Giftedness and Misdiagnosis

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ASD + gifted children are quite different from NT + gifted children, I think.
I was much different from NT gifted children in ways that were obvious to teachers, so they had a special plan for me.

I completely agree. That is one of the reasons I want to work with kids on the spectrum because I can pick up on tiny thigs that NTspecial Ed teachers can't pick up on.

can you elaborate? What would be those differences? I made and read many posts about it here in WP but no one seemed to have a good answer

Some are:
Much much much more detail-oriented
Great at learning and figuring things out, but terrible at communicating things about topics of learning/interest
Did not ask people questions
Learned poorly from people teaching me
ASD special skills like really good memory way beyond gifted NT memory

I am awaiting assessment for Aspergers but also have characteristics of giftedness (or I feel I do).

I started school early because I was exceptionally bright.
School work was very boring for me as the teacher would not let me move on to a harder level until the other children had caught up. She would not let me learn at a natural pace and I lost interest and took to daydreaming instead.
I was bullied as I was out of step with my peers. I was also bullied because of my high level of ability.
I never needed to revise for exams and still got A grades
I have creative and unusual ways of going about or seeing things

I suspect there is some giftedness there that has not be recognised properly, partly because my parents moved a lot and I was moved around from school to school and in my adult years my physical health failed me due to wheat consumption and I had to pull out of the University course I was studying as a result (also to care for my disabled mother at the time).

The result is that I have, thus far, underachieved given my level of ability.

The paleo diet has corrected my physical health but I am still left struggling with my social problems, have intense hobbies that I need time to pursue (I really do need the intellectual and creative stimulation, I get horribly bored without it, my brain doesn't know what to do with itself) and sensitivities that can affect my functioning but are not severe enough to stop me (I can work around most of them anyway Ie I can find the noise in a crowd very unpleasent but can tolerate it for a short period of time until I can get somewhere quieter, the latter of which I prefer).

My original diagnosis was Social Anxiety. I also get some depression...I need purpose in my life and right now, being unemployed I don't have any. I really want to start my own business or finish my degree.

I need a challenge. I am so bored it's depressing.

I do struggle to work with people though. The last time I tried group work I was told my ability was intimidating to them and was asked to hold it back a bit. That is not very fair on me as it means I can't use my ability to its full potential. Annoying.

I can rarely get a group to follow or understand me....I lose them somewhere even if I give them an essay marked with an A to read.

I work best alone.

The bullying and abuse from other humans I have experienced from other humans has also taken its toll. I am very sensitive and don't cope well with such behaviours from others. I am not a tough person. I am actually fairly gentle and loving despite how harsh I might sound in my writing.

I also don't cope well with society and its hideous belief systems and I am sick of people worshiping therapy. I find CBT to be over simplified rubbish and therapists tend to be less informed than I am. I see more than they do. How can someone who can't see things as broadly as me help me? I don't want to adopt a narrower view of the world nor do I want to adopt it's belief systems.

People are so caught up in their beliefs they are delusional.

Belief and truth are not always the same thing, people forget that.

/\ Other than the paleo diet and that I never actually dropped out (but should have), this sounds like I could have written it word for word. Bottom line is that I am depressed because I am BORED at my job and in life, just like all my previous jobs (and unemployment) and need to be constantly challenged. I am also a Giant and look tough (hence the username) but in reality I am softer and more sensitive than even many women. I also lived in my own world because school was so unbelievably boring and I was never allowed to work at my own pace or pursue my interests (and when I was, my peers not the teacher made sure I would not enjoy them).

One of my greatest fears is being put in jail or locked up. Not so much being confined (that is bad enough though) but being bored out of my mind all day long and not being able to do anything about it is a nightmare beyond words to me! I cannot understand how anyone can be happy being unemployed or sitting around all day long with nothing productive or constructive to do.

I also understand what you mean about your ability intimidating people. This is one reason why I enjoy being an ice hockey goalie: nobody ever accuses you of being a poor sport or trying too hard or cheating: the objective is to try to stop every puck no matter what the scoreboard says and there is no 'unwritten' rule that makes people angry at you for seemingly random things. I gave up almost every sport because I was tired of being called a cheater just because I was able to win or succeed within the rules.

As a child I tested as gifted, but severe meltdowns and other characteristics I had were not explainable by being gifted and I was also labeled as "ADHD, Severely emotionally impaired"

Clearly twice exceptional, but the nature of the exceptionality is not clear, I've had doctors say I was disabled by Asperger's, other by Childhood Bipolar and since I'm Bipolar and also a likely aspie probably both.

about being terrible to communicate things on interest: many (if not most) aspies are good at it and are little professors
about not asking questions: that is not a rule either. Many aspies like asking questions
if it is all about detail-orientation and memory then, how do you measure detail-orientation and memory skills to tell apart only gifted and gifted and aspie? Where is this division line?

Bit of advice from an old guy: If obvious geniuses, with the success to prove it, consider you to be a genius....you are.
If they don't, you are probably not as think as you smart you are.


You don't need the tests to know, though they are enjoyable just the same.

Point of usage: the "little professor" stereotype does not indicate skill at communicating. It is meant to convey stilted, overly technical lecturing in what would be expected to be a conversational context. A skilled communicator gets the attention of the audience, entices it to deeper engagement with some engaging anecdote or compelling question, then focuses attention on a powerfully presented phrase or sentence in sympathetic language, appropriate to the audience.

Many, if not most, aspies talk about what they are interested in, in the language they are comfortable with, without regard to the needs of their audience or the impact they are having.

At least, this is my understanding and consistent with the painful process I went through as a young adult in college, relearning how to speak and write so as not to piss off my professors with my complicated sentences and generally pedantic style.

agreed. I didn't mean they have good communication skills but that they usually don't have trouble speaking about their interest, even in the cases when it is mainly rote memorization.

Absolute obliviousness to contexts and the sorts of connections the rest of the world finds important are two good clues. As is having no idea where anything is, just heaps and mounds of papers, shoes, jackets, gloves, toys, etc....Most of what I remember of 4th grade, besides novels, was drawing forest scenes. Every branch, twig, leaf. Thousands of leaves. There was some sort of class going on around me, don't know what. It was a very long time before I understood that you could draw a credible tree without drawing every single leaf. And there was something stifling about it, but I didn't know what else to draw. Nobody bothered me, though, since I didn't act out much, was incorrigible anyway, and was reading novels written for adults. Did all right on tests when they came around because you could figure out from the test itself what the answers were supposed to be.

If you grow up like that, it's easy to conflate giftedness and AS, but I think we're a fairly small minority of gifted. The very bright non-artist people I meet are generally far more socially-directed than I am, much concerned with getting along, awareness of internal social rules and desires, etc. The ambitions are very much coming from a point of being part of a social body. It's much more common to meet a very bright artist who stands apart, but even there...no, a lot of artists, even writers, seem to be quite socially-oriented, always looking for communities of artists, doing things together, etc.

http://www.grcne.com/giftedAsperger.html

I was also mostly left alone to do my thing in class, because I always got high marks on tests and quizes. I was identified as gifted but they spent a lot of time on issues that I know understand are connected to ASD. It was the 1970s, though, and no one had ever heard of Aspergers. People hardly talked about autism then, and when they did it meant nonverbal kids who injured themselves, period.

So I was, gifted, but not misdiagnosed, just undiagnosed.They knew something was off, but they had no name for it and they did the best that they could.

The traits I listed were my traits, not asd children in general, and I was classic autistic child plus gifted

Very well said!
I can relate to the transition you have made.
It was exceedingly difficult to become aware of and overwrite my natural state.
Some individuals with ASD do not ever achieve awareness of these behaviors and how they are received by others.