overestimating us?

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Do you think the media is encouraging peope to overestimate Aspies?

Firstly there is the Autistic lad who has became a basketball star at his University then there are programmes on TV about "savant" and gifted Autitics? (Monday 27 feb Channel 5 9pm UK)

Then there is Rainman aswell.

Your Thoughts

Edgey

I have noticed it is a condition of extremes in that. It gets tiring when people are always saying what a genius you are. How do you live up to that? It also distances people from you, as if it isn't hard enough to connect for us socially as it is!

Worst part is when people hate you for it.

I don't see or hear about any of these sterotypes. Am I that out of touch, or is it because high schoolers are ignorant and I never watch TV?

I hear you dude. My Dad has such high expectations of me, but I've failed subjects before and he puts me through a massive guilt trip. As if that'll help.

My school life was doomed as a result of my "genius" status.

Exactly! I actually had one teacher, in front of the prom king and queen, say audibly, "But, you're so much better than them!" and mean it. Oh, that did wonders. I argued vehemently against, but it's a loss at that point.

They were going to skip me ahead a year in second grade, but I was already one of the youngest kids in my grade at the time. If they would have skipped me a grade, I would have avoided what has been named by more than one teacher one of the worst classes (as a whole) they have ever seen. I made it out alive, though, and I'm glad I did. After high school, there are a few more years of strife: college, the first years of working, where the AS works against, but eventually, you break even socially and you start moving beyond your peers.

That's why many of us wouldn't trade it for the world! It's resources like this web site that make a lot of difference too. I haven't been on here long, but the change has been drastic as I have been reading the advice and reading the articles. A heck of a lot cheaper than a psychologist. So much so, I think that those of us who have the means must help support it.

I don't mind people thinking I'm gifted and intelligent, because I am. I find it reaffirming and encouraging. It makes me feels like I'm being genuinely appreciated for who and what I am. On the other hand, I am often hurt by people underestimating me or blowing my off because they cannot see want I'm capable of. Even if I fall flat on my face (which I have many times) I still would rather have people believe in me than tell me to shut up and go away.

What I see the previous posts is not a problem with others stereotyping you guys, but your own self-esteem problems you are projecting onto the actions and words of others. It's so much easier to deal your own feelings of self-loathing if you can rationalize it as being someone's else's fault. They set you up to feel like crap, they had unrealistic expectations, and so forth. But seriously, how many of you would prefer to fail and make excuses for yourself because succeeding scares the crap out of you? Fear of success is very common, for Aspies and NTs (and especially among men), because success demands accountability. So if you can resign to being a failure, then you can weasel out of being accountable by saying you never had it in you to succeed in the first place. But if you were to succeed and then have a failure, be it major or minor, you have to be accountable. You set the precident of your abilities by previously succeeding, and any failure after that if squaring on your shoulders.

That may projection from yourself onto us (how can we know?) Just because Aaron's father had high expectations of him and occassionally he failed a few subjects in school (notice the past tense), doesn't mean that he is basing his self-esteem now on what his father thinks or, even that he did so before: he commented on how the guilt trips were useless, suggesting the opposite.

I did have a lack of self-esteem back in high school, which was ages ago now, but that was based more on things like one of the bullies sitting down on the gym bench, shaking his head, and asking, "I just don't understand; why don't you kill yourself?" Or the many times I found myself getting the crud beat out of me. Or the constant drone of people making fun of me in every situation to bolster their own self-esteems. My point is, after getting through that, it's all downhill because people grow up. They really do. Most of them.

That is a hopeful message

My problem was that my parents were both so intelligent that they and my teachers expected me to be intelligent, too. But because of my ADD and--in high school, depression---I couldn't live up to my expected potential. I came to dread and loathe the continual litany of "Andrew needs to apply himself" and the papers that came back marked "See me." How do I apply myself? Can you show me? See you about what? The anxiety on report card day was overwhelming. So, by the time I got to high school, I was hyperactive and depressed. Not a good combo.

Parents shouldn't expect anything from their kids. They shouldn't expect them to be smart, or good at math or English, just because they were good at math or English. All they can do is ask them to do their best, help them to do their best and show them by example how to be good, loving human beings.

My dad expected me to be because I was believed to not be able to work in a school environment... I wound up blowing all of my naysayers away when I beat the whole class in several subjects.

I lost the edge in year 8 when, after a titanic battle in the bottom class, I got top of the class - but this saw no frutition. Feeling the effort was a waste, I gave up. It's a rut I've been stuck in ever since.

Thankfully i've never had to deal with this, my grades in school were always average (i could never focus on my school subjects most of the time and didn't get to do the subjects i wanted at a-level, so did just as bad then), i guess it also helps that i'm undiagnosed, i think my parents don't expect much of me and i'm glad in some ways i couldn't focus, so their expectations of me went way down. Though i'm sorry for any of you that have had to deal with with these sort expectations.

I was dubbed a "genius" as a child, and I haven't even considered the possibility of being an Aspie until very recently. Having high intelligence, or even appearing to (as people with Asperger's may), is often cause for social isolation all by itself without actual Asperger's.

If you are seen as a "genius", you will often come to see yourself that way. As I did, you may begin to be lax in your studying because, all through high school, simple rote memory from sitting in class is enough for straight A's. Then, when you don't learn study skills, college is too difficult for you.

People should be taken at face value: No stereotypes, no preconceived ideas of who you are, no categorization. Everyone--even the straight white American male--has his own set of categories by which he's perceived; people's brains are made to categorize things so as to more easily handle the stimuli the world has to offer. Stereotypes are an effect of the way people's brains work; but it is quite possible to consciously overcome them.

So I know it's a dream; but it's one I still wish would come true.

Cripe I'm 51, I still get this.What summed up the dichotomy for me was a fellow activist
who when I mentioned I have Aspergers (1) immedaietly mentioned that as a dance instructor
for autistic children she was trained to put children in a half nelson (Not the term she used)
then ask me what wonderful thing I perceverate.

The upper devision leval of this nonsense goes something like this-Asperger's is a social construct so don't worry about it.On the other hand, be "realistic" and accept your limitations,
"don't be so hard on yourself".(when I stop being hard on myself, I fall apart).

And ya these same people are allways hurt or dissapointed the first time you let THEM done.

Yeah, I know what you mean, muddlinthrough. There's a lot of things people things say "are" that "aren't." I get a kick out of people saying "be yourself" and then criticising me in the same sentence. I love the "but"s -- be yourself, but try to X, where X is something that is not part of your personality. Like, "Be yourself, but smile more."

It's all so complex!

Essentially the perpetuating the media invented myth of the "Super Cripple" and the way aspergers is portrayed seems very much to come from that kind of perspective of disability which the mass media portray to the world.

I've always held the belief that people use a disability to dismiss a person's hard work into achieving something. With aspies in particular, it isn't the hard work, it is the disability (so, I, as an NT, do not have to work hard because I do not have a disability and cannot achieve the same thing).

The diagnoses for AS does not mention IQ and I still believe IQ isn't part of the equation. The autism part comes from the disconnect between how we feel and our body language, not the ability to perform complex mathematical equations in our heads.

Last edited by k96822 on 28 Feb 2006, 8:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Dismiss the individual with the disabilities hard work/people with a disability use the label too...

Clarify