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"the time has come" the walrus said "to talk of many things..."

@There is no Spoon Yep, totally get it , myself and my partner are on the spectrum . Both of us also have ADHD . We have lived with it and we live it. The challenges it brings and the miscommunication , isolation and the feeling no one really gets you. As a parent I'm sure you feel your daughter's struggles most profoundly. I always advocate for double empathy, because so many people don't get it. My partner and I are neurodivergent.

Edit missed out a word
 
Wonderful thread "to talk of many things" regarding neurodivergence and dealing with IR or Type two, or the potential for both. and a topic close to my own heart - promoting prevention of both generally and extra-especially for one's own offspring/adult children. (And pain relief side effects, and neuropathy! Big topics. So good to have somewhere to join in on and share.)

I am deeply grateful to the neurodiverse person I am closest to, as he was large in my life when I was first diagnosed, and he had applied his magnificent brain to diet and disease via merely listening to the radio. I nothing but benefited from his big Asperger brain in that regard.

@There is no Spoon - you are really lucky your daughter had a nurse who was up with the play on low-carb food and diet/IR connection! I am lucky my daughter went online and read up on Type two immediately I was diagnosed, she and the neurodiverse person did that, and never once have I had to belabour any point on the disease generally, or the diet-disease connection since - bless them!

@Melgar, I am really inspired to see you have dyspraxia in there in your interesting list! . My first born has dyspraxia, and I am super anxious that he develop IR and metabolic disease, as I cannot see him being able to deal with the formidable practical detail and tasks that treating for T2D or even prediabetes entails. As you deal with it very well obviously it gives me hope! any tips on dealing with metabolic disease, and def the prevention of, with dyspraxia would be much appreciated! I am very anxious about this, but do try to - mask! - that anxiety for sure. ps my favourite take on dyspraxia is from a French website tagline, "Dyspraxique mais fantastique!'. Bless!
 
AloeSvea said:
And pain relief side effects, and neuropathy!
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Hi @AloeSvea , as Bob Hoskins used to say " its good to talk."

One aspect of neuropathy is for me oversensitivity to touch even even doing nothing, the back of my hands and arms can feel very antsy, feels like my skin is crawling. Its worse in the evening and can be constant.

This is purely anecdotal and may not be the case for anyone else.
While looking for gloves I stumbled across electronic hand warmers, my fingers are cold in summer and "Winter is coming".

The hand warmers seem to be reliving the skin crawling feeling.

Its early days haven't had them for long; but they do seem to be having a positive effect, for anyone else out there considering them they are relatively cheap for under £20 and if nothing else they keep your hands warm.
 
How it is for me - I don't know where my body is in space. I cannot play sports. As far as my dyspraxia goes, I have difficulty with balance, which led to many injuries. I cannot do formal dancing, or follow physical instructions which require a sequence of events. I struggle significantly with physical sequencing in general. It's difficult to separate my difficulties from my autistic traits and my ADHD so I'm not sure how they interact. They are all, of course, neurodevelopment conditions. Any one of the above mentioned conditions can affect processing speed and executive function or other functions such as Auditory processing, visual processing , speech and memory. This plays out in other diagnostic measures such as IQ testing. My IQ scoring was spiky across all the measurable points, such as executive function, memory, spacial , verbal etc, due to those deficits. I believe they call it dis- harmonic results. So in effect, IQ scoring cannot be trusted, because one's brain is wired differently. I had very high scores and very low ones, so the mean score could not be assessed accurately.
I'm very aware that what I'm about to say is overly simplistic - so very briefly instead, the brain of a neurotypical person will complete a task that typically follows a brain pathway, say A ,B and reaches the result at point C. In someone with a neurodivergent brain , the pathway may have to follow a different root , so instead of ABC , the brain of a neurodivergent person may have to travel from A , F , D to reach point C. So it takes the brain longer to process. This is when you find people who are autistic, ADHD or Dyspraxic, with quirks like tasting smells or having to move to think, simply because of this neurodivergence.

As one gets older you develop coping skills to counter so called deficits. We live in a world that is not built for us. So we adapt. I struggled significantly when I was much younger, but as I have aged I have developed coping strategies - masking. I'm a 'high masker' . I've had to adapt to function in a NT world and are judged by NT standards. So we appear odd, weird or dysfunctional.
So I have gone on, but depending on severity , we counter those deficits.
I hope that makes sense.
 
Melgar said:
So in effect, IQ scoring cannot be trusted, because one's brain is wired differently.
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Not so sure I put to much faith in IQ scoring. Last time I was tested for anything, dyslexia, I was given an IQ rating of below average intelligence.

I have 2 degrees.
 
There is no Spoon said:
Not so sure I put to much faith in IQ scoring. Last time I was tested for anything, dyslexia, I was given an IQ rating of below average intelligence.

I have 2 degrees.
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Did they give you your full IQ breakdown @There is no Spoon ? If it's done as part of a psychological assessment you would likely get the full breakdown. Most people, if it's not done as part of an assessment , so like Mensa, would just get a number. Which as you say can be quite really meaningless on its own. So an IQ test is all well and good if you are neurotypical. The components they are testing, like memory, spacial reasoning, verbal etc will likely be in the same region of each other , maybe varying by 10 pts , but if you are neurodivergent then you get larger discrepancies beyond 20pt differences.
 
Hi @Melgar and @There is no Spoon - re IQ tests. I am a huge fan of the multiple intelligences theory. And traditional IQ tests only three of them - linguistic, logical-mathematical, and visual-spatial. Wonderfully there is a whole host of others - musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and in my home country educationalists included spiritual (which I thought a very good thing). Since my day teaching Gardner, the theorist, has added digital, which seems sensible indeed. So 10 different types of intelligence. Some others suggested additons to the types of intelligences with humour, cooking, and sexual - Gardner said no, but maybe those folks had something there....
 
AloeSvea said:
I am a huge fan of the multiple intelligences theory.
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An argument could be made that education is primarily there to teach the masses just enough to enter the work force.
Conformity is paramount in such a system.

Traditionally society places its highest value on Gardner linguistic and logical-mathematical modalities and seeks only to further the these. The arts are the first thing to go during times of austerity as they are seen to have worth, but not value in the fledgling workforce.

I'm a fan of the Universal basic income as a way for individuals to explore there potential.
 
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