"But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can end up diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. This is particularly true if you’re bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking. As I came into my adult personality, it became clear to me and my mother that I didn’t have Asperger syndrome, and she apologized profusely. I forgave her, after about seven years."
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Thank you for sharing this.
My son was indeed misdiagnosed under the "spectrum," yet I knew to my core that he was in fact being dismissed for his atypical, but gifted, development.
Consequently, I in turn dismissed "the experts" and helped my child even-out at home my (our)own way by spending time with him, teaching him. He was autonomously reading and comprehending complex written language at age two (2), and fluent in the "language" of spatial relationships, yet he did not begin to process spoken language or converse until age (6). These developmental differences were dismissed as being indicative of "autistic markers" and we were sent on our way with recommendations for special schooling and more "experts."
It has been my experience that so many "experts" like to conveniently box children into nice neat categories, pontificate in generalities, and capitalize on the mystical respect we as a society are blindly programmed to give them as health professionals. Essentially, such people diagnose to justify their own degrees. I did find one PhD who was exceptional and pegged my son for being gifted, but the many that I encountered not only severely lacked what I think should be the requisite academic inquisitiveness of a person given such power, but they also did not have children of their own and were thus incapable of knowing the variability of day to day development.
Most importantly, they gave no credence to the input of me as the mother. I too was dismissed and seen as being in denial. This was a very difficult hurdle to overcome, both in the system and from within. The pressure was so great that even with my resolute position intact, I still began to have moments of self-doubt. The reality is that I would have been perfectly willing to accept any issue my son had to deal with, any diagnosis they made, had it been correct.
I wish I could show them my kid now...he is, as you say in your blog, a proud nerd, who has earned academic honors, and has all the human qualities they said he could not have...insight, emotion, empathy. He is doing just fine.
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