🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)Mar 24, 2023

@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

Show threadWendy Nather
@alice @axnxcamr @actuallyautistic @davep Kid in the “gifted” track here, diagnosed with #ADHD in my forties, parent of #autistic kid. I think everyone learns to do whatever works at the time, until they level up and it stops working. As a parent, I feel it’s my job to help kids acknowledge when they need a new technique, and point out that not everything works for everyone (“just make a list and check things off”). And don’t rule out meds. When something incredibly difficult becomes doable just 20 minutes after the right dose, it’s unconscionable to make kids struggle purely in the name of Protestant Work Ethic.
Nov 25, 2024 at 8:04pmWeb