silveradept: Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown lays on Snoopy's doghouse, sighing. (Charlie Brown Sighs)
[personal profile] silveradept
[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]

Twice Exceptional is the phrase that I might have needed the most as a small child, Or perhaps, the phrase my parents and teachers could have used the most in their decisions to raise and educate me. The "bright" or "gifted" parts showed up early and obviously. The other bits did, as well, especially on the early report cards, but they had to do with emotional sensitivity and situations where being wrong was not only difficult for me, it could invoke teasing or other child-like behavior from others. At that point in time, ADHD (or variable attention stimulus trait) was still thought of mostly in the "hyperactive" form, of a child that acts out constantly, cannnot sit still, and otherwise lacks emotional and bodily regulation to become a classroom disruption for the other students. A smart kid with a few close friends and a few minor enemies doesn't fit that profile at all. Mostly, what happens there is that when it cane time to do reading assessments or practice, using those newfangled computers, I was given access to certain names applied at the login screen that would let me jump up grade levels and use different disks and reading exercises meant for older audiences.

There was one point in time where the condition might have been discoverable in grade school. My second-grade teacher noticed that one of her students was airways reading a book after she had passed out the worksheet and explained what to do with the worksheet on the blackboard. Since the assignments always came back to her done well, she assumed that student was taking the work home and getting it done there with the help of the student's parents. She suggested having that student tested for learning disabilities. (The truth of it was that i didn't need the explanation on many of those worksheets and was already doing the problems as she was explaining how to do them to others. I would be done with the worksheet by the time the teacher had turned around after finishing the explanations, and classroom rules were such that if you were finished early, reading quietly at your desk was acceptable. So I read.)

The tests came back "brilliant child," a difference than what the testers usually had to work with, and the opportunity was lost, because the testers didn't know that 2e was a thing, or that someone might manifest excellent academic skills and struggle hard with organization or social skills. It became such a cliché that elementary-school me specifically asked that "academic excellence" be left off the end of year awards given to all the students one year, so that some other thing could take prominence. What I got instead was "academic excellence and."

Well, if you're going to get typecast, even when you don't want it, you may as well play to type, right? And as someone who did well in the academic environment, with clear goals, deadlines, and boundaries, I set up systems to make sure that my work was always done and submitted with time to spare, worked on thoroughly while still freshly-assigned, and otherwise made sure I had backup systems in case something floated out of my brain to remind me when things were due and what to bring to class. The systems themselves didn't always work, because not all the time did things go into the systems so that they would output the reminders, but for the most part, the systems did work, and the instances of failure were opportunities for castigation and redoubling attempts to make the systems work again. And thus, it still didn't become clear what had happened, as I was thriving in my academic environment, after all, right?

Once I left the academic environments and had to work in the working world, and deal with people, and managers, and the expectations of someone neurotypical who thought they were dealing with someone neurotypical, who also thought they were neurotypical, that's when the problems started showing up, and within a few years, I had nearly gotten myself fired from my job because my manager believed I wasn't working up to her expectations, and I was routinely getting in trouble for not communicating well, for supposedly focusing more on things that she didn't think were appropriate, and for being rude to others by using what few techniques I did have at my disposal not to suddenly fall asleep during important meetings. Which caffeine did not help at all. It still took me several more years and a partner who understood what they were looking at, in relation to their own having the variable attention and the like, before I could get officially diagnosed. Also, understanding had advanced pretty significantly from the days of my childhood so that other types were possible and other symptoms than the loud, boisterous boy were considered as possible ways of having variable attention.

Getting diagonsed and getting meds has been very helpful to me. I still have all of my maladaptive reactions to when my variable attention gets me, even sometimes with the medication on target, because explanations are not necessarily excuses, and sometimes the way to get through a situation is to apologize profusely and self-flagellate. I have a better way of knowing what I need to succeed at things, and what to ask for when someone asks me to help with a thing or to take on a task that cannot be done immediately. And the meds do help for keeping the focus in place and moving from task to task, when it's necessary to do so. But there's still the young child who wants things to be easier and to have more structure in their life…or less responsibility, so that when the variable attention strikes, nothing big or terrible is lost by it. The kid who wants to be able to effortlessly excel at the things that are put in front of them and not to have to confront the things that aren't in their wheelhouse. The adult who is doing pretty good for themselves and holding down the fort is still unsure about whether they're actually managing it in this world, and is terrified that things will once again go off the rails because other people have stopped trying to understand and are instead trying to ensure conformity to a specific neurotypical way of work. Because the medication helps, not cures. You could probably hit me with a very strong dose of the medication, and it would still only help, rather than cure.

So, yes, I'm one of the growing ranks of the neuroatypical, and I'm managing the best I can, with the tools I have at my disposal. It's a community I might not have wanted to consciously choose, but since I'm here, I may as well make the best of it, and do what I can to help myself and others through their neuroatypicalities as well.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Silver Adept

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