Coulda told me years ago, Dad...

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I was highly academically intelligent in grade school. So much so, in fact, my parents told me, that in the younger grades I left the class and went to the resource room because I already knew what the class was learning. Because I was too smart.

Yeah, that didn't sound right to me, either. Today I had the following conversation with my father. (Incidentally, my parents do not know, nor will I ever tell them, that I have been diagnosed with Asperger's.)

“Dad, why did I go to the resource room in elementary school?”
(Bearing in mind that they had always told me it was because I was too smart for the class. Which is partly true.)
“Because they felt that you were socially ret*d [WHOA! NEW INFORMATION!] but too advanced in other things.”
(Long pause.)
“If I was socially ret*d, why didn’t they teach me social skills? Why did they just teach me advanced schoolwork and computer skills?”
“Well, they can’t teach you social skills. I didn’t mean... socially ret*d. What they meant was, you wouldn’t talk to the other kids. You wouldn’t interact with the other kids. While they were playing, you would take a book and hide in the corner. They didn’t put you in an older class because it would have been even worse.”
“So... if I couldn’t even interact with kids my own age, there was no way I could do it with older kids who were my academic equivalent? So instead of putting me up a grade, they just sent me to learn on my own in the resource room?”
“Yes.”

Well, jeez, Dad. Coulda told me this earlier.

Maybe they should bump up kids and not worry so much about "their" (teacher's) perception on things. And yeah, he should have told you earlier! Parents!!

That seems to be fairly typical, at least it was when I was coming up. If you are exceptional in some areas but behind in others they place you based on your weak area, not your strong one.

Which is why they were going to hold me back and so my parents decided to homeschool me instead.

I comprehend. I was academically gifted, really quiet (way too quiet, like mute-quiet), and well-mannered. Thus my autism was not treated. Unfortunately, those with HFA &/or AS do NOT get treatment for this very reason. As if their 'condition' will just magically get better over time. Instead, the discrepency widens and the HFA/AS individual pays the steep price for non-treatment, which is tantamount to medical neglect. But justifiable medical neglect, in some 'professionals' or parents, or teacher's eyes.

What surprises me the most is that my dad's comments, along with those of my teachers on report cards all through school, paint a classic picture of an Asperger's kid. I understand that they wouldn't have recognized the problem - can't have been well-known when I was a child - but you'd think they would have figured out something was wrong. Or at least asked if anything might have been wrong.

How much can you explain away as stubbornness/wilfulness/antisocial/etc. etc.?

Doesn't help. I got tested with EEGs and everything they had available when I was in 2nd grade - but they hadn't identified Aspergers back then and not for another 20 years. So, I ended up getting stuck with kids "my own age" that I had nothing in common with because I was too smart but "weird", they didn't want to move me up a grade (or three).

At least yours tried to give you a positive reason. I was told that I was a bad child because I was smart enough to do the right things socially, and there was nothing "organically wrong" with me, therefore I was doing it on purpose.

I think it depends on the teacher. We have Primary schools in the UK and for some reason I got very bored with the direction of the class when I was about 11. For talking the teacher sat me beside the class dummy - who had been held back not one but two years - and left me there, ignoring my questions! She was a stern Dutch woman from South Africa and had very uncompromising opinons and tended to shout a lot at the children. I found this to be very intimidating.

About a month later the exams for the end of that term came. My reaction was to rebel and I made a point of spoiling the papers. She made me 36th out 36 pupils and treated me very badly. My parents complained to the school. The headmistress realised something was amiss in this sharp turn around in my grades, and took me aside and gave me a different set of exams and readjusted my rating to 2nd out of 36. Thankfully I never had to see that woman again, since I was moving up to Secondary School that year.

The irony of it is, that at home I was already studying Algebra, Geometry and Trig, and reading Voltaire and Dickens whilst my classmates where struggling with basic arithmetic and Spot the Dog.

Last edited by alienesque on 29 Feb 2008, 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Indeed, I was much the same showing very obvious symptoms of AS all through childhood. Today, I am a little angry that no one actually noticed!

My elementary school knew something about me was 'different', since I didn't talk much to the other students or have any friendships, had plenty of speech issues which I was thrown into classes for that, and usually sat in class with my head facing my desk daydreaming all day(and still getting good grades), but this was before Aspergers was even in the DSM-IV. They couldn't pin a label on me and threw me in special education classes(even sent a letter home to my parents saying I was mentally ret*d), even though I had math abilities well above those of normal students my age.

My dad's most recent words on this issue with yet another inquiry: "Have you seen that film with Dustin Hoffman? Well they thought you were one of those. I just thought you should know that."

*shrug*

Certainly explains a lot. He doesn't want to tell me any details, for whatever reason.



School? Daniel has the right idea: BURN THE SCHOOL DOWN

I grew up in a fairly small town and my dad was a teacher at another school, so my teachers knew whose child I was. We had a rotating school psychologist who identified me together with two other kids for sessions with her when I was about 10. When I told my dad about it he screamed "YOU TELL THEM THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!", which I told the poor psychologist in the same tone (my AS version of humor).

That was the only time that anyone reached out to me, while it was so bloody obvious that I'm in deep trouble. Both my parents are educators... When I confronted them recently about no-one noticing a thing, my mom said she just thought I was her quiet child and my dad apparently doesn't remember the above insident!

How do you not feel resentment.

Yeah, it makes you wonder, HUH? I mean Danielismyname speaks like he is the epitome of the bad that could have happened in such a case, but when I was in the lower grades, I went through whole years without really being exposed to any new information.

I went from someone that LOVED school to someone that HATED it. If you know the info, you SHOULD be allowed to leave class, I WASN'T! But the goal should be to LEARN MORE! Luckily, I had that option SOMETIMES, but that was rare.

Daniel said that in the early grades, he tested over genius level, but didn't get much smarter. Since the chronological age keeps climbing, your mental age has to keep going up. If everyone was exposed to more info when they were younger, ESPECIALLY if they wanted to learn, and weren't overwhelmed, they would probably be smarter overall.

I dont know what kind of symptoms I was showing. But I had a few trips to the Principals office and a few arguments with the principal as he was angry at things I said at school and I asked "What is wrong with saying that? It is the truth."

My report card had a lot of Cs as i was zoned out and bored in classes. Very ADHD/aspie stuff but when I was a kid noone even had heard of either. I was just a "difficult child".

School was always a difficult thing for me. For starters, I was teased a lot due to my obviously impaired social skills and my self-esteem went down, my grades along with it. I was always doing something wrong, and staying behind and plenty of teachers hated my guts which didn't help at all either. I've long since then recovered (although I do still cringe at my report card, despite As and Bs), but I wish I had some help before, else maybe I wouldn't have so many problems due to childhood trauma.

I went to a psychiatrist when I was 6. I don't know if I EVER REALLY knew why. My mother recently said it was because of SOCIAL problems! I KNEW I was shy, had problems, etc...

It is like people to FEIGN proper care decide to test you, and interpret THEIR perception, rather than to merely ask you, and try to help. That is like finding you can't read, and deciding to send you to a remedial reading class, rather than ASKING you and finding you just need glasses!! !! !

Yeah, I went through something similar -- therapy since age 7 because I was being bullied. No mandated therapy for the bullies, though.

Nobody ever explained to me how I was different, they just always told me I was "different", and as often as possible tried to put that in terms of being gifted, I think because they thought it would help my self-esteem. But I didn't feel "gifted", I felt like I was behind everyone else because there was so much I didn't understand. I didn't realize that academics came easier in some areas because almost nothing else came easier. I always felt stupid and like everyone else knew something I didn't, something that was so far beyond my comprehension that I could not even imagine it.

I mean, what "normal" gifted kid has a receptive vocabulary so bad that they don't know what the word "testing" means when taken for an IQ test? Or doesn't understand what they're being asked to do when told to do a report, until observing their assigned partner getting up and giving one, and then only getting a tiny bit of the idea, not the whole thing? Or always gets in trouble without having any clue why, and gets picked on in the exact same manner every day, with a predictable routine, yet goes along with it every single time even though they hate the results and hate being laughed at (like Charlie Brown running up and kicking that ball Lucy holds for him, when she pulls it away every time so he'll fall over, but he never learns from it)?

It just... boggles me. And not being told things doesn't help either. There was a lot about my childhood I was never told directly, and then it would come up casually in conversation as an adult and I'd go "WHAT?!?! Why didn't you tell me that BEFORE!?"