Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Salon article: Not autism, brainy introverted boy

I think a lot of us can relate to this Salon article. What do you all think? That's not autism, it's simply a brainy introverted boy

Personally I see a lot of these traits in my daughter, too. But I could recognize my friends' very gifted son in the descriptions of sharing esoteric interests.

BTDT.

I don't know what I think about this article. I felt like it was relying on some outdated ideas about autism. I wearied of all the "blah blah male brain" stuff as well.

Blah-blah?

Ultra, exactly. The author assumes that a person who is imaginative or enthusiastic or spontaneous cannot possibly be autistic. Those traits are not diagnostic.

There is a kind of desperation to believe a kid is "fine"-- i.e., NT-- that also implies that autism is "not fine." I find this desperation troubling for many reasons.

DeeDee

In part I think this is borne from black and white thinking on both sides (ironic, eh?) about autism...autistic or not, severely impaired or fine. I much prefer the concept of the spectrum, and offering help when people evince the need for it. In fact I think it's possible that some kids could be well served by diagnosis with "autistic-like traits" or simply "social difficulties."

By blah-blah...well, I'm not really convinced by the argument. I've read quite a bit in this area, and the science isn't nearly as convincing as he makes it out to be.

This article was helpful to me. I think I have a greater understanding of why my son's neuropsych says that he is not on the spectrum. We are still doing a social skills group, although he is doing better socially and we may end the group soon. Everyone's situation is different. I can relate to a lot in this article. If my son turns out to be on the spectrum, we wouldn't do anything differently. Interesting perspective.

It's all a big fuzzy tug-o-war until we move away from symptom based cluster disorders and towards scientific, neurological based measures. Hopefully, NIMH's push in this direction will be a huge benefit in years to come.

Bingo.

There are frequently no bright lines anywhere when it comes to diagnostic criteria anyway-- in a biochemical, functional sense.

There's so little data there and it's so complicated that as of right now, I'm not sure that we can define neurotypical as a quantitative construct to begin with-- not even with fairly well-studied conditions such as depression and ADD.