work from home and things have been a lot better for us. We actually have time to blog now. And sometimes we even get what's close to a full night's sleep.

Hope to catch up and see how everyone is doing.

Grinity - thanks for the extra information. I did look it up at the time and it was very helpful.

mnmom23 - thanks for letting me know we're not alone. Things have been getting better in some ways and worse in others with my girl. She seems to be showing considerable talent for acting, so it's nice that she now has an outlet for her energy.

On the other side though - she got suspended a week before school ended. I just keep telling myself that it's just a phase.

For summer, I've given her the project of selling all of our old computers on ebay and doing some business-related calculations around it (like ROI).

MegMeg - Hanni sounds adorable. The explanation thing truly does sound advanced.

Newmom21c - thanks for the welcome. A lot of that sounds like Boodle. I remember he scooted all the way across our bed during the first month, but then stopped doing so after he got us to help him walk.

Hi Adhoc,
Great to 'see' you back. Glad the work-situation is better, srry to hear that your DD had a rough end of the year.
Love and More Love,
Grinity