autistic child with gift in one specific area

[theDudesmummy]

This is not a stealth boast and I am not one of these people who asks you what your autistic child's "superpower" is or quotes Rainman at you. Please hear me out, I am looking for people's thoughts. I am sorry it is a little long. Please give me your thoughts if you can.

I am the very realistic mother of a 13yo DS with autism and mild to moderate LD. Like many autistic people he has a very spiky intellectual ability profile. He is in a special school, and functions in some ways (e.g. language, social interactions with adults) well ahead of his peers, but in other areas (e.g. numeracy, peer relationships) he has significant challenges.

We have known for a long time that he has a good memory for things he is interested in (we know he can tell you what score everyone got last week on Strictly, what dance they did for several weeks back etc), but it is only recently that we have realised that he can remember some things to an exceptional degree. He has an interest in dairies and timetables, and likes to know my diarised activities (work and personal/social) and tell me what I am going to be doing every day. Recently we have realised that he actually remembers every appointment I have had for literally years back. When I say he remembers, he does not remember the date (in keeping with his poor grasp of numbers). He remembers where the appointment was, the title of the meeting, the names of all the organisations involved in each meeting, and can also triangulate and tell me who was present in any other meetings attended by each of those organisations. He also remembers exactly who was present at every social event we have attended, for years back, who came late etc etc. He remembers far far more than I do about my own past business appointments.

I don't know if anyone has watched "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" (I thought it was absolutely great by the way) but it features an autistic lawyer who has the whole statute book memorised. When she is depicted "finding" the information in her memory she goes a little glazed for a moment and pages are shown shuffling into place behind her head as she locates the correct text in her mind. He looks exactly like that, like he is searching through a text in his mind.

So, my question is, what can we do to nurture and make use of this ability? I am trying to think of a way we can help him to use it in life, work, education etc, to make sure that this, his one really exceptional talent, is not wasted.

I don’t have any experiential advice, but this is something I see coming up particularly in the US where they call it twice exceptional . They may call it that here too, I don’t know. If you haven’t come across that term it may be useful to Google it with ‘memory’ and see what comes up.

I think there are ways you can leverage this but you probably need to start with his interests and learning historic facts relating to those - take it as far as he can with books, wiki etc. It’s something that can develop and grow as he gets older that way.

Thanks, that is very helpful. I had not heard that term before and I will explore it. Unfortunately he is not really interested is reading books, history, or anything with much of a narrative. His interest is mostly in concrete discrete facts: who was there, what was their score, what dance did they do, who was late for the meeting, was all the paperwork available etc etc.

An example is that he "loves" Strictly (and the Irish equivalent Dancing with the Stars) but not in the way most people might love it. We watch it together every week, and both look forward to it all week, but he has not much interest in the actual dances. He barely watches them, if at all, he is buried in checking the stats on Wikipedia or copying out the Guardian's Strictly blog word for word while the dances are on. What he wants to know, and remembers seemingly forever, is what the scores are, who is top and bottom of the leader board etc.

I meant using books or online sources simply to get the data. Hopefully that term will open up some avenues to explore with people who know more about it.

Yes, that is a good idea. He does source date on the internet (not really in books, he is a high-tech only type of person), but it is in such narrow areas of interest and he doesn't really do anything with it other than quote it endlessly to us. I am wondering how to direct him in a way that is more useful! DH suggested teaching him to use Excel, which I think may be of some use...but he is not going to get the mathematical dimension of that.

I have found some resources already using that term, most are in the US as you say, but I now have some interesting reading at least. Thanks.