I first heard the term “asynchronous development” in a book called Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, Depression, And Other Disorders. I found this book rather by accident: I was ordering my tangible, touchable, lickable copies of the first two MBT books along with a second copy of my favourite book on Asperger’s in the whole world (Kitty wants a copy and I promised to purchase it for her). It turned out that alibris.com was the much better deal as a seller there had all three in stock (the total was about $10 less than amazon), and I glanced at the reccomended books before checking out. This book was on there.

I am not the sort to buy books before I’ve read them. I place great value in libraries, and tend only to purchase books I like enough to actually wish to reread or reference. I checked the local library system, and it was in stock at the Churchville branch, so I finished my order and headed over to Churchville (the libraries have been losing items between branches lately, so it was easier to drive 15 minutes myself).

Despite having been identified as ‘gifted’ in school, I didn’t know very much about gifted education–how it could be done, what type I had had versus other types, or even how I had been tested versus other tests (though I happened to have a copy of the paper verifying I needed gifted services, so I was able to find this information). This book was helpful in pointing me in the right direction: Hoagies’ Gifted and SENG. The rest of the book was mixed. The opening chapters on gifted theory, especially the introduction to the concept of overexcitabilities, were very good, but the section on Asperger’s was pretty craptastic (1).

So, asynchronous development. It’s this idea in the gifted community that I’d never heard before–keeping in mind that I work in a kids’ psych hospital and am a semi-active participant in the autism community. Giftedness is thought of as developmental acceleration, but kids can be accelerated at different rates for different things, and not at all for some things. So a child of seven, in 2nd grade chronologically, might read at a ninth grade level, do math at a fifth grade level, and have 2nd grade social skills. Her development is asynchronous.

This is, naturally, frustrating for everyone involved because you want to challenge the child, but when her social peers are her own age, but they can’t keep up mentally, and she is socially unable to keep up with her academic peers in any of her advanced subjects, it becomes difficult to educate such a child in a traditional setting.

I would like to propose the autism community begin to use the concept of asynchronous development. It is an easily understood, non-judgemental, and quick way to describe a person’s functioning level while remaining respectful of their skills and adaptations. This would be a much better shorthand than the currently used “mild/moderate/severe” which tend to imply “possibly can improve/work very, very hard/there is no hope” and are discouraging for parents and autistics alike.

I’m going to try to come up with a set of scales, but I could really use a researcher to work with me on this. Anyone know anyone? Children’s scales are the easiest, of course, because you can rate against other children of ‘typical’ development. But I think we can formulate an adult scale as well, with different criteria.

There is also the idea in the gifted community which would be helpful to bring over into the autism community of different paths of development. Giftedness perhaps should not be thought of as accelerated development at all, but as a different way of developing that looks accelerated compared to peers as children. Intellectual giftedness involves deeper ways of thinking, leadership giftedness involves an outstanding ability to be a leader that is a life-long skill, musical giftedness is lifelong as well. These talents all begin with earlier skills in childhood, but also quicker learning and more depth of learning. The gifted inevitably perform with a deeper understanding, whatever their field.

If we can stop conceptualizing autism as developmental delays, but instead begin to think of it as a different way of thinking and being, I think it would being a positive change to to lives of many autists. The social skills of those on the spectrum are only delayed for a handful of years before, realistically, they ought to be called ‘divergent’. Our social skills are certainly developing, but not in the average, NT way! Now, yes, some developmental delays associated with autism probably should stay under that label (things like toileting or other ADLs). But communicating and social interaction are major hallmarks of ASDs and often cited as “delays” when they are really just different developmental paths altogether that those on the spectrum might take.

It is also important to remember that one can simultaneously be on the spectrum and be gifted. This lovely asynchronous development makes it possible; it sometimes makes life even more frustrating, because you can write 1280 word blog posts about your current topic of interest and forget to eat food all day, but, you know, I don’t think I would choose to be any other way.

1. I actually have a good idea of why this was, and expect you to go read the link on overexcitabilities and then come back here, if you don’t already know what they are/haven’t been exposed to my excited rambling. Open a new tab, I’ll wait.

So, the authors of the book put forth a few times that a kid with psychomotor and intellectual overexcitabilities might be mistaken for ADD/ADHD, or even genuinely have this disorder at the most extreme level. That seems pretty logical to me–a kid that’s a little bit bouncy and very smart might get slapped with a label because he’s disruptive in the classroom due to boredom.

What they seem to overlook, though, is that the sensory/sensual and intellectual overexcitabilities combination is pretty much the profile of a mild ASD. The authors spend the section on Asperger’s talking about how aspies cannot ever, EVAR have empathy (and then using examples of sympathy–they don’t seem to have a clear separation?) and strong stereotypic interests like deep fryers and vacuum cleaners. Frankly, most of the aspies I know online demonstrate well-developed sympathy and a number of us are just fine with the empathy (it just takes a little bit more Theory of Mind, and it tends to be the older aspies because of this). We all have different interests, and while some have been a bit, um, weird, many are things that NT folks are commonly interested in, too–it’s the level of interest that is definitive.

But, see, that’s the sticking point for the gifted community and these authors, because the level that aspies are interested in things is the level that gifted adults and kids are interested in things, a lot of the time; also, as aspies get older we tend to get interested in more things at once (so rather than one or two interests, we might have three or five or six) and all of the sudden you can’t tell an aspie apart from a gifted adult. Funny, that. The gifted community does not want labels for their kids; it is strictly antilabelism, as far as I can tell. Oh, they want labels defining HOW gifted, but they don’t want anything noting any psychiatric or other developmental issues like ADD or an ASD. So the fact that being intellectually gifted with sensory issues looks pretty much exactly like a mild ASD does not compute.

Notes to self:

1. Asynchronous development.

2. Top half of map.

Look, it is exceedingly unwise to engage in a battle of pedantry with me. I will even engage those who don’t know they’re playing!

Spoilers for the end of Lamplighter, kind of.

Page 394, US hardcover edition: “Her Grace, the Branden Rose, Europa of Fontrevault, Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes; the Lady Threnody of Herbroulesse and a guest!” Aside from the obvious and terrible error of the oxford comma being missing, what’s up with this “Europa of Fontrevault” business?

At the end of the book when Europe gives her own list of titles: “You are addressing Europa, Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes, Peer of the Hacobin Empire, Marchess of the Vewe, shareward of the Southland states, descendant of Eurodice–speardame of the immortal Idaho, and of Eutychë, her granddaughter–spurn to Dido, and the Branden Rose, terror to man and nicker alike, and I will dare, sir, and I do!”

First of all, “the Vewe” is not on the zoomable map as far as I can find (I may be overlooking it, having given up in frustration–it’s elegant and gorgeous and well designed and I wish it was about 200 pixels bigger each way). Second, Fontrevault is a noteable location. It is mentioned by Threnody by name as the place where her mother and Europe were in sequestury together.

I have come up with two explanations for why Europe omits Fontrevault from her list of titles when claiming quo gratia.

1. The august of the calendars of a region is given the reigning power because she holds some of the highest ranking nobility (if not the highest ranking) of the group, as I understand the appendices (further clarification on this point would be most welcome). Syntychë is the Lady Vey, a Marchess, and the august of her clave, with Threnody Marchess-in-waiting although possibly not august-in-waiting (it hasn’t been clarified how the title is passed).

If Europe’s family holds Fontrevault and we are agreeing to the geography posed by the map, then it is quite possible that her mother (who remains nameless except as the Duchess of Naimes) may have been august at the time Europe and Syntychë were in sequestury. Threnody notes that Europe was kicked out of the sequestury; if her mother was august, this would have caused great shame. She could likely not disinherit her only child from all of her titles, but removing her from that title would provide quite a lot of appropriate remonstration.

2. It’s a simple continuity error.

I lean towards explanation 2.

Ugh. Hate firefox. Love and hate. Mostly hate right now.

I’ve spent the past five hours trying to bend this stupid program to my will, which ought not be terribly difficult, given that I am a willful creature. It started with huge lags and hangs on startup, then moved to memory leaks of unspeakable horrors. Okay, not unspeakable: it is just ridiculous to spend 14 seconds waiting for a tab to switch. The updater had been bugging me to switch to 3.5 and then 3.5.2, but I am the opposite of an early adopter (1).

Frustrated with this lag, I decided to try the upgrade. It took half an hour (!) and removed what I consider one of the very most important parts of my browser experience: the theme. I don’t like change, unless I’ve initiated it, and I’ve used this skin since I started using firefox back in 2003. I switched to this particular version three or four years ago and can’t imagine using anything else. It is firefox for me. I had a tantrum, found some developer tools that would let me force an install, and fixed it.

Just after this, and after Kit went to bed, I noticed my saved passwords weren’t working properly. I was making a book purchase/salivating over hard copies of MBT on alibris and my paypal info didn’t come up automatically. That’s WEIRD with a capital everything, because this is some of the oldest saved info on my computer. I checked my saved passwords to see what the deal was, as I’d noticed 3.5 had screwed with a few of my defaults, and they were all gone. Gone, all gone, nip nip nip, just like that.

Not. Pleased.

So four hours after that and a lot of yelling and threatening the toaster with a hammer, and a few time-outs for the kitten, I had seen the same advice over and over (this appears to be a not-unusual issue and was a known issue BEFORE THE RELEASE WTF). The advice goes like this: make a new profile, copy your old passwords file into it, and it should generate a new passwords file. The issue is because firefox is changing how it stores passwords (all your info, actually) from txt encrypted files to, um, something else. That’s the gist of it. And the conversion, if you are a good password maker and use non alphanumeric characters, can get corrupted. I am a good password maker. I also had about a hundred, and maybe a quarter of those in my brain.

None of the solutions worked, because I am a good little password maker so all conversions kept re-corrupting the files, but I did hit upon an alternative solution. I’m afraid this worked for me and probably no one else, because I am superlame:

I got on the laptop, installed an addon to export my passwords, and did that. I also told xmarks to start sharing my passwords. I then got back on the toaster and completely wiped firefox off my system, then did a clean install of 3.0.13 from the old installs page of mozilla. I modded it the way I like it (my theme, my addons) plus the password exporter. I used this tool to import my passwords from the laptop, where I had saved about 2/3 of the list I had on the desktop (but that’s 50 more than I had!), approved xmarks sharing passwords, and did not scream anymore.

And that is how I spent my morning. Now I’m going to the library to find a book on gifted kids and adults and dual diagnosis. Because, fuck it, I’m special.

1. I ran yahoo 7 until the program forced me to switch after four years; my internet would literally no longer connect through that interface and I had to upgrade (and skipped a whole platform to 9, which I’m now tolerating, about 9 months later). I also ran Windows ME until MBC told me they would no longer allow me to get online and I had to upgrade to XP. Telling me I can’t get online is a good way to force me to upgrade.

Title: Five ways in which Europe surprises Syntychë
Author: Ali
Summary: Really, the title says it all.
Rating: T for kissing. Girls kissing. Everyone’s gay!
Disclaimer: All characters contained herein are property of DM Cornish, not me, who is not DM Cornish by any stretch of the imagination. We once lived on the same continent, but as I am sure he would tell you, this is nothing at all like being the same person. This is strictly a work of fannish glee with no intention of gaining money, fame, notariety, or good will from any person or persons. This partciular combination of written words is my own.

____________________________________________________________

1. She is eight when she arrives at the sequestury. Syntychë is eleven, and finds Fontrevault altogether a terribly boring place; this is largely because her mother is august, Marchess of Herbroulesse and her aunt Marchess of Fountrevault, and between the two they control the teaching of the young calendars. She might like to be a scold, perhaps, but her occupation will be decided by Mother.

Miss Europe comes with a parcel of fancy titles and fancier clothes, displacing Syntychë in the hierarchy of nobility. No one else comes near to her in peerage, and Syntychë wonders how in the world this child convinced her mother to allow her only daughter—only child!—to go off and do this potentially dangerous thing. Her own mother would never allow such madness were they not all calendars, and she merely the oldest of four.

It is two months after her arrival that Syntychë, on the grounds of pleasant acquaintance, stops by the younger girl’s bedroom before breakfast. She is astounded, horrified to find her sipping daintily at pennyroyal tea, chestnut curls pinned up in a bun.

“My mother says that will spoil your insides!” Syntychë says, by way of greeting.

Europe arches one brow at her, an expression of such disdain she looks twice her age. “Perhaps I wish to spoil my insides.”

“But how will you ever bear an heir like that?”

The younger girl laughs, and it gives Syntychë chills. “I will not. That is the point.” She sighs, wistful. “It does taste abysmal, though. Shall we go down to breakfast?”

2. They are sitting on Europe’s bed together when it happens, studying a history book they are sharing, The text is supplemental, and they pooled their pocket money—of which Europe has an inordinate amount, so this all feels a bit contrived—to purchase it during their last trip into the town. Syntychë is acutely aware of Europe’s hand next to her knee, which also feels contrived. She is seventeen, and somehow Europe’s fourteen does not feel a significant age difference anymore.

It certainly does not when Europe’s lips find her own during a shared glance up from the book. Nor when she finds herself unpinning that horrible bun the girl insists upon wearing, day in and day out—honestly, crows feet are not attractive, she wants to scream, but Europe is doing something so expert with her tongue Syntychë is caught in a border-world of not thinking at all and wondering how a girl three years her junior learned to kiss like this.

3. The others cannot tell that Europe is angry, furious, to be sent away. Syntychë knows. But, then, she is furious with Europe, and is glad to see her leave.

A calendar’s duty is to her clave, and that was what Syntychë had told Europe when she discovered her with a man in her rooms. Not just a man, but a leer. How Europe had managed to get him in, she still was unsure, but he had been there, and they had both been largely undressed, and the whole thing had been a terrible shame.

Well. And there had been spite in it, too. Three years of sharing a bed, with her mother perfectly aware and ignoring—peacefully ignoring something she had done, for once!—and now Europe had to go and ruin it all by having a fellow. A leer. She hadn’t even tried to make excuses or dignify herself when caught. She just raised her eyebrows at Syntychë and asked that the door be shut so her private affairs might stay private.

Syntychë watches the carriage go with Europe in it, and wonders if this is what heartbreak feels like. She does not enjoy the sensation.

4. “Mother. If you insist I must be transmogrified, at least let me choose.”

The request is reasonable. Syntychë frowns out the window, rather than at her daughter. How to explain she still can’t quite tolerate the sight of her daughter because her hair curls the way Europe’s did at that age? She lifts a hand, gesturing for Threnody to continue.

The girl breathes, and tries. “I should like to be a fulgar.”

“Because of those novels you read.” Syntychë cannot help but snap.

“No!”

“You are a liar, child. You wish to be like one of your heroines, yes? Let me guess. It is the Branden Rose.”

Threnody bursts into angry tears and storms from the room. Syntychë resolves to have her made a wit. She is too like Europe as it is, and Syntychë will never be free.

5. Defending a young man in front of an inquiry board is really the last place she expects to find Europe, so it ought not be a surprise that she is there. They exchange greetings coolly and ignore each other, stiff and pretending not to have a quarter century of shared history, half of it obscured by travel. She had heard Licurious, Europe’s horrible leer that ruined everything, had died.

It is only after Europe has finished reciting titles—has she acquired a few since Syntychë heard them last?—and claimed quo gratia to remove this young man, or manikin, or whomever (and she doubts he is any but the former, if self-righteous Europe is involved), and they are boarding a coach to leave that they share another glance.

Syntychë aches to call out to her, but instead, she watches, silent, as the coach takes Europe out of her life again. Unlike the last time, she does not believe it will be forever.

To her surprise, she finds she is pleased.

So I love maps. And I love fantasy fiction. And my current favourite is the Monster Blood Tattoo series by DM Cornish.

He made a zoomable map that I am thoroughly enjoying, except for the plot continuity errors.

First, let me say that this is one of the most beautifully rendered maps I’ve seen created for a fantasy world. I love the zoomable element, which makes it accessible and easy to navigate, and the quality is just excellent. If someone can provide me with explanations for what I think are errors, I would love to know what’s going on.

This post contains minor spoilers for Lamplighter.

First, to orient ourselves, the second book takes place for the first half in Sulk End, at Winstermill, the Lamplighter fortress:

As you can tell, the fully zoomed-out map has us slightly to the right of center and to the bottom.

As the story progresses, Rossamünd and Threnody head to Wormstool, not marked on this map as far as I can tell (I cannot find any of the Lamplighter house names, so I believe this to be a deliberate choice). It is described as being at the far east end of the Wormway/Conduit Vermis, at the edge of the Ichormeer, so I have located it approximately here:

We have moved up and right on the zoomed out map, as is expected for going east and a bit north.

However, this is where the plot issue comes in. Threnody is described as pointing out the hills overwhich Herbroulesse lays in the first day of travel from Winstermill. “Threnody slid over to Rossamünd’s side of the carriage and, pulling back the drape, stared at the low northward hills where Herbroulesse was hidden, still dark despite the morning glow.” Herbroulesse is marked on this map (with a spelling error of one s), but it is down south near the Serenine:

(Also shown is Naimes, Europe’s duchy.) A zoomed slightly zoomed out view provides us with Fontrevault, as well, of importance to the Lady Vey and Europe:

I can find one other use of the name Herbroulesse on the map, further south to cover a large territory. I am unclear which of these are truly intended as the calendar stronghold, but as Fontrevault is noted as a sequestury and given the same symbol marking as the Herbrouless I have shown here, I think I’ve chosen correctly. Either way, neither place is to the north of a day’s ride east from Winstermill.

Also, I am a pedant.

Well that title didn’t provide me any challenge.

Dylan and I went to see Adam on Wednesday. It was a free screening hosted by Fox, which we drove to Baltimore to attend. I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible for those who don’t wish to be spoiled.

Why did I suggest we drive four hours for a free movie? Well, because we had been fighting, and part of our making-up was my agreeing to invite them places. This involved a grand gesture. Have I mentioned I hate driving?

The drive up was very nice. We went right after therapy, which was very theraputic (as it ought to be). I prefer to drive on backroads (it’s always less stressful, going more slowly) and we went through a number of adorable little towns. We had to cancel our stop for bubble tea due to traffic on the beltway, which couldn’t be helped, and we go to the theatre right on time.

For the sake of spoilers, all I’ll say about the movie is that I felt it was a good, non-patronizing portrayal of Asperger’s and that all of the actors were quite good–a bit of a surprise with Rose Byrne. The script helped quite a lot here, as did the careful directing and editing. I would strongly reccomend it to anyone who gets the chance to see this movie (especially for free).

The drive home was long, and sleepy. I had the same visual phenomena (seizures?) off and on the whole way home, which was a little worrying, but not enough to make me stop driving. I’m nearly done with Lamplighter thanks to this 4 hour stretch of Dylan falling asleep, so that was pleasant.

It was a good trip.

Europe, having been kicked out of the sequestery but before being made a fulgar. Click through for a full-length, larger version.

Insights I have had in the past few days:

1. I really can’t skip the iron pills.

I thought I was in the clear because the month that Kitty was here was like some unending meat-fest, in terms of the relative level of meat in my diet. I normally don’t get a lot of meat because it’s expensive (I only buy free-range, hormone free stuff if I’m doing the cooking), and there’s that whole raw meat thing which I’m not down with. I eat a lot of vegetable proteins (mostly soy) and cheese and yogurt and hope for the best, although of late my yogurt consumption hasn’t been dairy, either. Of course, this is illogical, because the body continually uses its stores of iron and needs them to be replaced.

My iron levels have been ridiculously low in the past, something I first discovered as a teen when I started to give blood–and got rejected about every other time for too-low iron. I’ve had this followed up by doctors intermittently (with lab work) and the usual reccomendation is to take a ridiculous amount of iron pills and get on with things. The thing is, iron pills make living unpleasant–they cause my already unpleasant stomach upsets to become worse. So I avoid taking them as often as I probably ought to and rely on instinct (ha) and/or Kitty to tell me when I’m due for a pill.

So I’ve had this headache for about 2 weeks. I’ve felt stuffy, dizzy, tired–very tired. It’s been really bad, but not migrainous, which has been a confusion and a relief. The extreme visual side effects of my topamax (for the migraines, a small dose) have been out of control to the point that I’ve been seriously concerned that I’m beginning to have occipital seizures. It finally occured to me that it’d been about two months since my last iron pill, and the amount of meat I ate while Kitty was here not withstanding, that is an awfully long time.

The side effects were the first to drop away, back to their usual level of obnoxiousness. Then the tireness, and then the stuffiness, and last the headache (it’s still there a little bit). Ah, anemia. Lesson learned: remember the things that I already have, rather than being afraid of things I might have in some horrible alternate universe.

2. On the subject of Things I Have vs Things I Don’t But Could In An Alternate Universe, I got the results (finally) from the first clinician I saw. My overall feeling after having read his report is that I was swindled out of a large sum of money for very little effort on his part, with a dose of sexism and perhaps a side of pet theory.

What I should make clear before I go on is that this psychologist has social anxiety himself, and made a point to tell me this a number of times during our two meetings.

So, according to him (although not my current therapist, who agrees with my self-assessed aspieness, and with whom I will finally be discussing these results this coming week), I have a social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality. The report is like some strange hybrid of what really happened and what I think he wanted to happen in our meetings–he gave a lot more weight to answers that were not weighted by me, and did not listen to a great deal of what I told him. The fact that I meet all criteria for AS was roundly ignored, although he was “kind” enough to leave a “rule out PDD” in my Axis I. The fact that he did not care to specify which speaks volumes as to his skill.

The thing is, I have this handy internet right here at my fingertips, and have accessed the guidelines for social anxiety disorder (social phobia–which should have been given a specification, even if it was only ‘generalized’) and avoidant personality disorder. As far as I am aware, I do not meet the criteria for either of these categories.

Now, I might meet one criteria in SA (point D); I do tend to avoid social interactions in the scope that I know this psychologist was discussing (parties). This is because parties are often loud, with new people, and there’s just a lot going on sensory-wise. I don’t dislike them once I’m there, usually, and I attended parties on a pretty regular basis in Melbourne. I go out to eat, to the store, to work, to see plays and movies, all without problems. I believe that he interpreted my dislike of other people because I don’t understand their intentions all of the time for fear, and this is a problem within his own nature–projecting his own diagnosis–not a problem with me. I will concede to point 6 (the first part–I think I am often a bit inept!) in the avoidant list.

So he’s given me this inaccurate set of diagnoses, ignored my accurate self-diagnosis, and I’m trying to work out why. The best I can come up with is this: I am a girl. I am very smart, and I am largely self-sufficient. I was on my best behaviour (no stims, no tip-toes, no meltdowns, compliant and test-taking and omg I love tests it is a miracle this blog is not overrun with internet quiz memes yet). I have a girlfriend, which explicitly counted against me in his final review (queers and people in relationships can’t be on the spectrum now–I guess I’ll have to tell the researcher I’m helping out via the GRASP newsletter). He had a medical view of autism and the spectrum, and was not open to neurodiversity as a concept, nor to the social model of autism.

He did not ask, or wish to know about, my Theory of Mind, my executive function. I was “too open to new experiences” to be really aspie (because one of the tests they gave asked if I liked to travel–in my opinion, an aspie dream of planning and maps and public transport and endless flight details).

He asked, at one point, if I held grudges. “Most autistics do, I find.” I stammered a no, because it’s rude to hold grudges; later I realized that I do, profoundly. I still hate the kid who forged my signature on a prank love letter in 7th grade and slipped it into the locker of another boy. I lost one of my best friends over a grudge because she wouldn’t apologize for being cruel. I wonder if he would find me more autistic knowing that this envelope has only added fuel to an already well-burning grudge, or if he would just accuse me of faking?