Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources "Gifted Should Not Be Confused with Disorder"

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:



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.

Also our youngest is barely 3, she's not yet experienced the full impact of how her dietary limitations may effect her as she grows up.

To further confuse a confusing issue... fwiw, I think so much of the perception of "disability vs gift vs something in between" depends on individual personality, and even individual personalities and viewpoints can flux over time in the same person. At least that's what I've observed so far in my own family.

polarbear

That is why i said we see no upside YET - as some of her comorbidities resolve she may see some benefits surface more... And personality and other family/home/life issues totally play a role.

My son really latched on to the dysgraphia is a gift thing. We were watching the Eides DVD and they talking about "dyslexia" being a gift and DS said "DO I have that?" And I said "no it looks like you have dysgraphia, which is dyslexia only of writing." He said "well I believe it is a gift!" He also seems to think he has dyslexia "midly"... Hey nothing like a 7 year old self-diagnosing. I told him the neuropsych should be able to give us a more sure answer about both. But his hypotonia isn't a gift at all, and he seems very keen on finding a "gift" in his inadequacies, ykim? He loved hearing about the "gifts of dyslexia" - He felt that gave the disability meaning.

My son was expressing frustration about his low working memory when my husband spoke up, "It is not a disability. We have an alternative way of our thinking, and it has gifts. Here is just one - programmers with low working memory have very few bugs in their code, because when they troubleshoot, they don't assume things are a certain way - they have to recheck line by line, and so they catch the errors."

I love that my son has someone who helps him understand he is wired the way he is supposed to be wired, and it is up to him to find ways to adapt to the things he has to deal with and to embrace ways it gives him an advantage.

I wouldn't have been able to think of a single gift from low working memory.

Hey HK--quick aside, I don't know about other disabilities, but people first language is very important to the self-advocates that I know, so they would strongly encourage "daughter with Trisomy xx". Thanks!

Totally agree. Personally, I think autism is not the source of DS's data-headed gifts at all; there's enough of that elsewhere in the family to suggest he just got an extra helping of what was already around. To me, autism is no gift-- as Mum3 points out, the struggles are constant, his and ours both.

However, I support his figuring out his own attitude-- it's his autism, not mine-- and his ability to look for and find a bright side in his very complicated and challenging life will probably help him be a happier person.

HK, I certainly didn't mean that disabilities all come with lovely silver linings. Indeed, I detest the "oh, you're so INSPIRING" business. I prefer the Buddhist acknowledgment that there is a lot of suffering in the world, to notice and live with and mitigate where possible.

I agree, HK, that all disability is personal, and yes, it would be grand if someone would ask what's needed to help in a matter-of-fact way without making unwarranted assumptions. We actually have some (not many, but some) folks in our lives who do that, and it is fantastic.

DeeDee

Excellent point. Most of the time, to us, she's just {Childname} and her trisomy isn't even part of how we identify her. Among the parents, of course, we sometimes share our frustrations, but those are almost invariably about advocacy challenges, not frustration with our kids' disabilities, per se.

I think that often, this is what parents are most in need of emotionally, as well-- thus the resonance of Welcome to Holland, which makes most parents cry the first time they read it.

Of course, over time, you keenly feel that maybe that kind of Pollyanna rhetoric ought to go pound sand...

but it doesn't mean that there aren't some fringe benefits from living outside the mainstream. I just wish that we had the OPTION to join the mainstream when it suits us, and we don't, of course. I'm like any other parent to a child with special needs there, I think. This, too, transcends "disability" and includes giftedness at high LOG, doesn't it? It would sure be nice to have the option to just go with the flow and be "normative" once in a while.

What I find most interesting is that so many of those benefits transcend the specifics and nature of the disabling condition... they are about stepping outside of one's assumptions as much as anything else.

Life with disability has really forced me to take off my blinders. I think that many people never realize that they are wearing them in the first place.