Reply to Which is "worse", major ADHD or minor Aspergers?

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Reply to "Which is "worse", major ADHD or minor Aspergers?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You don't have a balance.  Your child is very young and you are already "expecting" him to go to an ivy league school.  Perhaps you are comforting yourself over his diagnosis with this idea but it isn't healthy.  [b]of course it is possible that he will end up at an ivy league school but it is very, very unlikely and your expectations will not help him and can do damage.[/b]
I did not have any parental pressure or expectations and I went to an ivy league school.  My children will not, I believe.  My NT child who is a junior has very specific, other plans and my DC with AS has not interest and, though very intelligent, needs a different environment.

Your parenting is not measured by where your children go to college.  [/quote]

I don't know why you feel the need to tell me that my expectations are "unhealthy" and will harm my child:  My child is young so why lower my expectations simply b/c of a diagnosis?    Like you said, it's far in the future.   There has been no indication why I should lower my expectations.  You seem to be saying that since my child has AS - I should give up hoping that he does as well as similar people in my family.

When DS got the AS diagnosis our developmental pediatrician told us to "lower our expections" simply b/c of the diagnosis.  While I respect and like our developmental pediatrician, I will "lower my expectations" when my child shows me that I need to lower them.  For now, DC is healthy and happy:  I measure my parenting by that.

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NP here. I haven't responded yet because I have such mixed feelings about what you say. I am also in a sort of similar circumstance, family history at Ivy League schools and a 2E kid. ADHD in my child's case. I also know that there are plenty of kids at every school with Asperger's and ADHD. One of them may eventually be yours--of course you can work towards that. I truly hope that your child experiences all the success you expect.

I did want to say, though, that I think you should be careful about assuming that life is simply easier these days due to the extra support. There are differences in the way school has evolved in general that can make things very challenging for a child with social issues. There is overall a greater emphasis, for example, on group work and creative thinking and explaining process, to name a few things that come immediately to mind. So my second grader, who can do incredibly advanced math computations in his head, might only get half credit because in the part where it says, "explain how you got the answer," he writes "because I know it." Other kids might get very distracted or anxious in group work. I know in class, mine gets totally lost in the word part of word problems, though at home he loves them. My child is working hard on these challenges and improving. In the long run, maybe these changes will make our kids more balanced and, if that is the case, then it is all a good thing. But where I think that in my math-facts/memorization-oriented grammar school of the 70s and 80s, my child would have really stood out as a powerhouse in math, he ends up as a fairly "average" student (really good at some stuff and really bad at others!). It takes testing and a very interested teacher to notice that he is very capable. He certainly doesn't think of himself as any kind of math prodigy the way I think a kid like him would have back in my day. All kids are different and yours may excel at everything. I just don't want you to assume that everything is the same plus more support.

My other more emotional reaction to what you are saying... I think it is always important, with any child, to have high expectations, supporting and challenging the child as needed. But, for me, part of the process of coming to terms with having a child with special needs has been adjusting in a profound way what I consider an expectation... and what I consider victory. I know that I celebrate moments and cherish experiences that are banal and meaningless to parents of typical kids. I am not a rose-colored glasses kind of person. I think that it is incredibly hard to be the parent of a special needs child but this--being given the opportunity to take pleasure and pride in, say, watching your child a child make a real friend--is one of the incredible gifts. And these moments have made me see some of my former expectations as banal and meaningless. I admit, I don't let go of them completely but, having been through so much with my child already, I honestly no longer care one bit where he goes to college. [/quote]

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