What do gifted children and autism have in common? Well there can be plenty of commonalities and it could be one in the same.
When someone thinks of a “gifted” child they may think of a child prodigy, like someone who can write a concerto at the age of two. However, autistic kids have some amazing abilities that would put them into that gifted category.
Gifted children and autism create very special children indeed. My brother’s son is autistic and although it’s been quite a struggle for many things for him. There are certain things that simply come easy to him where many of us adults struggle. One of those things may be memory recall of numbers and places. Another one would be the uncanny ability to know the current time without even looking at a clock. Yet another one would be when you ask him what day of the week a certain date falls on 10 months from now, he would know the exact day of the week, and even when it’s a leap year.
His son, as with many autistic kids, simply loves music because they can associate with it. He has approximately 500 hundred CDs in his music collection and he has all of them loaded onto his computer. If he hears a song that is played on the radio that is in his collection, he knows exactly which CD number it is, and which track the song is played.
He can also hear any song on the radio, and immediately find it on a YouTube video. That is without searching for any lyrics to get the name or artist of the song. And he barely knows how to read yet.
There are numerous other stories of gifted children and autism including a recent news story about a young girl. When she was a toddler, she was pretty much unmanageable. She would just scream and throw tantrums. However, she too loved music. She was so gifted that she could hear a song and immediately go to the piano and play it note-by-note. That is an incredible gift and talent.
Through the years and through her therapy, she was finally able to learn how to speak. As she learned to speak, she also learned how to sing to the songs she so loved to play. Her favorite artist was Katy Perry and she loved to play Katy Perry songs on her piano. Although Katy Perry is a huge superstar, she has a heart of gold and has proven it many times. This time, she had the young girl come out and play her song on the piano and sing “Firework” where ultimately Katy Perry joined her on stage and sang with her. That certainly is any kid’s dream come true to have their idol sing a song with them.
Although these are only a couple examples of what amazing things autistic kids can do, it does give light of the fact that autistic kids can certainly have gifted abilities to share with the world.
