Giftedness and Misdiagnosis

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From what I remember, the other kids in my gifted classes were really different from me. They were more like regular, normal kids who just happened to be very smart. Most of them were popular and stayed part of the popular crowd all the way up through high school. I never did understand the "nerd" stereotype I saw in movies because where I went to school the smart kids were the popular kids. I was in that crowd early on, up until the third or fourth grade, but gradually drifted out of it. I remember feeling like they all had some kind of secret understanding with each other that I wasn't in on. Like they would share a look with each other and I didn't understand what it meant. I think I was just perpetually naive. They kind of teased me about it, though not really in a mean way.

I was different because I was a bit more inventive and creative and I don't know, maybe more of an independent thinker or more independently willed? Some of the other kids were actually more intelligent than me, like this one guy who ended up getting a perfect score on the SAT in high school. Maybe I just fit the profile of a gifted child more than they did. I didn't just sit there and do the assignments we were told to do, I would come up with my own projects and make things. And I don't remember anyone else who read as voraciously as I did, or who read the encyclopedia for fun, or just sucked up information about things the way I did.

The other major difference is that I had crying meltdowns, almost every day in the second grade and then less frequently as I got older. And I cried specifically because I hated being in the gifted program and felt pressured by it and was convinced I had something horribly wrong with my brain.

I know a lot of gifted people with autistic traits, but they don't have the eggstra autism something that makes me autistic and them not.

Hi, this is a very interesting thread!

I believe academic giftedness stopped my teachers from having to "bother" with me or notice me at all- I was guaranteed to get good results and the pressure was on them to focus on the people who were struggling. I read my school reports recently and there were a lot of comments like "she is gifted in this area but works very slowly and is disorganised". Occasionally a teacher noticed I was horrendous at remembering homework but they hadn't mentioned it to me/punished me because my grades were good and I could always invent a plausible excuse. I was soooooo gifted in sneakiness that in secondary school (age 11-16) I never once did a piece of homework at home- I'd do it all extremely quickly in my form/registration class before lessons. My coursework for GCSEs was all done the night before hand-in (overnight) and I even managed to get away with handing it in very late because they always thought it must be a genuine mistake from such a pleasant, gifted student, and covered up for me (Muahahaha). I never revised for any test until 15 mins before it. Basically, I got away with murder! Then I would go home and couldn't remember a list of 3 things my mum asked me to do (eg. Sort out my washing, put socks away). I'd either distract myself so the things didn't get done (a way not to face up to my difficulties I guess) or remember one thing, and forget to do the rest, then get annoyed at my mum for not believing that I had genuinely forgotten what she said. It didn't help that I had a touch of ODD too haha. For my uni dissertation I gathered notes and read a lot, and drew doodles and collected images throughout, but I didn't actually start writing the text until the day before the deadline!

The problem was that as an adult I'm not scared of what will happen to me if i don't *appear* to have done what was asked. I'd become so adept at hiding my executive functioning skills that my family still don't really have a clue how hard I find it just to remember look in my diary once a day, to plan what I'm supposed to be doing. They admit that I am far from lazy, that my intentions are always good, but they know i dont function well doing everyday things, yet because i can appear very sociable(on a good day) they dont think i could have aspergers. Everyone sees me as very capable because I am eloquent and know a lot about "human behaviour" and interesting subjects. I'm a very good agony aunt because I always know what someone *should* do, and can take in a lot about the factors involved- why the person feels/acted a certain way. People are my special interest because they are soooooo complex.

On the subject of maths! I was always near the top of the class but never had a clue what the teachers were talking about and (despite feeling like it was all we did in infant/junior school) I could NEVER learn my times tables. I really felt like I struggled due to not being able to know WHY you do something, but now I realise that the stupid teachers probably didn't even know (or care) why, as long as the answer was correct. I recently found a letter from when I was 15 inviting me to be part of an advanced "supermaths" course for gifted GCSEs candidates. I'd take about 20 mins to work out what 8 x 6 was, but someone obviously noticed that I grasped the more complicated (obvious) ideas much more easily, like algebra, geometry etc.

I realized I hadn't told my story yet! I wrote it in other posts, but well
to begin with when I was in kindergarten they wanted me to skip grades. But then decided it wasn't the best idea as I would be years younger than peers and this wouldn't help the develop of my social skills. I think they did it right specially as now I know I have aspergers and I would be many years behind socially and emotionally and wouldn't make friends and have terrible psychological consequences etc
then I went to school normally and loved it! I loved to learn new things. In Brazil we don't have gifted programs (I wish) nor we identify gifted kids, but everyone thought I was very bright, teacher, relatives, any adult. A teacher even said in her career of more than 30 years she never found a kid as intelligent as me. I think this is considerable.
Right before high school I moved from an average small town school to one of the best schools in my country in a big city. This is because my parents wanted me to have a good education. The subject taught was way ahead of my school but I studied it all by myself in order to do the entrance exam. They gave scholarships because I couldn't pay for it and obviously would be a good student. Later they gave me a full scholarship because of my academic success.
well, I still thought school was very easy. I didn't do any homework (only in the last day or in 15 minutes before class) just like AlienorAspie and studied for the exams in the exam day morning or didn't study at all. But I always got away with everything because people thought I was bright and got great grades. No one ever suspected of any impairment because of it. But I don't think this is the reason I didn't get my diagnosis earlier! The reason is that in Brazil no one knows about aspergers syndrome
This school was full of gifted people but the smartest of them were not popular. They had their group of friends but had some social issues. I didn't exactly have my group of friends but I didn't see it as any difference between gifted people and me because I was more intelligent than they were.
in my senior year I went to a special engineering class. Well, let me explain, there are two engineering schools that are VERY hard to get in, there are like, 30 seats for the whole country. And all the brightest kids go to those special courses to study more advanced stuff to try a seat. But usually people only get a seat after 2 or 3 years of this advanced study. But it is different than MIT and such because in there they take into account extracurricular activities etc, here you only have a very hard exam and are either in or out. You have to study every waking hour.
so in this course there were (very) gifted people from all over and there I found people I considered more intelligent than I was. hmm at least in maths. I am also very skilled in history, social studies, literature etc and most people gifted in maths have very specific math talents and not others. And to be honest the most gifted teens were probably outcasts in their schools, but together with other gifted people they formed groups. I was still kind of left out and didn't know how to interact and I didn't understand their jokes. But I haven't heard about aspergers back then.
I think I compensated a lot of things using intellect,I learned all about social rules and humans and today I consider myself fluent in our second language, NT. But only in theory, I guess. If you show me a situation I am able to tell what is the social mistake the person did, but when I have to interact myself I do the mistakes. I think it is because I have to pay attention to lots of other things like what they are saying and body language and have to answer fast and can't think enough of what I am going to say. I have no idea how functioning I would be if I wasn't gifted. Probably would have trouble at school in the beginning grades and people would have noticed I CAN't organize myself. And would probably be depressed for not being able to socialize, I would probably be very very quiet and passive (much more than I am), probably mutism. Because I first observe and gather all the information about a group before interacting to know how to proceed, but if I wasn't good at it I would probably just not talk to anyone at all. but this is all speculation.
pfff I don't want to write anymore it is too long already. but I guess this is it.

Last edited by linatet on 18 May 2014, 6:10 am, edited 3 times in total.

Why do you find it depressing?

Even lower likelihood of understanding/simpatico people out here than I'd imagined.

I was in the gifted class in elementary school in the 1st and 5th grades. However, I was not considered gifted (as my IQ score was 129 and the district used 130 as the cut-off).

Entering middle school, I was placed in the non gifted classes. I was no longer allowed to be in the same classes as kids from my elementary school. I quickly realized that I was too smart to ?fit in? with the ?normal? kids (who preferred sports to academics), but not smart enough to ?fit in? with the smart kids.

As a note, I have some of the characteristics of giftedness listed by the OP, but not all of them.

deciding who is in and out of a gifted program using iq as a separation line is very close-minded. Of course they have to have an objective way to measure intelligence, but any kid that is interested in learning and can keep up with the gifted program work should be allowed! this is absurd. can't believe people that are woking with kids education do those kinds of things

My school did the same thing. I think it's pretty common.

I hate traditional teaching. What the hell educators have been doing these days? The whole point of the special programs is to stimulate talents of kids! Not to separate them based on a test score. 130 in, 129 out. Oh damn this is so wrong. This is not education, at most is a system to unmotivate kids. Plus IQ scores don't mean that much, specially a difference of 1 or few points that could have been caused by lots of things including the test being in a particular day. Can't repeat enough how unbelievable this is. Don't the educators know anything about kids, psychology, education, pedagogy? Anything about anything? What is their motivation to go to work anyway? What is the point of the school?
I hate traditional teaching. I am going to repeat it forever. Everything is so wrong. Education has failed so many of my friends. Instead of getting interested in learning and motivated and their natural curiosity nurtured they get insecure and thinking they are dumb and give up. What the hell? This is exactly the opposite of education goals. I could write a book only criticizing traditional teaching. actually I give a lecture of criticism to anyone that wants to listen (or that doesn't want to anyway ). This makes me mad. Everything is so wrong. I created my own teaching methodology and it is awesome! I read a lot about the matter and psychology and I believe I got the best of every alternative method. It has a completely different structure but kids would learn so much more and develop other skills like social, independence, secular ethics, determination, critical thinking, confidence, community service, and develop their own personality and talents. I am going to start a school if I am able to save enough money in my life. And it is going to be such a success people will hopefully want to reproduce the model in other local schools.
so much has been developed in matters of psychology, education, pedagogy, cognitive theories, personality theories, learning disabilities etc and schools still teach like in the XIX century! This was an exaggeration but not so much of an exaggeration. (can't I make hyperboles like normal people? It makes me feel like I am lying so I have to correct) we have to break the XIX century paradigm and start a new teaching system, a new school model.

Rocket123, you may not have had so wonderful a time in the program, either.

Many districts are flexible about that sort of thing now - if a kid's near cutoff points but just seems to belong, they'll put him in. By and large, though, schools aren't run by people who're tremendously bright themselves, and when that's the case...well, as a runaway from a gifted program, I can tell you the program's not all that wonderful to begin with.

There's a lot of misconceptions about gifted ed, but the main thing to remember about it is that at this point it's an industry. Colleges of ed sell certificates in it; school districts are mandated and must provide services, meaning must hire people to oversee and deliver them. Tests, metrics must be devised (and have been) and administered. And there is emphatically no requirement that those who deal with gifted populations be gifted themselves, since to the districts this is just another special-ed population. The upshot's that the kids are still much brighter the people trying to teach and assess them, and all kinds of dumb ensues. The usual solution by 10th grade or so is to shovel the gifted kids at community colleges, where they can "get a jump on college" by sitting in classrooms with the barely-literate, where the professors have to go very slowly so as not to fail everyone in the room. (That's less accurate than it used to be, but still plenty accurate.)

The sensible thing would be for the teachers to get together in, say, October, and talk about which kids were clearly sitting their with their brains running out their ears, split them up by general interests/temperaments and hand them over to a few teachers who were good with those sorts of kids. But this will never happen, the schools aren't built that flexible anymore. You can blame money and science.

I concur. My language skills and maturity were not at the same level as the other gifted children in the program. I was on par with the gifted children in my better subjects (Math and Science). But was not on par with them in other subjects (English and Social Studies). I had a particular challenge with English/Literature and Reading comprehension. I remember having issues understanding symbolism (?How do we know that the author intended the red hat to represent ...? If he intended that, why didn?t he just come out and say it?).

In any event, because I did not ?fit in? with either group (normal kids, gifted kids), I felt like an outcast. I figured that this difference would disappear once I graduated from High School. What I now realize, is that this ?feeling? was right (feeling like an outcast), but for the wrong reason.