"Family": Far From the Tree continued

Autism, Schizophrenia, Disability, Prodigies

I continue to be pretty obsessed with this very long book. I have already brainstormed how to assign chapters from this book in future Psychology classes I might teach. Note: I don't teach them yet, that's just how badly I would like to teach anything where I can assign chapters from this book. It's that good guys.

Autism:
Of the identities covered thus far in this book autism presented some of the most complex conundrums. Many with severe autism are totally without language - at least language that we can understand. There is some evidence that many with autism do have the capacity for language but is is near impossible to express. This leads me to a meta-science question, how would we know if someone with severe autism has the capacity for language? How would we know? Previous chapters in this book have stressed how much social and verbal communication is vital to humans as a species, as established with deaf children, if not allowed to develop communication skills their intellectual development is delayed. Certainly a similar process likely occurs for those with severe autism but, then again, maybe their abilities are SO different that we would be unable to ascertain this. It's almost like if we tried to communicate with an alien species, how would we know what their capacity for language is? How would we know how to communicate? It is a bit of a stretch to compare kids with autism to aliens but the depth of the social disconnect for some individuals is very intense.

This chapter also illustrated I think how vastly difficult it is to parent children with autism. That's pretty obvious yes, but autistic children often do not express affection while simultaneously demanding huge amounts of resources. I cannot imagine the pain of these parents who quit jobs, spend their life savings, to see improvements to facilitate basic skills for their children like feeding themselves and then their kids can't show their love or appreciation. May not even treat their parent much differently from a stranger or a foreign object in extreme cases. Wow.

Schizophrenia.
Another "meta" question ran throughout this chapter for me regarding forcing psychiatric patients to take their medication. Clearly, many of these individuals suffer psychotic symptoms at a level that incapacitates them. But how do we know? How do we know when someone's mind is so plagued that they cannot make an informed decision about their treatment? We uphold individual rights (or say we do) at a high level in our culture, yet is it an unfair burden for those with schizophrenia? One parent quoted in this book, whose son was severely affected and homeless, describing allowing his son to go off and stay off his medication as slow suicide. And the connection between the closing of psychiatric institutions and rise in homeless populations is pretty well documented. So functionally, is being homeless better than being forced to take medication? Is the ideal principal one we can really uphold? I don't know.

Disability
This chapter was very similar in some ways to the autism chapter in that often the goal of these parents is not to obtain "normal" functioning - they don't ever expect their kids to be average - but basic self care and comfort. One of the controversies in this chapter was about whether to artificially stop puberty for severely disabled children (especially girls). I think this is a very intriguing and intense debate and one that I really can't take a side on. I find the idea repulsive at the idea level; however, I when I think practically about these families and how providing basic physical comfort can be such a challenge then I think that I can't have much of an opinion. The challenges these families based are so idiosyncratic, unique to the family, good lord there is no way I could say what they should do. I thought of a family I know who did take this option, because knowing that their daughter had the intellectual abilities of a much younger girl and had no verbal abilities, how would she feel when she began to bleed and have cramps? They presumed, I think correctly, she would be freaked out, uncomfortable, and unable to understand the experience. But at the same time, considering she could be a 20 year old with the body of a 12 year old seems repugnant, yet, the lifespan of these children is so short, is that really an important issue? I don't know.

Prodigies
A prodigy, for this book, was any child who could perform an ability at the level of an adult. This chapter focused on musical prodigies particularly. What was particularly interesting to me about prodigies is how much being a 'prodigy' requires facilitation from their adults in their lives. You can't be a piano prodigy if your parents never had one in the house and weren't ok with you practicing (at a minimum) five hours a day. And oftentimes, the children were acting out the fantasies of their parents, "living vicariously" seemed a common occurrence. I think that is likely because in very few cases were the parents themselves prodigies so they would have no understanding of the experience. Secondly, children reflect the wants and expectations of their parents. And there is really no way to separate that out once the kid has picked up on it - so again, how could we know what those kids really want? And just because they want it doesn't mean it is good for them. Kids want to eat candy all the time but we sure don't let them. It is a little facetious to compare to the two but there is lots of evidence that prodigies are often lacking in lots of skills, especially skills, because of the service to their talent. The complete focus or obsession on their talent is inevitably to the detriment of something else. So what things are worth sacrificing? I'm not sure the talents are inevitably worth it as parents often assume.

I have some personal perspective on this. I read at the college level when I was in the fifth grade and was in gifted education throughout most of grade school and on. Yet my education was still quite lacking, I can count on one hand the number of times I had homework in high school. And certainly in some ways I have regretted not having more educational experiences pre-college, mostly because I think I could have gotten a lot more of college paid for. However, I have still been very successful academically and often find I am more well rounded in my interests, in my social and personal life generally, than many of my PhD program peers. And for that I am very grateful as I do regularly though not often feel socially isolated because of my talents, I can't imagine how much more that would be had I been able to "exploit" them earlier and with abandon.