I've got a 10-year-old at home. She's always saying, "That's not
fair." When she says this, I say, "Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. Your
family is pretty well off. That's not fair. You were born in America. That's not
fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair
for you."
Things get much more interesting in the sections on AD/HD and Asperger's children. As usual, I'm just pulling out the stuff that interests me. Quotes are in bold, my thoughts will generally be in brackets. Here we go:
- The rapid responding of some gifted children with AD/HD can result in meeting challenges spontaneously and with great passion. This may be the best thing to do, and many such actions have benefited others, but it may also be a disaster if the action does not really suit the problem and is more the result of impulsivity. For example, Martha was saving her allowance to go on a school trip. She also heard about a campaign to raise money for the local food bank, so she donated all her money to the food bank. When it came time for the trip, Martha had too little money to go. What she had not considered in her generosity was how she'd feel being the only one not going on the trip. Martha hadn't intended to miss the trip, and she didn't really make the choice to give the money rather than go. She just had not considered the consequences.
- Many gifted children with AD/HD are like Martha. They are compassionate and generous to a fault...It can also mean they are just as generous in early years with others' possessions as they are with their own.
- Some gifted children with AD/HD suffer from a real deficit in being able to understand and apply the language of feelings either to themselves or others, and only intense affect is felt or noticed.
- [Lovecky is concerned that violent video games desensitize AD/HD boys and make them even less empathetic. She worries that AS kids will never learn to be empathetic if they immerse themselves in violent games.]
- Gifted children with AS have difficulty with empathy, especially in the immediate moment. Attwood (1998) suggested that the diagnostic criteria that people with AS lack empathy should not be taken to mean that they lack completely the ability to care for others; rather, they are confused by the emotions of others and have trouble expressing their own emotions.
- While the literature does offer many examples of lack of empathy in children and adolescents with AS, it is important to recognize that some gifted children with AS are compassionate and want to help others, relieve suffering, and work for causes to aid animals and the environment just like other gifted children. [I suspect that many of the peculiarities of PETA's tactics are explained by the presence of many Aspie members with limited Theory of Mind abilities when dealing with human beings. Aspies not infrequently excel in forming an empathetic bond with animals.]
- Separate the teaching of empathy skills from the teaching of compassion. This will enable the gifted child with AS to focus more readily on the goal of caring about suffering. [Very good. While eventually these two strands should come together, teaching a gifted AS child abstract ethics and moral rules is quite different from teaching interpersonal empathy, where the child will need to learn to monitor interlocutors' non-verbal communication.]
- Because of their problems with intensity, behavioral and emotional reactivity, impulsivity, and sensitivity, gifted children with AD/HD have more difficulty than gifted children without AD/HD in learning to be tactful. To be tactful requires being able to put a feeling on hold, wait for an opportunity to act, think ahead about how to say something and think about the ramifications. With an impulsive style, this is almost impossible for the child.
- The literature suggests that children with AS have the ability to respond to moral precepts. Gillberg (2002) suggested that people with AS can appear quite undisturbed by the suffering of those near to them, but can be deeply involved in ethical, moral, and philosophical issues. Some also fight for particular causes. However, while these children have high moral standards, they can be rather rigid about their beliefs, and then make decisions based on these beliefs which may not fit the situation.
- Ozonoff et al. (2002) suggested that because adolescence is a time of ambiguity, especially in social situations, children with AS tend to develop rigid moral and religious beliefs as a way of coping.
- On the whole, people with AS are very much guided by rules. Once they know a rule, they will follow it.
- However, gifted children with AS may disregard rules they think are silly or that they cannot follow.
- [Asperger's kids are generally extremely honest and scrupulously avoid lying, cheating and stealing, although there is a subgroup of mostly high-IQ, impulsive Asperger's/AD/HD kids who are less honest and rule-oriented.]
- Some gifted children with AS have long memories for negative events that occur. They can obsess over the incident, bringing it up over and over and asking the same question each time.
