lucounu, deacongirl,
I have a friend whose boy has severe autism and apraxia. He is the opposite of high-functioning. Whenever I hear her talk wistfully about him *maybe someday* moving to the high functioning program (or even the mid-functioning program) I get tears in my eyes.
The surprising thing is that she knows all about my son (from a mutual friend), and she talks about him without the least jealousy or pain. She makes me feel OK that my son is who he is and she does so in a way that many mothers of typically-developing children don't.
I can't help but feel horrible around her, but I like to talk about the ways her child is amazing, and you know it's really not difficult to find those.
I was watching a rerun of 'The Big Bang Theory' this evening and felt the need to share because it made me lol at the timing.
Mrs. Cooper: "I've been telling you since you were four years old! It's okay to be smarter than everyone else, but you can't go around pointing it out!"
Sheldon Cooper: "Why?"
Mrs. Cooper: "Because other people don't like it!"
This sums up my high school experience, particularly with my father.
I was raised differently. My parents subscribed to Howard Gardners theory of the Intelligences, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences).
My brother has dyslexia and was surrounded by gifted siblings. Everything was more difficult for him. Maybe to compensate, and maybe because my parents truly didn't believe they were better than anyone else, we were raised to not notice or make a big deal out of our giftedness. Yes, we were in the programs, but no, my parents never talked about it with anyone, not even us. I didn't even realize my dad was PG until my son was born and he told me how he was tested when he was young. It never occurred to him that this was important.
They like to focus on the things that made every person unique. They don't spend time comparing or judging others, or at least, not in my hearing. My brother with dyslexia loved planes. My parents focused on that, and not how difficult school was for him. He is now a commercial pilot, and maybe the confidence to achieve that came from never feeling like he was less.
Because you know, he isn't.
