@axnxcamr @actuallyautistic

There's a real problem faced by "highly-capable" or "gifted" kids:

Things are easy for them, until they're not.

And when things get difficult, it's often because the kid coasted by on their IQ without developing the skills they'd need when things got more complex than they were able to brute-force with their brains.

I know this happened to me, and it's only as an adult that I learned more about why.

Autism is often co-morbid with executive function impairment and atypical sensory-processing.

Learning skills to help counter executive functioning issues and techniques to deal with over-stimulus when it comes to task completion can dramatically improve quality of life and burnout issues with tasks that suddenly seem to be too great to surmount.

Take this with some salt, I transitioned from psychology to computer science half-way through my college career.

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#Autism #ExecutiveFunctioning #ActuallyAutistic #Burnout

@alice @axnxcamr @actuallyautistic

Okay but YES SO MUCH THIS.

I was a 'gifted' child. Blew through school for years. 0% effort 100% achievement. And then I hit Grade 9 and everything went to shit.

I didn't know how to study. I didn't know how to research. And because I was 'gifted', nobody ever thought to teach me. I somehow flailed my way through college and into University, where I completely crashed and burned. I've never really recovered from those failures.

Add to that a mother with a 'no child of mine is failing classes so do better' mentality and it was hell. (At least once I got older and we started realising there's genuinely some Shit Going On in my brain she apologised and said she should've realised sooner as a teacher and she fucked up as a parent. That helped.)