On Being Gifted and Disabled

I am what is politically correctly called twice-exceptional: intellectually gifted and disabled. The combination of these qualities has thrown me for quite a few challenges in my life. Mostly, it is impossible for most people to see both my intelligence and my disabilities, so they expect me to be either gifted or disabled, not both.

My parents expected me to be gifted. They couldn’t deny my blindness – if they could, I’m almost certain they would have -, but they could minimize its impact and deny my autism. I was fine with that as a child, being quite poorly adjusted to my blindness and assuming my autistic behavior would go away as I grew up. So I learned to present as gifted, as genius. I calendar calculated aloud at family gatherings, and liked the praise I’d get.

The people at my schools for teh blind expected me to be disabled. I’m not sure how they managed to deny my academic ability, but for some reason, they denied it. I still remember in sixth grade the principal calling my parents in ecstasy about my high standardized test score. My behavior problems, daily lviing skills delays, and poor adjustment to blindness were magnified, and my academic achievement failed to impress my teachers.

The education system in the Netherlands is not equipped to meet the needs of people who are gifted as well as disabled. I – or rather, my parents – had to choose between an academically challenging education and a school for the disabled. They chose an academically challenging education, and found a psychologist willing to recommend mainstreaming at last. I struggled at every level other than academics, but till this day, my parents maintain that is normal.

The higher education system is theoretically equipped to meet the needs of those who are gifted as well as disabled, but as soon as you don’t fit into the standard programs, you are too difficult. That’s how I failed college twice.

Anotehr misconception that haunts those who are gifted as well as disabled, is the idea that intellectual ability is the same as being high-functioning, or that you are able to compensate for disabilities by being very smart. This misconception leads people to believe that I am either not truly intelligent, or can live independently without difficulty. Well, I wonder what academic intelligence has to do with housekeeping skills.

I internalized a lot of misconceptions about the twice-exceptional. I till this day struggle with believing I must not be smart because I failed university and independent living, or I must be able to go back to university and independent living because I am smart. In reality, my disabilities at this point prevent me from doing these things, although we can never be sure what the future will hold. That does not mean I’m not intelligent.

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Highly Intelligent vs. High-Functioning

The fact that I refuse to buy into “functioning levels” with regard to autism, says nothing about my recognition that some people have more abilities than others. In fact, every autistic is different, but there are some more obvious ways in which autistics can have better or worse abilities. Intelligence is one such thing.

I have a verbal IQ of 154. My performance IQ cannot be measured because I am blind, but there is no indication that it would be below-average. I am, therefore, highly intelligent. Fine with me if autism advocates, or anyone else, use this term to describe me. I don’t like my intelligence for various reasons, but I have it. Some autistics do not or appear to do not. I have never denied that

With regard to the term “high-functioning”, however, I have a lot more trouble when I see it used about me. This term connotes independence in areas of daily living and a relatively good outcome. I am not “high-functioning” in many common respects: I live in an instituttion, I cannot work, I have difficulty with leisure activities, I have meltdowns and self-injurious behaviors, to name just a few things. Ironically, I do not fit in with the “high-functioning” crowd in one other respect, which is the fact that most of their problems are presumed to be social, and I am in a relationship.

If you want to refer to me in debates, and you want to distinguish me from your autistic relative who presumably needs a cure, and if you care to do it accurately, call me “highly intelligent”, not “high-functioning”. Then, examine your prejudices about people who are highly intelligent, whom you automatically always assume to be highly functional in daily life.

The fact that I refuse to buy into “functioning levels” with regard to autism, says nothing about my recognition that some people have more abilities than others. In fact, every autistic is different, but there are some more obvious ways in which autistics can have better or worse abilities. Intelligence is one such thing.

I have a verbal IQ of 154. My performance IQ cannot be measured because I am blind, but there is no indication that it would be below-average. I am, therefore, highly intelligent. Fine with me if autism advocates, or anyone else, use this term to describe me. I don’t like my intelligence for various reasons, but I have it. Some autistics do not or appear to do not. I have never denied that

With regard to the term “high-functioning”, however, I have a lot more trouble when I see it used about me. This term connotes independence in areas of daily living and a relatively good outcome. I am not “high-functioning” in many common respects: I live in an instituttion, I cannot work, I have difficulty with leisure activities, I have meltdowns and self-injurious behaviors, to name just a few things. Ironically, I do not fit in with the “high-functioning” crowd in one other respect, which is the fact that most of their problems are presumed to be social, and I am in a relationship.

If you want to refer to me in debates, and you want to distinguish me from your autistic relative who presumably needs a cure, and if you care to do it accurately, call me “highly intelligent”, not “high-functioning”. Then, examine your prejudices about people who are highly intelligent, whom you automatically always assume to be highly functional in daily life. Oh, and, of course, don’t assume someone is highly intelligent in the first place just because they can write well.

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Autistics and Stigma: It Shoudln’t Be About Hidden Intelligence

Harold Doherty of Facing Autism in New Brunswick, in his most recent post, criticizes the assertion that the stigma associated with autism is fading. The reasoning behind Doherty’s view is that, while the stigma associated with Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioining autism may be fading – which, I might say, is not to say it doesn’t exist -, there is still a huge stigma associated with autism with intellectual disability. For once, I agree with Harold here.

Now Doherty continues to criticize Richard Grinker’s view that autistics may in fact be more intelligent than they appear. This view is in fact backed up by research: a number of autistics score higher on non-interactive tests, and this can make the difference between intellectual disability and normal IQ. But that shouldn’t be the point here, because it is also a fact that a number of autistics do not score within the normal range of IQ even on non-interactive tests. I do not know for certain whether Grinker denies that fact, since Doherty’s quote may be out of context, but if he does, he is denying a very real autistic experience, and he is stigmatizing not only autistics, but everyone with an intellectual disability, and, to a lesser degree, autistics who do not have an intellectual disability but are not as successful as Grinker may think autistics can be.

Eradication of stigma based on the condition that the stigmatized group prove they have enough in common with the majority, is not an eradication of stigma at all. It is the creation of new stigmas. If we want to deconstruct the stigma of autism, we should start by acknowledging that some autistics in fact do not conform to the shiney examples of success that make it onto TV, and that these people are acceptable. No amount of hidden abilities research will help the acceptance of the autistics who for one reason or another do not show these hidden abilities. Hidden ability research is good in order to find interventions or supports based on strengths, but it is not some kind of ticket to acceptance, because as human beings, we should not have to earn that ticket.

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Misconceptions About Autistic Abilities and Intelligence

Urocyon wrote a lengthy but very interesting post on abilities and the supposed loss thereof, especially in autistics. Even after multiple reads, I find it hard to digest all that she writes. However, I do already see quite a few misconceptions about autistic abilities, intelligence and “regression” that she addresses.

Firstly, people often suppose someone has lost a skill, when in fact they never had that skill, but they were never expected to have it, either. A lot of “regression” may in fact be explained by a lack of expected progress. To give just a tiny example, when I still lived in the independent living training home, I often found myself arguing over skills I’d presumably had before but no longer had. One of these involved the ability to plan a meal independently. In reality, I’d never done this and had always gotten help planning meals. What changed were not my meal planning abilities, but my staff’s expectations of them.

Changing demands can play havoc on one’s apparent skills on a very large scale, too. Just because I could easily plan for a test where I had to study 50 pages in high school, doesn’t mean I can plan to study 500 pages in college. In fact, I never planned for the 50-page study at all, but I need to if I need to study 500 pages. This may seem like a tiny example, but it is a big reason why keeping up with college academics is much harder than keeping up with high school academics, and I for that reason make a lot less progress at college.

Another misconception involves the idea that a high test score always indicates across-the-board ability. In truth, a single skill might enable a person to do well on a broad range of tasks at a certain age, when that same skill will not help a person as they get older. Amanda mentions in the comments that her IQ score dropped by half between the ages of five and 22. She attributes this to her hyperlexia, which enabled her to score in the 160s at age five, but wasn’t helping her anymore as an adult. Interest in and, hence, familiarity with the test items would also have an effect. For instance, I’m not sure I would still score as high on calculus as I did in childhood, because I had a special interest with it back then and haven’t in many years.

Changing environments can also influence apparent functioning. Put simply, if an autistic is in a too stressful environment for too long, they run the risk of burning out. I still find it hard to acknowledge that this overflowing happened to me in 2007, and I don’t use the word “burn-out”, because medically speaking that refers to very specific symptoms, which I didn’t display. However, I must admit that the change in environment from the training home to my own home, plus a lot of accummulated stress from when I lived at the training home, contributed to my psychiatric breakdown. It is of course possible that my self-esteem was ruined, that I was seeking attention, or any number of other explanations I’ve gotten from others, but you cannot simply dismiss the impact the change of environments had. It just wasn’t true that I’d always had the skills to live independently: until my institutionalization, I had always moved into less restrictive environments, and there was no way of telling beforehand whether I would be able to cope there.

As Urocyon highlights, all this becomes more complicated when you’re labeled gifted. Gifted kids are supposed to know better and be successful in almost every area. Furthermore, gifted kids aren’t supposed to lose skills. If you were once gifted, or scored as gifted on an IQ test, you should always display extraordinatry abilities. I find it somewhat ironic how a drop in measured IQ is seen as tragic when the child was intellectually disabled to begin with, yet as something unreal and impossible when the child tested as intellectually gifted to begin with. In both cases, a drop in measured IQ may indicate a loss of skills, and it may be an indication of a broader loss of abilities, but it may also indicate different developmental expectations, less familiarity with the test items, exhaustion, stress, or any other number of things. Similarly, if a person tests as highly intelligent, that may indicate they are actually highly intelligent – which does not say a thing about social, behavioral or daily living skills -, but it may also indicate they are just good at taking tests. There is no need to throw unwarranted and biased stereotypes at someone on the basis of a test score, even if these stereotypes are presumably positive.

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Thoughts and Feelings about Wanting to Accept Myself

Recently, Joel of NTs Are Weird wrote a post on stereotypes about successful autistics. Even though I already wrote a comment, I think I need to address this issue in a wider context in my own journal, since it’s been quite an issue for me personally and I’ve particularly faced it over this week.

I am intelligent. It was no surprise to me that, when the mental health folk who interviewed my parents, asked what I was interested in as a young child, my father immediately said “Knowledge”. I do not remember my very early years, but at age four or five, I taught myself to read. My mother stimulated me by creating books with very large print in them for me. At age seven or eight, I found myself explaining squareroot calcxulation to a 15-year-old acquaintance who had trouble with her math. At age eleven, I was fascinated with maps – studying as well as drawing them. I was also still interested in calculus, and could (and still can) do calendar calculation, albeit not extremely quickly. I remember one day about five years ago getting my mother into a “she’s so sublime” brag about me for doing this at a family get-together. I don’t know what’s so sublime about this, since anyone who bothers to learn the rules of how the calendar works and who has reasonably good calculation skills, could do it.

Of course, if you didn’t know anything about me other than my current ASD label, it would be fairly easy to write off all of these abilities as splinter skills. The thing is, they are not, even though I obviously did perseverate on these topics. I am in fact intelligent. My verbal IQ (performance IQ can’t be measured cause of blindness) has always been within the gifted range, and I did well academically in high school with relatively little effort. I will not deny I was (and still am) successful intellectually.

Arda has come to call my intelligence an impairment. Even though I don’t like the negativity in this wording, I can see where she’s coming from: because people know I’m intelligent, they will make false assumptions about my abilities in other areas. Since being labeled autistic, this fortunately has changed for the positive at least with people outside of my family or the autism community. That’s why I’ve only come to dislike my intelligence less since finding out I’m autistic, because when I now explain my difficulties and how people can help me, most will not assume I’m trying to excuse myself for being lazy. Some will, of course. One is my sister, unfortunately. She may not have meant it that harshly – or maybe she did, I don’t know -, but when repeating over and over again that I should “just try”, she really hurt me. I’ve been trying freaking hard for all of my life and I’ll continue to do so, but when I request help it’s not because I’m lazy or lack self-confidence, but because with that help, I can have a fuller life.

The problem is, you either acknowledge you have a problem and get to have your whole existence medicalized, or you prove that you’re good enough not to be medicalized and, by this means, lose your right to get help or services to help overcome your problems. Last Tuesday, I found myself caught between these two, when Arda wanted to write into my “care plan” that I “suffer from an autistic spectrum disorder” and my sister kept saying I could do much better if I just tiied. I asked Arda to correct the “suffer” part, and she did, but didn’t seem to understand the point. My sister kept repeating herself until I hung up on her. And here I’m sitting, caught between two stereotypes, neither of which I meet. I don’t suffer from autism, but the reason has nothing to do with how little trouble I have cause of autistic difficulties.

But, I must say, I am not a strong self-advocate, at least, not yet. I still realize I’ve pretty much internalized that line, where on one side you’re good enough to claim a right to be accepted as you are, as long as you stay good enough, and on the other side, you have the right to acknowledge you have difficulties, but you’re only accepted for who you would be if you didn’t have whatever people assume makes you bad enough. The thing is, I want to accept myself for who I am. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to change anything about myself, but that I want to accept myself as a person with strengths and weaknesses, who wants to develop her strengths and work on overcoming her weaknesses. Unfortunately, this is still a very fragile concept, and I’m beginning to believe no-one shares it. Man, was this whole stupid issue ever easy on Tuesday, when I did my writing for BADD. Not anymore. Now I’m using the same stereotypes and counter-stereotypes to prove to Sigrid that I do have difficulties and to prove to Arda that I don’t suffer from my ASD, while all I really feel is, God, I don’t want to choose between being good enough or bad enough, I want to be okay cause I’m me.

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More Thoughts on the Contradiction between My Intelligence and Behaviour Problems

Has this contradiction, that I wrote about this afternoon, always been there, and has it always been to the same extent? The first question can simply be answered affirmatively. Well, no, it can’t, since I can’t remember all of my life, but for so far as I remember, it’s always been this way. That’s exactly what the fights stemmed from between my parents and the schools for the blind. That’s why I was sent to remedial educationalist after remedial educationalist till my parents eventually had the answer they wanted: that I was good enough for regular education. Technically, they didn’t get that answer – they got the answer that I should be using the remainder of the 1998/1999 school year to sit in on regular ed classes to see if I could deal with that setting starting by August, 1999. It got down to five days in May and June after I had already been accepted unconditionally at my regular high school. But that’s not my point. My point is that the fight – the good enough for regular education vs. bad enough for low-level special ed debate, which, in essence, was a debate of whether I was intelligent or behaviourally disturbed – was going on even in 1997 till 1999. I had much less of a voice, in the figurative sense, than I have now, simply cause I was a child, but the same logic happened then: I only used my voice when I was the “good enough” me. I remember a discussion with a high school teacher on its open day in 1999 when I stretched the importance of a small school with only one educational level as a positive point. I meant it, sure. I never say anything I don’t agree with, and, when I’m “good enough”, the small school with one educational level is certainly an advantage. Somewhere, Cal Montgomery differentiates between impairment and disability and considers Bruce the embodiment of impairment while Mary signifies disability. A small school with one educational level was a barrier removed for someone with blindness as a disability, because it meant a smaller building to learn routes around and the possibility that teachers will get to know me quickly cause there simply aren’t so many. It did nothing to lessen my behavioural and social/communicative difficulties and neither did any other accommodations. Well, my tutor eventually, in the higher grades, did some “translating” back and forth between me and teachers and most teachers had significantly lowered their expectations of me by the eleventh grade as compared to the seventh grade, at least as far as behaviour is concerned. I held on in high school, of course. I managed to keep the “good enough” image at least, cause, of course, “good enough” doesn’t necessarily mean perfect. Yet I was still also “bad enough”. That never changed. I’ve always been both and it depends on which “expert” you were to ask which was emphasized and to what extent. My parents often told me I made their lives miserable and so did Sigrid. They’ve had all kinds of paradigms about that that I’m not going to go into now, since I’ve done so many times already. See this entry for an overview.

Has the contradiction always been equally noticeable? I don’t think so. I’m not sure why this is, but there are several factors contributing to it, I think. The first is that it was never acknowledged. In elementary school, I was mostly behaviourally disturbed. My parents knew I was intelligent and stretched this, but everyone knew I had behavioural problems. It was in this context that the only situation in which my parents accepted help for my behaviours happened. It was pretty useless – four completely worthless sessions of play therapy when I could’ve been in biology class in 1996 -, but it was there. I know that my parents were talked into consenting by the school social worker, but I don’t know whether my parents’ self-determination was just less than it was a year later when they resisted the 1997 report to that same social worker, or whether my behaviour was truly so bad that even my parents thought I needed help. Later of course, they never denied that I had problems with behavioural/social functioning. All they said was that it was more important that I’m intelligent. Yet I was the behaviourally disturbed kid and I don’t think I was seen as pretty much anything else. My parents used to treat me as if the intelligent girl was hiding behind the behaviourally disturbed one, cause they never seemed to get it that they were using the same mistakes the school was: to assume that a behaviourally disturbed kid can’t be intelligent, and vise versa.

Then in high school I was the intelligent one. I remember the time, in early 2002, when “I don’t understand” was almost as big a part of my vocabulary as it is now. My father told me I’d have to use my analytical intelligence to think out solutions for those social/behavioural problems and got really pitiful when I told him I couldn’t. I also remember the time in the tenth and eleventh grades, when my tutor was desperately trying to get me to adopt social skills. When I told him that I didn’t understand, he explained the situation that got him or someone else to criticize me and I said I would think better about how I behaved. I did think, and yet I didn’t understand, but I didn’t have to as I still got high marks in school.

What’s my current situation? No-one can deny I’m intelligent. I am, after all. This is not by the grace of some IQ score, but by the fact that I graduated from high school, am now in college and can talk politics on a level most staff don’t understand. And yet I’m behaviourally disturbed. I have major word-finding problems in some situations, if I don’t get completely “locked up inside”. I had these problems in high school, too – well, the complete “locked up inside” stuff, the word-finding problems emerged when the complete “locked up inside” stuff decreased slightly last spring -, but practically, it didn’t cause major problems cause my tutor, father or sister was there to clarify, simplify or solve a situation for me when I failed. I have major temper tantrums where I may get aggressive. These have increased in severity over the year 2006, but have always been there to an extent and have been much more severe than they were in 2006. I think the practical/social demands on me are heavier than they were in let’s say late 2005, which might in part explain the increase. This was a part of my problems that I could never really deal with effectively, but it was still either brushed off or laughed at or screamed at or all of this. Sure I was told I was a retard, autistic, psychotic, abusive, a bitch, and all sorts of other things. It never changed the way I behaved – because simply punishing (or ignoring, which also happened) bad behaviour will not teach someone good behaviour. At least not me. I remember a parenting program on TV a few months ago in which a five-year-old boy was constantly screaming and whining whenever he wanted his mother to do something. The psychologist advised the mother to ignore the behaviour and suddenly the kid began to ask questions, which was of course reinforced. All great, but I still wonder how that kid learnt to ask the right questions. I’m still having trouble with that at age twenty and that’s anxiety aside.

Sometimes, I think I’ve gotten a lot worse in this past year, and sometimes, I think I’ve not really gotten worse at all. The contradiction in my functioning is more pronounced than it used to be, but that doesn’t make it any more or less real. I, personally, have a lot of difficulty answering that question from last week: if all my problems had been going on for years, why was I now in mental health? My answer is really that I would’ve been there three years ago if I’d had the skills and knowledge to take the initiative. My behaviour may’ve gotten some worse in 2006, but I’ve also needed to meet higher practical/social demands as well as academic ones and I still notice that I’m sort of in the position that started by late 2004 when I feel I can’t hold on anymore. I thought this should be over after two years, but probably it still is not.

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Thoughts on High School and College after Reading an Article on Twice-Exceptional Children

I was just reading an article on challenges faced by twice-exceptional children, that is, children who are intellectually gifted yet have special needs. The article holds a lot of significance to the issues I faced in school – and those I’m facing now that I’m out of school and trying to plan for the next so many years.

The author highlights the fact that often, children who are twice-exceptional, can compensate for their difficulties so well that their problems get unrecognized till they come to a point where they hit the wall and all their compensatory skills fail. With me, of course, it’s been the other way round for many years – I was thought to be unintelligent by the schools for the blind cause my emotional/behavioural difficulties were so obvious that they were masking my intellectual ability -, but I have felt for a long time that there was a pendulum effect going on here: that, starting by 1999 when I left the school for the blind and went to regular high school, I was supposed to be doing alright. This was only agravated by the fact that I did get high marks in the early grades – and later also got above-average marks if I tried hard enough. Ir remained unrecognized that I was using my ability to learn quickly and without much repetition to compensate for both my intrinsic academic difficulties – never reading faster than 95 or so words per minute (which may be slow but not extremely slow for a braille reader) or having more difficulty conceptualizing graphics (which may not be “normal” but was an issue for me), for instance – and the problems due to accessibility issues, such as getting books rather late or not having films described (which never happens here). That in itself does not matter – it doesn’t matter how you achieve something, if you achieve it -, but it does matter that compensating takes a lot of energy and even then may be failing, for instance, when you can’t get around graphics or when you’re dealing with material that isn’t often read repeatedly, like works of fiction for language classes. Of course, I’m willing to pour extra energy into things I feel are important or that I’m interested in – I mean, I considered (and still somewhat consider) majoring in American studies, which involves a lot of fiction reading -, but I refuse to buy into the idea that we as people with disabilities are obligated to pour extra energy into everythiing. We are, in order to achieve an equal position to the non-disabled, but no-one can require a person to get a Ph.D. solely because he or she has the intelligence to – and whether that person has an identifiable disability or not, doesn’t even matter, although some people within the disability communtiy would like us to believe it by for example calling the blind “college-bound” without realizing that only 25% of the general population have college degrees. It is one of these concepts I have a lot of difficulty with, having seen in the last eighteen months or so that I do have limitations – whether that is normal for a blind person with my IQ or not -, and sometimes it makes me want to drop any effort at ever getting a college degree or becoming employed in a challenging job. I know that I want that degree and that I don’t want to get a low-level job or live on disability for the rest of my life, so I still pursue the goal, but I pursue it because I want it and not because I would be a shame to the entire blind community if I don’t. Or at least, that’s what I say, but within me of course there are still the one who wants to prove that she deserves the Competent Blind Adult degree (which I don’t) and the one who has had enough of compensating and just wants to sit on her ass. However, I know I can help both by learning to be truly realistic about my situation – that is far more than my intelligence and my blindness combined.

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Myths about Gifted Students

In this fact sheet some common misconceptions about gifted students are being addressed, that make quite a bit of sense to me.

1. Gifted students are a homogeneous group, all high achievers: Even though I have always been a high achiever academically, I know many gifted students who were not. When I think of the people in my seventh grade gifted programme, I see no lower rate of school drop-outs or those repeating a grade than I do amongst others in my seventh grade class. Now that is still quite a selective group, since we’re all at a high level high school, but it’s just to illustrate that one’s intellectual ability doesn’t equal academic achievement.

When learning disabilities like dyslexia complicate the situation, as was the case with many of my fellow gifted programme attendants, the situation may even be more difficult, since then the student may be able to achieve academically, if only he has the ability to access the material in a way where he isn’t hindered by his difficulties.

2. Gifted students do not need help. If they are really gifted, they can manage on their own: I so hate this idea. It presupposes that if you are gifted, you automatically possess all the knowledge that you need. Granted, a person is generally recognized as gifted by the grace of his performance on an IQ test, and IQ tests often include many questions of knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that a gifted student always automatically acquires this knowledge. If he doesn’t have access to information, he simply won’t. That’s been quite an issue for me throughout elementary school: I wasn’t challenged academically in school, and cause I am blind I had limited access to information, so most of what I learnt, I learnt from what my Dad told me or from a children’s audio magazine I was subscribed to.

And that’s only speaking of academic knowledge. I won’t go into all those other issues, since then I’ll be creating a ten-page rant on the “intelligence equals capability” mindset and how it’s been troubling me over the past several years.

3. Gifted students have fewer problems than others because their intelligence and abilities somehow exempt them from the hassles of daily life: Sometimes, I think the contrary is true. When you have high intelligence, you often understand much more of the “big issues” at a younger age than your peers do, but that’s not to say that you can handle it. A five-year-old, intelligent child may not be bothered as much by “simple” things (if that’s true, I doubt, but suppose it is), but she is likely more disturbed by the big problems like death or poverty, cause she can understand these issues better than her average age peers can. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not fun watching the news and understanding all the big stuff that’s going on in the world but not being able to handle it emotionally cause at age six you haven’t had enough experience to place the issues in context.

4. The future of a gifted student is assured: a world of opportunities lies before the student: Should I really go into this? I hate that “intelligence equals success” viewpoint, and it’s still far too prevalent. I’ve gotten increasingly frustrated by this idea, now that I’m seeing once again (after 1998) that I’m not going everywhere smoothly.

5. Gifted students are self-directed; they know where they are heading: I don’t know exactly how to interpret this, but if it is to mean that gifted students know exactly what they want and can direct themselves to this goal without encouragement, it’s most definitely false. The part about knowing what they want is false, since many gifted students have a myriad of interests, so their ideas of what they want may change rapidly over time. And they’ll most certainly need direction in how to achieve their chosen goals, since they cannot be expected to have all the knowledge required to reach their goals without help.

6. The social and emotional development of the gifted student is at the same level as his or her intellectual development: Of course, I’m deeply touched by this misconception. It’s so prevalent among the general population, that I’ve often been extremely misunderstood for having problems with social and emotional development while I’m so intelligent. Either you acknowledge I’m intelligent, or you acknowledge I have these problems – both is almost impossible. As a result, oftentimes I’ve felt my problems being ignored cause people wanted to have my intelligence recognized, or in elementary school I felt my academic ability was invalidated cause people couldn’t believe I was intelligent when I had clear behaviour difficulties.

7. Gifted students are nerds and social isolates: This is an overly generalized statement. While it fits me in some ways – although I would not consider myself a nerd in the traditional sense of the word -, it probably doesn’t apply to every single gifted student, just like it’s impossible to make such assertions about every student of average intelligence.

8. The primary value of the gifted student lies in his or her brain power: Intellectual/academic ability used to be the only positive quality I could make up for myself before I thought about my creativity – hmmm, is it really weird that I can only think of two positive and one negative qualities of mine? -, and I like that one much more. Because intelligence is so oftentimes distorted to lead to stupid expectations, I’ve come to hate the fact that I’m allegedly so intelligent, even though I still list it as a positive quality (more cause everyone else does, than cause I truly think it is). However, in all times when I felt I was lacking significantly in some areas – like in the second half of ninth grade and in most of this year -, I’ve considered my artistic/literary qualities much more likeable than my academics.

9. The gifted student’s family always prizes his or her abilities: Mine did and does, but that’s probably cause I come from an educated family. If I came from a family of athletes, that’d probably be valued much more and people may not have validated my intelligence. Also, asynchrony in the child’s development may contribute, since when the child has many problems in other areas, her academic ability or intelligence may not be recognized or acknowledged.

10. Gifted students need to serve as examples to others and they should always assume extra responsibility: Well, if a student is ahead of the rest of his class, he may be expected to help other students, for instance, but it makes no sense to expect extra responsibility out of a student just because he’s more intelligent. “You have to be wiser and stand above this,” is a comment oftentimes made by parents to the oldest child in sibling arguments, and this may apply to a certain extent for intelligent students. Again, asynchronous development may be troubling this.

11. Gifted students make everyone else smarter: Of course, a gifted child may be able to help other students, but that’s not to say that in this way, the others will become smarter. The others may acquire knowledge they did not previously have, but if you equate this with becoming smarter, you can also say that teachers make students smarter. It’s true, in a certain way, but not totally so.

12. Gifted students can accomplish anything they put their minds to. All they have to do is apply themselves: All these remarks so push my buttons. It’s that old-fashioned expectations thing again, and it makes me feel so frustrated. This is a different sort of issue than that with blindness, since it isn’t society’s general attitude that blind people are high achievers – it’s the contrary that we, according to some philosophies, have to defeat -, whereas in general people believe intelligent people to be achievers, and it’s the gifted population that’s trying to get rid of this stereotype.

13. Gifted students are naturally creative and do not need encouragement: Of course, gifted students do need encouragement in being motivated or challenged. With regard to creativity, it probably depends on how you define “creative” and it also depends on the person.

14. Gifted children are easy to raise and a welcome addition to any classroom: Gifted children are oftentimes difficult to raise and may be a challenge to classroom teachers, for they often require a different approach than other students or children. They are often more intense, more sensitive, and more easily bored, so parents and classroom teachers may have great difficulty keeping up with them.

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Does Intelligence Equal Success?

Yesterday, I had a terrible argument with my parents, cause they want me to visit Grandma on July 3, which is her birthday. That’s not the problem – I don’t really enjoy visiting this Grandma, but it may be her last birthday, so I can imagine she wants to see us. I’m not sure that I could handle it if I didn’t visit this year and she would die before my having another chance at visiting her. And I don’t even mind that my uncles and aunts will be there. They’re all buggers, and I’ll have to endure some very dumb conversations, but okay, it’s only once. The one thing I always try to keep Mum from doing when we visit this Grandma (it’s her mother), is from showing off about my “genius”. I remember once a few years ago when Mum kept saying how I was so sublime over and over again. I just hate that, for it is making my intellectual or academic ability my one and only defining characteristic. And there are no people so eager to cheer at my oh so great excellence than my mother together with Grandma and the aunts and uncles. At times, I can make Mum refrain from emphasizing it too much, or when Grandma visits I just go to my room and check on her only periodically. But now I can’t do that as we’re visiting her, and I can’t stop Mum from showing off about my academics, cause I’ll just have gotten my high school diploma.

I have no problem with praise about my academics. The other Grandma is also proud of me for graduating such a high level high school. And yet why I love to show her my report cards and diploma, and I hate to do the same for the other Grandma, is cause when I’m there, Mum, Grandma and the aunts and uncles are all going to make academics my only quality. It’s a positive quality, indeed, and universal praise seems to e to be better than total criticism, but why is it always for this?

It’s cause it’s my only positive quality. That’s not completely true. When asked about it a few months ago, I named my creativity as another positive quality, and, to be honest, I like that one much more than my academic ability. But when one’s creativity is praised, it’s not usually made their only characteristic. No-one is ever being said to be “sublime” just because she’s creative. But intelligence is valued much too high in this society, and someone with a high IQ is often said to be excellent, as if he were excellent at everything. Even the educational profession, who are getting increasingly aware of other areas of development, equates intelligence with ability. On a report in 1998, my social/emotional problems were pictured by saying they contrasted with my age and certainly with my intellectual ability. I hate that general value being placed on intelligence.

When I was younger, I used to like it. I was proud of my knowledge, and was eager to help a fifteen-year-old acquaintance with her maths while I was only eight, and to calculate unimportant days for people who so liked my calendar calculation ability. I probably at the time thought I was better cause I was smarter. Now I don’t anymore, knowing that it takes a lot more than intelligence or academic ability to make it in life. I still get remarks like: “You won’t have any difficulty there, cause you’re so smart.” I know they’re not true. Probably they originate in the same troubles as my feeling that people who are social, independent or whatever, will most certainly be successful. Amongst the general population, the equation of intelligence with success is much more prevalent than any other, even though it becomes increasingly known that it takes more than intellectual ability to be successful. Yet why is it that when you have a disability, all other skills suddenly seem to be more important than academics? Dad would say that I’m “handicapping” (ie. falsely connecting the issue to blindness), but if intelligence is valued so much everywhere and yet anything but intelligence is valued in the blindness field, what does that signify?

I don’t think that blindness makes the difference, though. In all articles about such issues as career improvement, personal development and the like, things like interprersonal capacities, communication skills, and general appearance (how you come across, not just one’s looks, of course) are always highlighted. These are the truly important things, and hence the things the blindness field is involved with when considering what skills a person needs in order to be successful. Intelligence, I think, is merely something people can envy one another about. It is something you can’t train, beyond being able to go to college or university or the like to get higher education. People seem to assume that it is much easier to learn everything other than academics. You can become more sociable, communicative or the like, but you can’t acquire higher academic ability, they seem to think. Do I have to agree? You can’t become more intelligent than you are, of course, I will readily admit, but is it truly so easy to improve your capacities in another area? You can’t easily alter your personality, can you? In this way, isn’t intelligence of the same sort as sociability, communicative skills, and the like? You can learn new things, yes, but you can’t improve the part of it that is set in your personality. I know not ultra intelligent people who got university degrees by starting at a low level high school, than moving on to a higher level, than to the high level I’m on and then going to university, so it is possible. And yet still people value intelligence more than anything else. Is it merely envy? I think it is, but I hate it. I know there are extremely intelligent people who end up with very “low level” jobs or no jobs at all cause they were lacking in other areas. And everyone says that it’s a pity cause they are so intelligent. I’ve never heard anyone pity a not-so-intelligent but sociable and communicative and the like person who ended up with a “low level” job, cause they were so socialbe and communicative and the like. I don’t think I quite understand why all career perspective writings place so much emphasis on one’s communication skills and the like and all people think that intelligence equals success.

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“Asynchronous Development”

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share this issue with you that I’ve been dealing with for a long
time.. I was officially identified as gifted at age 12, although my parents
had suspected me to be much before. I’ve also been said to have problems
with other areas of development from the time I was a little kid on, eg.
difficulty socializing, being very easily frustrated (and when I am, I make
weird movements like spinning my arms and biting my hands), behind in daily
living skills (also in comparison to other blind/VI teens) etc.. I first
realized this as MY problem (not my parents’ or anyone else’s) when I was
around 11 (I’m now 17).

Lately, I’ve had more difficulty with this issue than I used to have. People
now often use my intelligence in ways I don’t like. My parents for instance
have always used it to indicate that I’m a “superkid” (which I’m not), but
when they showed off about my intellectual capacities I just let them..
although I found those sayings carried more expactation than pride with
them.. And I don’t really mind people starting to call me intelligent and
then going on that there’s more than that and talk about difficulties of
mine (I really appreciate people addressing them cause I know I eg. need to
become more sociable etc). What really makes me feel very bad, is when
people (which at the moment is the most common use of my intelligence) refer
to my intelligence to indicate I should be able of something or understand
something.. That makes me feel as if giftedness is something I should
compensate for or that it means I should be above-average in everything else
rather than it being an advantage.. I know I’m not sociable and that I’m
behind in daily living skills and I know this doesn’t “fit” my intelligence,
but please, I’m not faking it.. I just don’t understand certain social
situations and can’t do certain things and I wish I could scream: “Please,
explain it to me instead of shouting that I am so intelligent so should be
able of this!” It makes me feel as if there’s nothing I’m good at nd that
the only thing I’m good it carries more expectation with it than that it is
an advantage…

Lately I read Stephanie S. Tolan’s article Giftedness as Asynchronous
Development and I completely recognized it. It’s soo difficult to function
on sooo many different levels at once… It makes me sooo frustrated…

Sorry for this very negative topic..

Astrid van Woerkom

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