The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Hi! I also enjoyed The Black Cauldron. :)
Welll my first reaction to your OP, before I even scrolled down to see "AuDHD," was, "Another day, another 'gifted kid is unhappy, must be autistic'" soo... And warning, treating for autism with a kid who isn't actually autistic just makes things worse / the child angrier.
But that said, individuals I've known who were both gifted and actually autistic have been helped by Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough by Winner and Crooke (for adults about the workplace), and The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules by Jennifer Cook. Winner and Crooke also wrote Socially Curious and Curiously Social: A Social Thinking Guidebook for Bright Teens and Young Adults, which I haven't seen but hey, same author and for teens.
In particular, Winner and Crooke have a thing about "People have an idea of what counts as a big deal and what doesn't, and if you react super strongly to what they think should be a small deal, they'll see you as unpredictable/crazy and treat you badly."
Which is true. But oversimplified. And doesn't account for like actual differences and justifiable stronger reactions. After all, different people are different and how is it fair that one group gets to just dictate what is and isn't a big deal? (As many of your responses pointed out.) (I'd add that giftedness can be the sole cause of "over"reactions. Or can just be a partial cause with autism and/or ADHD as the other part(s).)
Enter idiosyncrasy credits / "weirdness points".
--once established as a generally trustworthy person / good friend, then you can stand up for your interpretation of the situation where it is so a big deal. (Being innately different, even solely due to giftedness, means you just are disadvantaged in this. It forces you to use up more idiosyncrasy credits on basic needs. Unfair but true fact of life.)
Based on your description, he's stuck in the opposite situation: He's already established as "the one who always overreacts." Uphill battle there; from a solely social perspective would be best to switch schools. The new dx will, socially, operate as a "well he's defective so he gets a pass for his constant overreactions." Might or might not make the situation tolerable for him ("You see, the autism means that X thing that doesn't bother most people really bothers him, so be kind to the defective and don't do it"), but that's never gonna be as healthy a situation as a new school where he started off on the right foot (and got established as "the overall good guy who cares weirdly a lot about X, we like him so we'll respect that").
See also Stephanie Tolan's A Time to Fly Free (about a preteen but still). And Grace Llewellyn's The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
(Ran this by one of the diagnosed AuDHD+gifted people I know and he cosigned it.)
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