Michael Phelps: Hindered or Helped by ADHD?
November 26, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
8-gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps has ADHD: Did he succeed not so much in spite of having ADHD, but, in part, because he does?
Tara Parker-Pope on the New York Times Well blog posed this question. Allow me to rephrase it in terms of autism and (to refer to an oft-mentioned figure), animal scientist Temple Grandin.
Did Grandin succeed not so much in spite of being autistic, but because she is?
And as some will not doubt rush in to point out that Grandin is very “hfa,” I’ll note that some things that can make things very trying for more son—his intensive need for order and his particular, deep-running sensory needs—can be of benefit. I always know where to look for his items and he’s becoming a champion grocery-put-awayer. I don’t think he’d himself be such a swimmer if he didn’t like being–need to be–in the water so.
Temple Grandin succeeded because of her autism. Nevertheless, she paid a price for it.
I wonder if Temple Grandin feels she’s paid a price.
Possibly, although it might be better to think of it as not buying into the same lifestyle everyone else does.
Both her and Germaine Greer have both ‘paid the price’ of not having the ‘typical’ adult female roles (i.e. the ‘mother role’ and ‘wife’ roles) but it’s questionable whether or not they would have been helped or hindered by those roles anyway.
As I understand she would not trade her life for the life of a non-autistic. While she has extraordinary gifts, she also has her deficits as well.
But that’s true of all of us to one degree or another, high functioning autism or not. Where do we draw the line at judging what the quality of someone’s life should be? If Ms. Grandin doesn’t feel she’s “paid a price” then who are we to say that she has? If she’s happy with who she is and comfortable with her life then more power to her, I say. I know many NT’s that can’t claim that.
Didn’t mean to go on, it’s just an interesting topic for me, given that I have 4 high functioning kids on the spectrum and I wonder where life’s going to take them. I hope that they are as successful as Ms. Grandin in many ways.
It isn’t a binary choice between “in spite of” and “because of”. That’s a false dichotomy. It’s really a combination of *both*.
Temple wasn’t always so “high functioning”. She has been privileged to have the resources to mitigate the most important things that held her back, and to find and thrive in environments which accommodated those things that she didn’t want to have to change.
And in those environments, the things she could really be good at were able to flourish — and be profitable.
And that’s what it’s all about, really.
If we devote our resources to precisely that balance of mitigation and accommodation, we get to a workable situation. Maybe not fame, fortune, power, or an intellectual summit of one kind or another, but a workable life. We defang the dire prognostications that fuel so much of the fear and irrationality driving the mainstream responses to autism.
Instead of imagining your autistic children non-autistic, imagine specific hurdles overcome, and imagine living environments in which differences which presently constitute barriers are accommodated and accepted. And then find and nurture the talents they do have, that will lead to vocations and avocations that they will enjoy. Just like you would with nonautistic children.