Are you autistic and gifted?

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Weird coincidence:

I was back at my primary school in the Kindergarten room at the moment of the École shootings on 6 December, 1989.

I always picture my Kindergarten room when I think of the massacre.
I even smell imaginary fingerpaint when I think about it.
It's ironic that we just started talking about Kindergarten today.

We just sat at desks, and did math or whatever. I don’t think I did any “projects,” except maybe cutting out things from magazines which started with a certain letter. We had these black and white notebooks, with the white looking like pebbles.

I would take a phonics test, and always get a zero. I had trouble with “borrowing” in subtraction.

I was put in a separate cubicle when it was reading time. I read about Hercules’ Labors; they were vivid in my mind.

I was bused in from Queens to Manhattan.

I never heard of the Ecole shootings until today.

We learned subtraction (regrouping) in second grade, using magnetic numbers on steel baking sheets.
I can't remember how that worked but it made sense to me straight away.

I had a very hippy-dippy primary education.
This was all in an open pod with six classes and no walls.
I was the yoga teacher for my class because my teacher wanted me to do deep breathing to chill out.
Little did she know I was ADHD.

We got to read on pillows on the floor.
No wonder I still have a pillow fort and beanbag chairs.

That's sad about the phonics.
My learning challenge was run-on sentences.
Imagine!!


* We had desks but didn't use them if we wanted to sit with the pillows.

Nope. None of that “progressive” stuff for us. It was mostly the kids sitting in individual desks, or, once in a while, around a large table. Conventional classrooms. Blackboard. Letters in cursive above it. Cursive was called “script.”

It was mostly teacher lecturing, kids listening. Then we had to do math or English or Social Studies or whatever in our workbooks at our desks. It was a bit looser when I started the “special school” in second grade…..but no “open classroom.” That was a 70s thing.

tested as gifted in school several times, moved to gifted group, promptly failed, moved back. I test especially high in the use of words and understanding of vocabulary, but when you recognize the fact that my other processing systems are all defective and unreliable, you can understand I developed the use of printed words and reliance on them to obtain information (reading!) like you would use a muscle... I simply can't trust my visual or audio processing to get input, fail every time!

Might just as well throw in my two cents since "gifted in several fields" was written on my autism assessment papers.

There were quite a few boys and girls around me who moved up one or two classes, but they also seemed to have certain "problems" with socialising later on (so not just the ASD folks). I never did because in grade school I lived out in the sticks where giftedness was something weird kids had, like the measles or something.

Unlike Quantum I'm good at the arts, so I went down that road for the first half of my life, but I kind of wish I had done what he did instead and become a scientist. As a funny little side note, my grades in STEM better than those in the humanities.

My giftedness simply comes down to being an autodidact and being good at things without putting much effort into it (=giftedness makes me lazy). I speak enough Japanese to get through a job interview and work in an office where nobody speaks English (which isn't my first language anyway), but since I don't like studying the way I learnt it was to listen to the radio over and over again until the pieces all came together.

I sometimes wonder what I could do had I been a bit more ambitious, but nah ... I'd rather have a cup of coffee and listen to obscure ambient music from the 90s.

That resonates with me. I ended up doing much better academically with science and technology but emotionally I'm more drawn to the arts, and have always seen my music as much more important than science, apart from science's ability to bring in a stable income.

Yes, the only real struggles I had were with conventional education. Whenever I went my own way it was much easier, except for having to decypher the unclear explanations of ideas in the subject matter I found, and finding the material in the first place. School made me think I had brain damage while my own pursuit of knowledge reassured me that I didn't.

Again, that's much like my attitude to the rat race. There's a part of me that kind of regrets not testing myself against the challenge to get to the top of the pile, but a bigger part of me is very glad I never did any such thing. Socialism gave me an ideology to back up my attitude, but even without it I think I'd have been much the same.

The hyperbolically positive remarks re my intelligence don't help. I have no real life achievements that can make me say 'Yes that's true'.

I grew up in a fairly socialist environment (Scandinavian countryside), so perhaps I can't shake off that part of myself even if I tried. The benefit of reaching the top of the pile didn't outweigh the cost I had to pay to get there, so I didn't do it. Though I did want to try new things in my life, and try to not remain too long in one place mentally, so maybe some people around me mistook that for having big ambitions ...

As a child it was taken as dogma in my family that I was gifted in fact all the problems I had coexisting with my peers were blamed on that however my parents took great pride in having a "gifted child". In Junior High I was invited to join a program in which you skipped a grade, which in retrospect was not a good choice for me. I had by far the highest SAT scores in my High School class however it was a small day school known to accept kids who had been asked to leave more prestigious day schools for academic reasons. As languages were my Special Interest at the time, I ended up majoring in Modern Languages in college which cost me several years of my career. I was very lucky to be able to eventually study Engineering.

At this point in my life I could care less whether I'm "gifted" I just want to be competent at my job and for my contribution to be appreciated.

EDIT:

Not sure if it's equivalent, but I got the message that being gifted meant not having to work hard to excel academically. Not at all to my advantage.

This is one of the reasons I don’t like labels and tests.

I was a “gifted” kid - adult oriented, rule following, academically advanced, curious, proficient test taker.

But I grew out of it - no longer like adults, have become cynical about other people’s rules, there are no “academic performance standards” for age 54, and I no longer have to take tests. Now I’m just an annoying old woman who asks too many questions, makes conversations over complicated, and goes into boring detail.

People seemed disappointed when I followed my heart into teaching and parenting instead of becoming a rocket scientist or something. (My even weirder, gifted friend did become a rocket scientist. It occurs to me JUST NOW that she was likely on the spectrum)

I wish I had the smarts to be a teacher……

Being a teacher and a parent…..both are quite noble occupations. I did neither.

If you have time and cash, there's lots of certifications you could get. ----if only it fit my current priorities.. lol.

I was in and out of 'the zone' when it came to exams and tests at school. A long lasting effect of the bullying I was subjected is wondering whether I'll ever be good enough as a person be it as a dad//caring enough/generous enough/intelligence wise etc etc.

I don’t think you have to be smart to be a good teacher. I think you just have to really understand the thing you are teaching - enough to be able to explain it many different ways.

And I think you have to really care if the people you are teaching are actually learning - gaining skills, acquiring understanding or knowledge, expanding their interest.

Some days the most important things I teach have nothing to do with the subject on my schedule. One boy I taught in several classes told me the most important and useful thing he learned from me is that communication is really important in relationships and that you have to express your needs and expectations, and you can’t just assume that the other person has the same desires and values.

Absolutely not, but I am the first person in my family to graduate from university. That's something I guess.

I'm currently working on a proofreading course with the intention to finish and get paid work. It's something I should have done long ago but I didn't think I'd be good enough. To hell with that, I'm now going to give it a go anyway.