Autism and gifted

Post Reply New Topic

I have both high iq and aspergers, and it's not an easy combination. Despite having a lot of potential and being gifted, I have not fulfilled my potential yet, actually i'm nowhere near that. And it sucks because i could have accomplished many things by now. I did nothing. For example, i started coding when I was 12 years old. I should have built a software company by now. Other than that, constantly thinking and worrying about lost years, makes me lose motivation. Not being able to talk to a human as one does, being weird, and yet being intelligent, is a bad combination and it's hard to manage.

Yup ....Hope you get through it well as can be ..... learning experiences and all ,dealt with much serious familial subversion myself... Found, that often,that a person can be their own worst enemy Aswell... Best Wishes

I think I would have responded well to benevolent exploitation, as perhaps you might.
I guess the anti-authoritarian thing put paid to that for me..

Sorry that you are feeling that way, as I know that feeling quite well. There is a definite curse for being intellectually gifted. Everyone (including yourself) puts higher expectations on your abilities than if you were just average. Lofty expectations lead to feelings of failure when things do not go as planned. It is easy to become discontent with life when it drifts off from your perceived future path. Over time it can lead to depression that pulls you down further from your path. But there is hope: You can always set a new set of life goals to change that path to a different direction if needed.

What you need to remember is that to your own self be true. Do not measure yourself using other's abilities, as it almost always leads to discontentment over time. You need to find what makes you happy in life, not what makes everyone else happy. You do not need to be the richest person to become successful in existence. That part is a misnomer that society tends to push upon people to get them to work harder til they die. It is better to be poor and happy than to be rich yet miserable in life.

As an intellectually "gifted" person with autism I haven't had the same success in life as an equally "gifted" person without autism. But I have had a great life compared to a less "gifted" autistic person. That makes me think of my intelligence as a blessing.

I'm not sure being gifted has helped me much, although that could just be me lacking the insight to recognize struggles I manage to avoid due to intellect.

I don't agree with telling an autistic child they're gifted as a way to make them feel secretly better than most people, which was what my parents did. Although they failed to acknowledge the problems they should have been confronting. At least I managed OK. I very seldom think of myself as gifted any more.

I feel like the last thing a kid with poor social skills needs is to be given a reason they can view themselves as superior to everyone else. It's just bound to make snobby elitism their default coping mechanism.

Ask me how I know.

I believe it's important to have self-knowledge and know what your weaknesses and strenghts are. I think you should tell an intellectually gifted kid with supposedly "poor social skills" (autism) that she's got "poor social skills" but she can use her intelligence as a tool to work around that. You should not praise an autistic child for it's high intelligence, leave out the "poor social skills" part, and promise it fame and fortune.