Is My Gifted Child Autistic?

“I’ve done lots of reading. I’ve looked at the standard definitions. I listened to the niggles and ‘problems’ that different people  – my GP, a friend, my child’s teacher etc. have mentioned. I know my child’s quirky . . . But, is my gifted child autistic?”

Is My Gifted Child Autistic? yellowreadis.com. Image: Staring Child

It’s a question almost every parent of gifted kids I have ever talked to has brought up at one time or another (particularly the parents of highly to profoundly gifted children). And though it seems there should be an easy answer to this question – a quick test, a definitive way of putting a yes or no to this question, the answer is actually much, much more complicated.

Having travelled down this rabbit-hole for a long while now, I’d like take you on a trip into the world of giftedness and autism.

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Gifted and 2e: An Exceptionally Different Road

Gifted and 2e: An Exceptionally Different Road, yellowreadis.com Image: Green leafy ground cover

It can be easy to think of exceptions as things that need to be fixed, to treat difference as something that needs to be shoved back into the box (even while we laud the idea of individuality). But living with my fantastic twice exceptional little tribe has taught me a very valuable lesson: there is no path. There is no right way to do anything, and the exception can be just as beautiful and amazing as the more familiar way. Continue reading “Gifted and 2e: An Exceptionally Different Road”

2e in the Family – Loving the Alien in Us

One of the first things that you read about when you start to learn about what it means to be neurologically different, is that it can feel like being an alien, the veritable ‘Stranger in a Strange Land‘.

In our family, it was both a shock and a relief to realise that when we were looking for answers to why our children were developing outside of the box that we were also finding the answers for ourselves as well.
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Those 2e Eggs Just Keep On Popping Up

Those 2e Eggs Just Keep on Popping Up, yellowreadis.com Image: Toy pan with four toy eggs on wooden floor

You know, when I started this parenting gig, I didn’t really know a lot – hell, what parent does? There’s been highs and lows – the highs are really really high, the lows . . . let’s just say that the Mariana Trench has a lot going for it.

But somewhere along the line, I kind of got the impression that if my kids were hitting the milestones at roughly the right time, “all was well”. (The right time, of course was statistically figured out with a bell curve. They’re really neat and rather mathematically beautiful. I actually like them, as an idea).

Somewhere, in the depths of over eight years of overwhelm, the bit of my brain that used to sigh with relief when my kids hit those milestones exactly on time got rewritten. Now, when a nurse or doctor assures me that something is perfectly normal, just what they expected of child brain/body/whatever development, I go into full-fledged panic mode. Even though the maths part of my brain keeps reassuring me that my kids have to fall inside the middle of the bell curve for some things, another, perhaps more realistic part of my brain will go “you keep believing that if you like, buster, but I’ll be over here locking myself in the panic room.”
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