Disabled Voices Anthology by sb. smith

Author:sb. smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rebel Mountain Press

Community, Identity, and My Gifted Diagnosis

by Lys Morton

Content note: ableism, exclusion, descriptions of sensory distress/ overload, and brief mention of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and sexual assault

There’s this question I’ve been asking myself the last few years, as I explore disability, neurodiversity, and the activism wrapped in these communities. Where my role was in it all as I found myself shifting from ally to member of these communities.

This journey started off with me looking for adult voices for the kids I worked with in the private school I volunteered at so often they finally hired me. The staff around me talked routinely about how important role models and representation were for our students. So, I went looking for those role models. And found them I did.

It was jarring, to say the least, as I was faced with these role models telling me that the language we curated at the school would be doing more harm than good. Terms like “child with autism” did more to separate my students from chunks of their identity than to help them feel “more than just a diagnosis.” Telling our students that everyone in the class was “friend” wasn’t the best way to teach social boundaries. And that we really should be working with stims instead of against them.

In all the information these role models shared with me, I found echoes of my own struggles. And now I’m fighting with imposter syndrome, various levels of internalized ableism, and struggles with a diagnosis that few would consider a hindrance.

My gifted diagnosis has come with a fascinating parade of criticism trailing behind it. It’s been 16 years since I received the diagnosis at the ripe old age of nine, and I’m confident saying I’ve heard just about all the criticisms out there. Contrary to what others might think, my mom did not sit me at the dinner table every night, drilling flash card drills into my head. I do not think that a gifted diagnosis is a classist, racist, ableist term. It’s not just some “fancy” version of autism. And no, it’s not just a couple of extra points on an IQ test.

People focus on the idea of gifted people being prodigy-level geniuses so there are many facets of the gifted diagnosis that few people discuss. For example, childhood depression or the hypersensitivity that can manifest as sensory processing disorder (SPD). People see “talents” and not the massive asynchronous development that is directly correlated to being gifted. They want to talk about how quickly gifted kids pick up on things, yet they struggle to understand how that ties in with the near manic energy that pours out of the kid.

Thanks in part to this discourse, I was twenty when I finally learned that giftedness was more than high IQ points. I was already on my way to becoming an adult when I realized there was a reason why my fine motor skills matched that of the average seven-year-old. It took until my first year of university to come

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