Intelligence is being able to approach a new problem, recognize its important components, and solve it—then take that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex problem. It’s about innovation and imagination, and about being able to put that to use to make the world a better place.
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Posted by
mobileman on 01/01 at 11:01 AM
Hello
Terrific article. Thanks.
My daughter Emily is 18 and was diagnosed PDD/NOS at age 5. Things were not going well academically or socially. Regular schooling failed to teach her to read until we took the task on personally with “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons”. Lo and behold she learned to read in a matter of just over three months. It was hard. I am sure it made her brain hurt. There were instances where mine certainly did. On a personal level this work done with her is my most meaningful achievement. Period. Now, Emily is somewhere on the scale consistent with Asperger’s. Although her high school curriculum was a modified program, she graduated this past June and received the Governor General’s Award for the highest academics in her graduating class of 35 students. It came as a complete surprise to all of us at her commencement a couple of months ago.
Having read endless studies and articles on the topic I can only conclude that your article is streets ahead of just about everything else out there. Parents have to realize that ASD children have tremendous potential and innate neuro-plasticity. It is hard work to improve their cognitive abilities and this can’t be done farming them out to therapists with potentially uneven skillsets or jumping on bandwagons with the likes of Jenny McCarthy.
Keep up the good work. Your article is an excellent guide.
Posted by
Terry Bollinger on 01/02 at 09:54 PM
This is very good. As someone who years ago reverted to using composition notebooks to explore challenging problems, I especially liked Point 4. Electronic media can make it easy to skitter and harder to think in depth about a problem. I was also surprised to realize that notebooks and a four-color pen made it faster, not slower, to capture and explore graphical interpretations of problems.
Posted by
leebert on 01/04 at 09:15 PM
This is excellent work, I’ve observed these fluid technqiues at my daughter’s school (brilliant & widely capable, she’s also in the spectrum in her own peculiar way). Note however the comorbidity of depression & spectrum disorders. Serotonin regulation to the rescue, drugs like Prozac are being found to also mitigate dysmenorrhea, even autoimmune disorders like coeliacs. And the entraining of amygdala & hipocampal neurotransmitters by SSRI & serotonin agonists in adolescence, even adulthood, can be long-lasting, well after ending a drug regimen. Likewise cannabinoids are shown to promote hippocampal & amygdala cell growth, improving cognitive function, memory and learning.
This is where science is pulling way out ahead of societal compassion. The ability to adapt to learning styles is a function of a compassionate society but is sorely lacking. Likewise medicine is making inroads into cosmetic neurology with nootropics, eugeroics - mind-enhancing noetical pharmacology.
We’re already in it - a cultural rush to enhancement and altered states - and yet the old culture is still engaged in a war against clumsy nootropics like marijuana, MDMA (ecstasy) & other marginally risky substances under the rubric of “abuse prevention.” Kava kava, a natural anxiolytic, was prematurely banned due to fears of liver damage (and yet acetominophen (Tylenol) and Choricidin remain on the market). Not all use is *abuse*. Should we now condemn e-cigarette manufacturers for fostering dependency, even if nicotine is found to forestall encephalopathies?
Moral quandary or neo-Puritanism? And are all dependencies necessarily evil? A lifelong dependence on aderol or ritalin might be a concern, and prudence is necessary, but the dependency is not evil.
I worked with the profoundly autistic years ago. On some rather odd occasions, our wards might find opportunity for lovemaking (obviously not sanctioned by us or the institution). What we learned was that autistic suffering and self-abuse were ameliorated after these trysts, but we couldn’t apply any lesson in some form of libertine allowance for conjugal relationships. It was both cruel and stupid, and yet there was no way for the society to budge to allow for the differences in needs and expectations with this population. As with the case of assisted suicide, a moral and ethical dilemma remains insoluble until society concedes that the alternative is actually worse. Questions of trust, ethics and abuse enter the picture, and yet abuse does not nullify proper use.
The overriding impulse of governance and education has been toward control and standardization. But research like yours show that a one size fits all approach is oppressive. We need to have the intelligence to listen to compassion out of an impulse to foster growth and happiness, not out of an impulse to enforce correctness out of fear of abuse.
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