HK - I was typing quickly on my phone before rushing off to something else and I absolutely was not trying to compare our situations directly, but as you said to compare my own children... The reason I pointed out that our DDs food issues are not life threatening was to try to show that I know that your family and our family's situations are different.
In fact all three of my children (and both of us) have food intolerance. Only one of us do I see that as reaching a life changing / "disabling" level, for the rest it's just a bit of a pain. Like you, most people I know with allergies, including life threatening allergies that have landed them in hospital with anaphalaxis (more than once), are still less restricted than our youngest is. They eat out, go to playgrounds, might send their kids on camp, etc. Conversely most people who know someone with an intolerance think of that person as a picky eater who will eat their intolerance foods if they really feel like it. We are as far from that as the multiple airborne anaphalactic child is from the child with one allergy that's never landed them in hospital and doesn't strain the family too much to avoid.
Likewise although I see no strong upside to my DDs Aspergers (yet!), I am equally aware that she's far better off than many many other children on the spectrum - some of whom WILL have strong upsides to go with their harder challenges...
Like you I think this is the crux of the issue:
The same diagnosis does NOT the same life make.
CCN - I find my other DD, who has ADHD, outputs far more creatively when on her medication than off it. I don't know if she has more creative ideas on or off it, I suspect it's no different. But she does an awful lot more WITH those ideas while on the meds. Ideas go nowhere if you are too far off with the pixies to use them.
Back to my previous post (sorry to jump around) - I think that the reason I experience youngest DDs food issues as less disabling than eldest DD's ASD is that we know exactly what to do to keep her safe and normally functioning, and as long as we are 100% successful she is a normally developing child (well apart from the giftedness of course), we live in fear but our efforts are successful. We expend equal or greater energy on doing what we can for our eldest and it all helps - but she's still fundamentally effected by her problems in heartbreaking ways. I don't know what the right analogy is... My mother can put on her glasses and they work and she can read, drive, etc, the remediation makes her normally functioning - until she takes them off. My youngest can eat an extremely limited number of foods, but as long as we make no mistakes ever, she's ok. Our eldest struggles on a daily basis, in a way that her sisters don't, no matter what we do.
