Genius!

Nurturing the Spirit of the Wild, Odd, and Oppositional Child – Revised Edition

George Lynn

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781846424489
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Difficultés d'apprentissage

Genius! is an inspiring guide to nurturing the remarkable abilities of "attention different" (AD) children diagnosed with conditions such as autism, Asperger Syndrome, AD/HD, bipolar disorder, or Tourette Syndrome (TS).

Drawing on their experiences with their own son, who has TS, George T. Lynn and Joanne Barrie Lynn offer a positive parenting philosophy and successful strategies for creating an affirmative social and emotional environment that unlocks the potential genius in 'neurologically eccentric' children. The authors emphasize the importance of identifying the signs of giftedness, providing the necessary care and mentoring, and using medication with due consideration of its benefits and limitations. They also acknowledge the need to confront the `dark side' of atypical neurology - obsessiveness, self-centredness and hyperactivity - and offer helpful advice on ensuring parents' and carers' own emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being.

This book will be an essential tool for parents and carers to help bring out the best in their AD child and help him explore his full potential in life. This revised edition also includes additional material on working with older age groups.

PART I

Understanding and nurturing the positive genius of your attention different child

Introduction

We know that something unknown, alien, does come our way, just as we know that we do not ourselves make a dream or an inspiration, but that it somehow arises of its own accord.

Carl Jung¹

The modern meaning of the term “genius,” that it defines a person who scores in the upper 1 percent of the population on certain tests of intelligence (approximately IQ 135), has not been the meaning ascribed to the word for the past two millennia. The Greek philosopher Plato said that a person’s genius is the spirit that guides expression of what he called the “seed self” or “daemon”—the “guiding force” of the child. Plato said that we come into life like an acorn, a tiny complete package of everything we have the potential to become. From this seed, our spirits may grow huge, full, and beautiful, as does an oak tree. It is our daemon, the great philosopher maintained, that guides our seed-selves to flowering. Later, in Greece, the term “muse” came into currency for describing a type of inspirational spirit that comes to us to guide us to our fulfillment, our growth from acorn to mighty oak.

Many cross-cultural myths carry the idea that one’s genius is a kind of spirit guide. From the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, we get the story of “The Spirit in the Bottle.” In this European myth, the boy finds the magic bottle at the base of a tree and opens it, releasing the spirit. The persona known as the “spirit” in the European versions of the story is called a “genie” in the Arabian version of the story of “The Genie in the Lamp.”

I use these classical attributions to shape my meaning for this word: genius is an unconscious pattern in the personality that guides a person toward the fulfillment of his particular potential. Described this way, genius is one’s creative guiding spirit, or genie.² Its character becomes known in a child’s special interests, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and dream life.

The traditions of myth and language inform us that genius has two aspects: a positive aspect and a negative aspect. The spirit is initially malevolent and tells the boy he is going to kill him. But later, the spirit gives the boy a magic cloth that has the ability to both heal a wound and turn ordinary metal into silver. This is a beautiful metaphor for the place of genius in human beings: it has the ability to take us from suffering to healing, and from misery to prosperity, but it is hot material and must be handled with care and thought, properly contained, or it will take us over and destroy us.

Common characteristics and gifts of the genius of attention different children

In the pages that follow we will take a hard and loving look at the genius of the children we parent, the very “difficult” ones. In my counseling practice with attention different (AD) kids I am often struck by the perfection of the personality of the child who sits across from me. He or she may come in trailing a long list of diagnoses, but in the safety of counseling, the genius will show itself. It will reveal itself in what interests the child, what he is very good at doing, how he describes himself, and in the problem that brought him to me. Problems usually show the dark side of the child’s genius.

There are some common patterns in the dark side of the genius of AD children. They tend to be tyrannical, oppositional, hyperfocused, obsessive, over-energized, socially inept, full of rage, and, at times, frankly psychotic. These aspects of the genius want it all and want it right now! Parents of AD children; those diagnosed with neuropsychiatric conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, autism and Asperger syndrome, or Tourette syndrome, know what it feels like to be banished because of the wild excess of the behavior of their children. Though they were once members of a social group, a church, a business community, or a neighborhood, their child’s behavior has made them into social pariahs. They have been marginalized by the judgments of their community and extended family that they are to blame for their child’s behavior. Friends drift away. People give them impromptu lectures on their parenting style. They come to dread social interaction and the disapproving looks of strangers. They become isolated. Their children also become social pariahs; lonely kids stuck playing on the computer all day. They are rejected for their inappropriate behavior by other children or exploited by those kids canny enough to recognize how easy it is to fool a kid who wears his heart on his sleeve.

The positive genius of our kids is proof of the fact that when trouble happens, human beings often develop compensatory strategies that are evolutionary enhancements. In my counseling practice I often get a strong sense that somehow, someway, a particular child, troubled as he is, is in the right kind of trouble. This is trouble caused by the presence of a certain genius that is both his guide and his demon. As much suffering as this genius causes, its presence also helps him work things out by teaching him that he has gone up the wrong alley in the maze and needs to go back to center. Suffering, far from being the enemy that threatens the child’s life, is the soil in which his particular giftedness grows.

The positive genius of AD children is expressed idiosyncratically. Each child is different in the gifts that he has for the world. But there are also some powerful common denominators of AD genius. There are some characterological signatures that I have found to be very interesting.

The first of these is that AD children have intolerance for absurdity. They provide the function of error detection that “smart system” theorists such as Donald Michael say is essential to the growth of an organization or cultural group. They are our truth-tellers.

Growing up on the outside looking in, AD children enjoy freedom from “groupthink”—the tendency to identify with a group so tightly that you do not question the way things are. The AD child, being a chronic outsider, will make meaning of his life by casting a sharp eye on the absurd “common wisdom” of the group. AD children, as a rule, find school to be a most absurd experience and they do not suffer the situation quietly. They are truth-tellers.

Second, they see deeply into things that interest them. Each AD neurotype has its own way of doing this. A nine-year-old child with Asperger syndrome who is interested in the topic of artificial intelligence may have a college level knowledge of the issue. An adolescent challenged by bipolar disorder may show a powerful depth and skill in her poetry made richer by the experience of her mood swings. A twelve-year-old ADHD boy with a passion for motor cross racing may become a regional champion in his sport. True to his ADHD type, this boy feels the track conditions in his body and moves instinctively. The genius of these children expresses itself in the ability to be powerfully in contact with the object of its fascination.

Third, they have wild creativity. As a function of being who they are, and of being guided by their type of genius, AD kids cannot color between the lines. Their type of creativity begins as “what if?” questions and they are restlessly explorative. They are easily annoyed by propriety in this regard. Their creativity, in my clinical experience, tends to have different flavoring depending on the diagnosis, and to mobilize all aspects of the children to attain their personal goals.

The creative genius of children diagnosed with ADHD will show itself in talents in athletics, the performing and visual arts, and in entrepreneurial endeavors. Many of my ADHD adolescent clients are sports champions or team captains at the high school level. As performers or musicians they tend to be creative and innovative composers, and charismatic on stage.

The creativity of children diagnosed with Tourette syndrome will show itself in their attacks on social norms and conventional ways of looking at beauty and invention. These features are seen in the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who, according to eminent neurologist Dr. Ruth Bruun, showed many signs of having Tourette syndrome.³ Mozart wrote music composed in his head that showed the total range of human experience, from joy to deep sadness. He was irreverent, oppositional, and wildly scatological. His raw creativity was matched by his constitutional wildness.

The creativity of children challenged by bipolar disorder is seen in the brilliant focus and intelligence they can put on whatever they find compelling. An American child challenged with bipolar disorder enjoys writing his own computer game in Japanese because this brings him closer to the technical and artistic foundation of the game’s multimedia designers. Children on the bipolar disorder spectrum often have this powerful auditory—visual intelligence. Historically bipolar disorder is the condition most associated with artistic creativity. To quote the great (probably bipolar) poet Emily Dickinson, “Madness is divinist sense.”⁴ The “maddened” (bipolar) mind is close to the mind of God.

The genius of children who fit the Asperger syndrome diagnosis is usually seen in the child’s enjoyment of a specialization in science, engineering, or the arts. Autistic writer Temple Grandin suggests that people with Asperger syndrome have a kind of creativity suited to their tendency to think in pictures.⁵ They are not good at following conventional rules to get to their results, but are powerfully visionary and will get new ideas as “feeling-images.” She profiles Dr. Albert Einstein as a person with Asperger syndrome, recounting that he developed the theory of relativity from a vision he saw while pondering the relationship between mass and energy. Parents of kids with Asperger syndrome tell me that their children are able to solve math problems in their head but cannot show on paper how they arrived at their results. The genius of children challenged by Asperger Syndrome does not like to bother itself with material not directly related to its principal interest.

Fourth, attention different children have prodigious skills for purposeful action. This capability is a natural result of having to apply so much will power just to get through each day. AD children can be tough, stubborn and powerfully goal-directed once they have identified what they want.

School does not give our children the venue to express their sense of purpose. Dr. James Hillman, the psychiatrist/philosopher who wrote the best-selling book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, an examination of the personalities of the 100 most influential people in the twentieth century, contends that most of the eminent people in his study hated school.⁶ Very little came easily to them. Their brilliance and quirkiness made the classroom an anathema to them—they could not stand it and so immediately came into conflict with teachers and other adults in their lives. The fact that their genius could not be constrained by the demands of school made them outlaws, and so being, made it necessary for them to survive by wits and grit. One gets a sense reading biographies of people like Thomas Edison (probably suffering from bipolar disorder or severe ADHD), Nikola Tesla (whose life showed the presence of obsessive-compulsive disorder), and Albert Einstein (Asperger syndrome), of this enormous purposefulness and refusal to be beaten down by circumstance and prejudice.⁷

Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who has devoted his life to articulating the gifts and interior lives of people with serious neurological disorders, writes:

But it must be said from the outset that a disease is never a mere loss or excess—that there is always a reaction, on the part of the affected individual to restore, to replace, to compensate for and to preserve its identity, however strange the means may be.⁸

I believe that Dr. Sacks is seeing the genius in his interview subjects. He is seeing the ferocity of their will to live and express themselves despite their neurological limitations. He is glimpsing, at particular moments, their seed selves.

Aspects of the genius of AD children are:

•They are intolerant of absurdity, hypocrisy, and dishonesty.

•They possess wild and unconventional creativity and the ability to see deeply into what interests them.

•They are purposeful and persistent.

AD children provide the gift of renewing disturbance to the world

I attempt to get across two messages in this book. The first is that though a child’s behavior may be extremely distressin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Dragons Dance in the Eyes of My Son
• Acknowledgements
• In the Crucible: Preface to the First Edition by Joanne Barrie Lynn
• The Importance of Identifying The Genius of ‘Attention Different’ Children: Preface by George T. Lynn
• The Spirit in the Bottle
• Part I: Understanding and nurturing the positive genius of your attention different child
• Part II: The seventh criterion in the field of nurturing: caregivers’ practice of high-level wellness in their own lives
• Part III: Special considerations
• Conclusion: Following the AD child’s genius to the domain of the soul
• Epilogue
• Appendix: The field of nurturing Awareness Checklist
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Author Index