(that wasn't me, but responding anyway)
I think the orphanage situation is the kinda thing that might fall into Grinity's "not pathological" comment. Neglect really isn't the same thing as run-of-the-mill under-responsiveness.
But the comment "being gifted in IQ alone is not enough" resonates with me as well. I would not hesitate to say that neither DH nor I found our way to meeting our potential. And in my case, I'm very sure that a little well placed direction when I was reading about neuroscience would have gone a LONG way. A friend of the family actually tried to do it (he gave me the materials for an anatomy course he taught), but I needed someone to tell me I needed to actually learn it to continue in what I was interested in. I probably even needed someone to poke me about it every now and then.
DH needs to be told to FINISH his papers. He hasn't finished one in 10 years or so.
But those are relatively grown-up things. I'm not sure when the first moment when I should have been taught was... Could it have been when I was 8mos old (the age of my son now), or was it much, much later...?
-Michaela.
