Read the Child not theTextbook

Being gifted doesn’t always seem like a gift……In reading this and some of my other posts you may question why I would not wish my child to simply be a “normal“ child.

By the time I sought out help I was at a desperate stage. That’s how most parents are when they first meet with the Director of my son’s new school. The parents have since happily shared the story involving a home visit by the Director. When the visit was over and the door was closed, the mother burst into tears, as I did myself. It was a relief (an understatement) to find that there was another person on this planet that understood my child and actually liked him!

My child knew when he was understood. The Director did not classify his excitement and high energy as hyperactivity, his frequent need to move as not wanting to listen or pay attention, his strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, his constant questioning as annoying and impulsive and his independence as oppositional.

Prior to this we had visited my son’s pediatrician to undergo a whole panel of allergy tests. Here I learnt that you have to take your own diagnosis to the pediatrician, ask for the tests you want and keep persevering if you are not happy with the answers you get. I learnt that even if my child is not allergic to dairy it does not mean that he is not lactose intolerant, and the same goes for wheat. He is not allergic to wheat but has less stomach problems when he eats less gluten and wheat related products. Diets free of diary and wheat can benefit children like my son. It helps not only with physical symptoms (lots of stomach aches) but I believe it modifies certain behaviors.

A psychologist also recommended ruling out anything physical by taking him for an EEG (Electroencephalogram). It’s an outpatient test that records and measures the electrical activity of the brain. Certain conditions such as seizures can be spotted due to spikes in the computer readings, although my son had never exhibited any signs of epilepsy.

By the time my son had endured all of these procedures he had turned sullen and had become more lost and unreachable. He was distracted in pre-school, hyperactive and extremely oppositional at home.

Children are being labeled with inaccurate diagnoses because of the general lack of awareness of giftedness, its characteristics and the frequent mismatch between the child and their school environment. Most of my child’s behavioral issues comes from his sensitivity to the environment, his intense reactions and his developmental asynchrony (especially being a big kid for his age, people tend to assume he is older than he is which just amplifies the problem). My son’s typical gifted behaviors mimic a number of other conditions. Misdiagnosis of ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder are among the most common misdiagnoses made based on these behaviors. Professionals believed at some point along the way that my son could fit into the category of any or even all of these. My child also suffered from anxiety and depression due partly to an inappropriate school environment, frequent peer and sibling rejection and even being misunderstood by me and my husband! These symptoms were diagnosed correctly but the underlying stressors were not recognized and treated until later when I realized he was a gifted child and became familiar with typical gifted children’s issues.

I would encourage anyone who knows or works with children exhibiting these types of behavioral issues to be aware of the pitfalls of misdiagnosis and to not leap to quick conclusions. With more care at the diagnosis stage we might hope to avoid damaging labeling, medication side effects through wrong prescriptions e.g. over use of Ritalin as a “quick fix”, inappropriate counseling/therapy and inadequate intervention.

Having found what I believe to be the correct diagnosis for my son, I have learnt effective strategies for nurturing sensitivity and for dealing with intensity and perfectionism, and for helping him identify his own emotions. I have learnt to understand how my child thinks and processes, how he can and cannot express himself, and what is needed in his environment in order for him to thrive.

I would not want to change my child into a “normal” child. I am just as proud of him as my other two “normal” children. He has taught our family many things that we would never have known had it not have been for his “differentness”. Because of him we are able to move forward more solidly as a family. There is immense power in being different with unique ideas and perspectives. I hope my child can find courage to be who he is, and to offer up his unique contribution to the world even if the world sometimes fails to understand him……..It’s what the world needs.

A Quest for Peace of Mind

It’s been a difficult year. It’s been hard to keep smiling even on the outside. I did not expect raising children to be so hard, especially my gifted son. It consumes more than your money and time, it worries the life out of you and before you know it you’ve turned into an anxious wreck of a person that can no longer string a reasonably sensible sentence together or even cope with the smallest of setbacks. I worry because hindsight is a wonderful thing and I can say “oh, now I get it, everything has fallen into place” which is great, but then you wonder what else there is that you are doing wrong or should have picked up on earlier, like my son’s depression. When my child was born I counted his fingers and toes and everything was there where it should be so I breathed a huge sigh of relief and never stopped to think about what was bubbling away beneath the surface.

I’m a glass half empty sort of person, so this doesn’t come easy for me to say, but I’m relieved that I finally found my diagnosis and I’m glad. I don’t have all the answers and it’s likely that I never will, but it’s easier to fight if you know what you are up against. Once I knew that there were certain behaviors that were beyond my child’s control I had to change my mind set and I had to persuade other people to as well. There is no point in expecting from him what other children his age may be capable of, especially social expectations; they can be too high for my child. He has a lack of empathy because he is an Asperger’s child. He doesn't seem to notice or care if he hurts someone either physically or verbally (not usual for Asperger's). He says what is on his mind. Most schools try really hard to accommodate different ‘skill sets’ but it helps them if the child participates and gets along reasonably well with their peers, some social skills are required for that. It is hard for an introverted gifted child to do something that is as unnatural to them such as standing up and speaking to an audience or working in a group with non gifted children. My oldest (typical) child tries hard to please other people, especially her teachers. She tries hard to conform and fit it. My gifted Asperger’s child wouldn’t know how to, even if he wanted to. He knows he is different.

What had an effect for my child was moving him to a school for gifted and talented children. I was lucky enough to have this opportunity; I know it is not available to all. It is a school led by renowned experts in the field of K-12 education. The school focuses on creative teaching methods including hands on activities and differential learning. They use the constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Generally this means students conduct experiments and real world problem solving to build on their knowledge and then reflect on it and talk about how their understanding is changing. The students are active creators of their own knowledge, by questioning themselves and their beliefs and making readjustments as necessary. The faculty acknowledges that along with giftedness may come other things. This group of children has unique requirements and the faculty understands and can manage the symptoms. Subjects such as Social and Emotional studies are as important for these children as Math and this is part of the curriculum at my son’s new school.

There is no “silver bullet” and I cannot say that things will get better quickly or at all. After all, there is no “cure” for Asperger’s. Focusing on the gift is important and this requires the appropriate teaching. Renowned and successful individuals such as Mozart, Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson are said to have had symptoms of Asperger’s (although no diagnosis was available at the time). My wish for my child is that he will learn about his own strengths and weaknesses, learn how to check other people’s faces to see how they are responding, and eventually find a comfortable way to navigate his journey through life.

My Gifted Child

People told me that my child was smart. I knew that, he was always very curious. I beamed like any other proud mother when he said something no one else had even thought of or noticed, or when he answered his older sister’s math problem.  I still could not match that with his frequent immature outbursts and his pure defiance and oppositional behavior.

He could never have been described as having an easy going personality but he had an ability to focus intently on a subject that interested him for a long period of time, such as lining up toy cars or building with his lego bricks. That was the only time I could take a breath in his very early years.  He even appeared to enjoy pre - school when he started at the age of 2 ½ years. But he never glowed like the other kids; he held a certain emptiness in his face.

There were at best two other things to be grateful for. He loved to eat healthily, always tried new foods and he slept to an invisible alarm clock. He went to bed at the same appropriate time, fell asleep almost instantly and woke at precisely the same time every day. It was uncanny. For a while, at least, I convinced myself he was like any other 3 year old boy. I talked myself into believing he was happy and he was, providing he was at home and doing what he wanted to do and with whom it wanted to do it.

At the age of 4 years, a close friend of mine told me one day he was too intense. I thought he was “too” everything:  too intense, too sensitive, too emotional, too competitive, too moral, too perfectionist, too driven, too much to cope with!

At the age of 5, he began to have an extreme need for constant mental stimulation, he followed his own path, he was less teachable than my older child and he still had this unusual depth of feeling. He had a recognition for inconsistencies, he was always telling me off for saying one thing one day and something else another, I think this is where he learnt his bargaining skills and he never liked to lose. He had to be the first child out of the bath tub, had to start his breakfast before everyone else, had to be the first one walking through the door.

Then, the two things that had up until now been consistent with him, changed too. He went almost completely off his food (not a phase) and began taking increasingly longer to settle to sleep. At the same time I began getting reports from his pre-school that his behavior was becoming more disruptive and until then I had chosen to dismiss his progressively depressive, anxious and aggressive self that rode in the car on his return journey home from pre-school. That’s when it began. My obsession, that is, with the need to pin it all down. He is a gifted child.