Here’s something that really gets me steamed: gifted children. Have you noticed how many kids are gifted these days? Or how many parents think their kids will be competing for Nobel prizes in the next few years? Well, around my neighbourhood it’s a bloody epidemic of genius and talent. Every second parent I meet has a gifted son or daughter. Pretty soon the only child who’s going to stand out at my local school will be the normal one – the one without ‘exceptional’ talents and amazing abilities. Which means both my basically average kids have a bright future ahead of them. I’m beginning to wonder what ‘average’ means these days as parents fight it out in the local playgrounds and nurseries in a game of talented kid or special child one-upmanship.
Almost one year ago to this very day I was attending an orientation day with other parents at our local public school. One of the parents there, a bright, peppy and rather forthright woman, was inquiring about the facilities for children with special needs. Her child has Aspergers Disorder or Aspergers Syndrome as it’s more commonly known.
S’ok. Just a few days ago I bumped into the same peppy lady at our local park. All you parents out there will know the kind of park I’m talking about. The standard plastic play equipment in awful bright colours designed to ’stimulate’ the children and be relatively free of lawsuit potential for the local city council. I find them homogenous and monotonous and rather sterile. It’s all a little too IKEA for me.
Anyway, sitting there on the spongy surface with bits of sand in our coffees, peppy lady and me got to talking. It’d been a year and I was interested to find out how things were going for her little boy – compare some notes. Had she decided on that Eastern Suburbs primary? And, if so, how were they providing for her son’s Aspergers?
Well, you’ll never guess, she says. It turns out her son doesn’t have Aspergers after all.
“He’s just gifted!”
Gifted?
Just?
Well blow me down. Another gifted child. One day it’s Aspergers. The next day it’s extraordinary gifts. Then, oh what a relief, it’s the Aspergers or Autism that gives your kid the extraordinary gifts. I just can’t keep up with all the mental trends flying around these days. And in the last year or so I’ve noticed it’s almost becoming chic to have Aspergers or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder or just Attention Deficit Disorder or whatever else. There’s a feeling on the streets that having Aspergers makes you pretty cool and kinda ‘out there’.
Look, I’m not going to cast any Asperger-sertions here. I know that there’s something out there called Asperger Syndrome and I’m not about to debate the existence of Aspergers or ADHD. But I know, too, that parents who ACTUALLY deal with the added stresses and strains of kids with these conditions probably suffer just a little bit more because of the new Aspergers cool. Now everyone is piggy backing on Aspergers or ADD to explain away their own kids’ nasty behaviour and, ironically, it loses its specificity or special quality. Now everyone has special needs. And I’d be willing to bet it’s become an excuse. He’s not actually a badly-behaved little bastard – he’s ADD!! Yay! We must nurture his tantrums – they could lead to great art or a Nobel Prize for physics.
But I wonder how many Asperger sufferers or ADD kids running around our hood would actually be diagnosed as such according to the standard clinical criteria?
There’s a veritable race to define our children as different, as special or gifted. I mean it’s all gone a little bit hyper these past few years, hasn’t it? This rage against the ‘normal’? “What’s normal?” I keep being asked. “My children!” I cry. Both of them are pretty much average. Not too bright. Not too dumb. “Oh you poor thing” is the condescending reply. “You mean they don’t even have Auditory Processing Disorder? Aren’t they even allergic to nuts?”
The parental urgency to have your child stand out in the competitive child market has established a crazy race to the bottom. Wild-child? A misfit? Aspergers? Gifted? ADD? ADHD? APD? What’s your baby’s Unique Selling Point?
I suppose it’s just part of individualism. We all need to feel like we’re special. And now with all these medical conditions we can get the scientific veneer of specialness – ‘objective proof’ that our kid is more interesting and talented and brighter than all the other kids. And we can sit back and bask in their amazingly gifted glory.
I guess what I’m riled about is the idea of a “gift” – of intelligence as a “gift” or a “blessing”. Is it the religious tone that concerns me? Or is it the biological determinism – the idea that some things are just “innate” or “in our genes”? Or maybe it’s how the quasi-religious idea of a gift from above is being re-issued in a modern style as biology.
Any way you cut it, I feel we’re all being subjected to a con job. The pressure is on parents to produce worthy and brilliant progeny in a world that increasingly divides people into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. We all worry about our kids’ futures in this unstable time. And so we’re trying to set them up. It’s understandable.
But this golden child scenario has all got a bit too much. Surely they can’t ALL be the Chosen One? Now I KNOW there might be some children who are off the chart when it comes to all the indicators and indices we’re using these days. But they have got to be EXCEEDINGLY rare. These are the kids we don’t understand. They’re the anomalies we helplessly call ‘geniuses’. But I sincerely doubt that there are 15 of them in your kid’s classroom.
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You ask the question how many have Aspergers by clinical criteria.
The answer is approx 1 in 100.
There are genuinely many affected kids out there and many still Underdiagnosed. This syndrome has only recently been recognised but these kids have always been around ( without the label)
In contrast to ADD ( which I agree was overused), it’s not about drugging up poorly behaved kids.
Its about understanding how Aspie kids tick and helping them get on well at school.
We will all remember a kid at school who was poorly co-ordinated,nerdy kid who didn’t fit in. They often had a very hard time at school ( despite being obedient kids) and recognising their Aspergers can help them through these difficult times.
What a lovely comment. And interesting too. I really felt for that nerdy unco kid at school you finish with. And, what was partly my point, I BET a lot of parents suspect that their little angel MIGHT suffer from something like Aspergers. The problem as I see it is that ALL parents worry about their kids “fitting in” etc and that they can latch on to these new trends as a means of simply explaining away their own projected fears and worries. I’m saying that they CAN do this. I’m not saying that its all simply a projected fear. There are legitimate cases as you point out.
I am interested to learn that the stats are one in 100. That seems like an awful lot.
Its worrying. Could you explain a little more about this trend? Why do you think this is such a common condition? Do you think the numbers of Aspie kids are increasing? Is it all simply a matter of genetics? Or is it a social condition too?
How do you know there are many underdiagnosed Aspie kids out there?
And why do you think ADD was overused?
I want to make it clear that I am NOT arguing that Aspergers doesn’t exist. Or that there its not a serious condition for some children and their carers. What I’m concerned about is the change from Aspergers to “gifted”. I’m not happy about the ideological soundness of re-inventing a problematic condition as a wonderful thing. There are Aspies out there who would argue against the notion that its brilliant fun. See this for example: http://tinyurl.com/n77wrn
And I’m also speaking more generally about the idea of being “gifted” and these new ways of defining children and childhood.
Thanks very much for your comment Adelaide Dad. I’d be interested to hear from any parents out there who have kids with Aspergers and what this means for them.
I’ve got lots to say, on two counts.
As a father with a daughter diagnosed with PDD-NOS I get mighty pissed off with people who talk about their child having Aspergers or ADD but have never even bothered to take their child to a psychologist to have their suspicions checked.
Through a friend I know of one school in the southwest of Sydney where the local GP diagnoses kids as ADD and prescribes Ritalin. Apparently up to 10% of the kids in any one class are “ADD”, yet few if any have been assessed by a psychologist.
FWIW, Asperger recognised the syndrome over 60 years ago. I do agree that it is correctly underdiagnosed, but also believe it is incorrectly overdiagnosed.
For more information on Autism Spectrum Disorders start here http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/autism/complete-index.shtml
Our daughter was always “different” to us, yet we manage to make her appear normal by knowing her limits and talents.
I believe that when it comes to IQ, the population distribution is meant to fit a bell curve, so by definition half the population is below average in this respect.
It amazes me when people spend thousands trying to make their kid smarter with learning toys. The reality is if they’d spent the money beforehand on nicer clothes or such, they may have been able to snare a smarter partner. If you really want a smart child, sleep with a Nobel Prize winner.
The tag “gifted” is really over-used nowadays. I had it applied to me personally from very early on, when I started to spell and read before four years of age. I was put into school on the day I turned four years and nine months and great things were always expected of me. I was moved along quickly and ended up in with kids 2-3 years older than myself in early primary school. It was very hard socially, and I was even ridiculed by teachers as “professor”. Eventually when old enough I went to a selective school where I had to repeat. To be honest I did not like being smart, and it took me until my late twenties before I liked myself and started to curb self-destructive behaviour. I don’t consider my self gifted, but “blessed” in a mixed way
I recognise some aspects of Aspberger’s Syndrome in my behaviour but it doesn’t all fit. I will get assessed at some stage.
Overall I agree with you that parents latching on to a “coffee -group” diagnosis to explain poor behaviour tends to trivialise the trials suffered by those truly suffering from the syndrome/disorder. To me it resembles Munchausen by proxy, to garner sympathy or a sense of “specialness” for themselves or their child. If anybody thinks there are more upsides to Asperger’s or ADD or any PDD then they are truly showing their lack of intelligence, and this trait is most probably inherited by their children.
As a mental health practitioner, I have noticed in the past seven years that the ‘diagnosis’ of ADHD had dropped and the ‘diagnosis’ of ASD has increased. Based only on this anecdotal evidence, I am inclined to cynically suggest that the medical profession took the best part of a decade to realise that throwing a prescription at parents didn’t work, so clearly another diagnosis is required. The thing that I frequently notice is that (with the exception of parents who base their actions in common sense) a diagnosis is simultaneously used as an excuse for both bad behaviour and the parents’ get-out-of-jail-free ticket into not actually managing the condition and the behaviour problems that go along with it. I find that this is usually due to the fact that the parent is not very skilled at managing themselves, and therefore is all the more likely to become overwhelmed with a challenging child. Parenting a ’special’ child gives a lot of social patting in terms of either the wonder of a gifted child or the sympathy for a parent ‘downtrodden’ by the tyranny of a syndrome or disorder. I think it is time that we realised that it is the average child who is most likely to be content in life. Nobody needs a label to deserve appreciation.
As the father of a now 13-yr old autistic daughter w/ 2 older and quite bright siblings, I can tell you it’s no cake walk. Our youngest was the brightest of the 3. The 2 older ones rightly held unexercised bragging rights by standardized testing scores, but who cares? What we cared about was that they learned how to get along in this world, to love God with all their heart, mind and soul and love others as themselves. In other words, to be normal, good kids. The youngest was the brightest of all until we had her vaccinated. Funny thing was, we’d heard & read the horror stories so we held off until she was 2+, then strictly gave her the Tetanus-only and dead polio.
A short while after the series started, she started having problems, night terrors, nasty personality, then like a light switch, she was shut off. There was virtually no verbal communication for about 2-years. We had no clue what happened. She went from being happy, bright and communicative to being a non-verbal, hand-flapping child who could not look you in the eye. She was finally dx’d as autistic and the shock was horrific. It turned out the Tetanus was preserved with thimerosal.
Through prayer, incredibly intensive family attention helping her retrain her vision to see “forward” instead of the new damaged-wire “sideways”, numerous games helping her restrain the “flapping” and incredible amounts of love, support from her friends and teachers at church and school, she moved from obviously autistic to “slow”. Because she’s stayed with the same group of kids since Kindergarten, they all watch out for one another (private Christian school).
Public services here in my part of CA are worse than non-existent, they are downright negligent. Our school system pays exorbitant amounts to administrators, including retirement at 100% + COLA (cost of living allowance) + full medical, dental & ophthalmological + liberal paid vacation. The Special Needs admin’s job is to “not pay” for kids who need help, as in speech, physio-therapies, etc. We tried to put our child in PS, but the only class they’d let her in was the one with kids wearing helmets and w/ major motor skills issues, i.e., “drug babies”.
My child is unique, as dx’d by the panel of experts we had to hock our lives to pay for in our attempt to get services for her only to discover the total lack of expertise they were allowed to have when providing those services. She is what they call, “high-functioning”. Her function level enables her to see enough to want to be an animal doctor. I don’t hold a lot of hope for this, but she has surprised me many times and will doubtless do so again. High-functioning is normally where the Asperger’s kids are also, except they usually have better processing skills.
For the last 11 of our girl’s 13 years, we’ve been trying to cope with the financial and parental realities of how to deal with getting two children through university and handling the needs of one who will probably never be able to live independently with any degree of security or safety. If you don’t have one of these kids, you have no idea what stresses come with the job.
I’ve spent a fair portion of my life in a wheelchair, have lost a limb, am disabled but find ways to own my own job, and cared for a blind cousin. This is harder than all of that combined.
Don’t be so quick to dis the bright ones. With every government on earth trying to force mercury into the veins of every child, and autism at 1:150 in the USA and growing, those kids are going to have to make more money than the mint to keep things afloat. Either that, or the do-good eugenicists will simply murder them all in the names of economy and quality-of-life, ala the late 19th and early 20th centuries to its natural fruition of the 1930s-1940s.
I actually had the whole Aspergers thing shoved down my throat for two years. My bright, slightly antisocial, intense son was tagged with that label by teachers until dozens of doctors visits, massive waiting lists, hundreds of forms later the docs agreed with what I had always known – he wasn’t. There is nothing wrong with my son – he just doesn’t fit into a neat little box and neither did I.
My old boss (who has Aspergers) used it to his advantage. He didn’t get bogged down with all the emotional baggage that accumulates around water coolers and office kitchens. He would tell me that he couldn’t miss what he never had in terms of emotional understanding which seemed like an interesting bit of self analysis. Mind you, I wouldn’t have wanted to be his girlfriend.