The wrong sort of child
Mar. 20th, 2026 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseA quick correction to yesterday's entry: all the coronation stuff is confusing even if you are in the SCA, as it turns out. It is the new rulers of Drachenwald who are being crowned, not, as I previously said, the Prince and Princess of Insulae Draconis. The confusion came about because I contacted the principality signet to see if any scrolls were required for Coronation, and he told me that the new Prince and Princess had only just been selected and were probably still wondering what had happened, so they hadn't requested any scrolls yet. But, no, that didn't mean it was their coronation; it simply means that the principality signet deals with any scrolls requested by the Prince and Princess, whereas the kingdom signet, who is a different person, deals with any requested by (at the moment) the Kings. Reigns last for only six months. It's a sensible amount of time.
Anyway. I had an e-mail this morning from a regular correspondent who a) is highly intelligent, b) had some pretty bad things happen to him when he was a child (including a nine-month stay in hospital when he was an infant; that wasn't the worst by any means, but it was the thing he specifically alluded to in this e-mail), and c) is autistic. Well, he says he isn't any more, but let's say the jury is out on that. He was certainly autistic during the entire period when I was dealing with him in person. And what he had to say was that he felt there might be a link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. He then went on to say that he'd had to find ways to distract himself during that lengthy hospital stay in his infancy, and he felt that that had caused a dopamine addiction which led to him getting distracted (by media and the like) when he should have been giving his children full attention.
I told him gently that I didn't think there was any link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. I'm about as intelligent as he is on balance (less so in some ways, more in others), and I'm not addicted to dopamine or anything else - not even codeine, though I've been on a high dose of that for the last ten years, as they routinely give it to you to slow your digestion if you have a stoma. (They took me off it cold turkey to replace Sidney with Sibyl. I didn't even notice. Therefore I can't be addicted.) The theory of the stay in hospital causing dopamine addiction is more plausible; nonetheless, the phenomenon of getting distracted when one genuinely needs and/or wants to pay attention to something important is not really to do with dopamine addiction. It's an autistic thing.
My adorable nephew has both autism and Down's Syndrome. He's a lovely child, very cheerful, with a mischievous sense of humour and an awesome sense of rhythm; nonetheless, he is undeniably a handful. You do need to keep both eyes on him at all times, in particular because he has absolutely zero sense of danger and a passion for exploration. This is the boy who once got out through a window, stark naked, and managed to run off as far as the nearest supermarket before he was caught (not massively far, but still not a trivial journey). My brother-in-law, his father, is also autistic, though not nearly so obviously; he's a really nice bloke, also very intelligent (he has a PhD in topology). And he cannot - and knows he cannot - be left alone in charge of Adorable Nephew, because sooner or later he will get distracted, no matter how good his intentions. That is exactly what was happening with my correspondent.
And, I believe, also with my father; but he was at a great disadvantage in relation to the other two, because he didn't know he was autistic. He couldn't know. It wasn't even identified as a thing until he was in his late teens, and even then he probably wouldn't have been recognised as autistic because the children who were being studied were so autistic that they were largely shut off from the world. My father was more like my brother-in-law; he was intelligent and could work round it, to a large extent (and, indeed, it had its benefits for him - he was an outstanding accountant). Nonetheless, I'm quite sure now about what must have happened.
Both of my parents wanted children; however, when I came along, my father rapidly discovered he couldn't cope with me. That, obviously, wasn't the sort of thing he could accept or admit, even to himself, because he'd always had it instilled into him that everyone could automatically cope with their own children even if they had difficulty with other people's. So if I was too much for him and he needed to go and listen to a record while my mother kept me out of his way, then, logically, that meant that I was simply the wrong sort of child. If he'd only had the right sort of child, everything would have been fine. And so, of course, everything that happened after that needed to reinforce this narrative; and when my sisters were born, it became even worse. Obviously my father wasn't going to decide he now had three wrong children, so if he couldn't cope with my sisters, that again got put onto me. I was the scapegoat for my sisters long before they were old enough to do anything actively wrong. (My mother went along with all this because of course she did; I thought for a long time that she was the one in charge, because she was forceful and aggressive while my father was quiet and apparently laid back, but no, it wasn't like that at all. Most married couples end up with compromises, so that they have things this particular way in this particular situation to please one partner and then a similar thing elsewhere to please the other one. With my parents, everything actually revolved around my father. My mother just did everything the way he liked, and what she liked never came into consideration; so of course he was quiet and laid back. Life was running in the grooves he had dictated for it. When he died, it took her a long time to get used to the fact that now she could use the hi-fi, watch television whenever she felt like it, and even have her eggs the way she liked.)
So, obviously, I knew I was the wrong sort of child; and I spent my entire childhood trying to work out who I was supposed to become in order to be the right sort of child, and therefore gain some measure of acceptance and tolerance from my parents. (I knew very well it was who I was, rather than what I'd done. I was a very well-behaved child, mainly because I thought that would help. It didn't.) But I now know I was completely missing the point. My parents couldn't tell me who they wanted me to be, because they didn't know; and they didn't know because "the right sort of child" didn't exist. No matter what sort of child I'd been, I would inevitably have been the wrong sort; and once I was established as the wrong sort of child, I had to remain so. If my parents had ever admitted that I was even nearly as good as my sisters, they'd have had to ask themselves a lot of hard questions, and neither of them had the introspective capacity to do that.
It occurred to me this morning that the amount of money in this disputed legacy is roughly about a third of what I could reasonably have earned during my lifetime if my father hadn't sabotaged my degree (this is assuming I didn't take any particularly high-powered jobs, since I probably wouldn't have wanted them). It also occurs to me that if I don't get the money, I'll have to give up on my current degree, which means that my father will have sabotaged it twice, in effect.
I think I understand him, at last. He couldn't have risked my doing as well as other people. That might have suggested I was just as good as other people, and I think he literally could not have handled that.
Anyway. I had an e-mail this morning from a regular correspondent who a) is highly intelligent, b) had some pretty bad things happen to him when he was a child (including a nine-month stay in hospital when he was an infant; that wasn't the worst by any means, but it was the thing he specifically alluded to in this e-mail), and c) is autistic. Well, he says he isn't any more, but let's say the jury is out on that. He was certainly autistic during the entire period when I was dealing with him in person. And what he had to say was that he felt there might be a link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. He then went on to say that he'd had to find ways to distract himself during that lengthy hospital stay in his infancy, and he felt that that had caused a dopamine addiction which led to him getting distracted (by media and the like) when he should have been giving his children full attention.
I told him gently that I didn't think there was any link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. I'm about as intelligent as he is on balance (less so in some ways, more in others), and I'm not addicted to dopamine or anything else - not even codeine, though I've been on a high dose of that for the last ten years, as they routinely give it to you to slow your digestion if you have a stoma. (They took me off it cold turkey to replace Sidney with Sibyl. I didn't even notice. Therefore I can't be addicted.) The theory of the stay in hospital causing dopamine addiction is more plausible; nonetheless, the phenomenon of getting distracted when one genuinely needs and/or wants to pay attention to something important is not really to do with dopamine addiction. It's an autistic thing.
My adorable nephew has both autism and Down's Syndrome. He's a lovely child, very cheerful, with a mischievous sense of humour and an awesome sense of rhythm; nonetheless, he is undeniably a handful. You do need to keep both eyes on him at all times, in particular because he has absolutely zero sense of danger and a passion for exploration. This is the boy who once got out through a window, stark naked, and managed to run off as far as the nearest supermarket before he was caught (not massively far, but still not a trivial journey). My brother-in-law, his father, is also autistic, though not nearly so obviously; he's a really nice bloke, also very intelligent (he has a PhD in topology). And he cannot - and knows he cannot - be left alone in charge of Adorable Nephew, because sooner or later he will get distracted, no matter how good his intentions. That is exactly what was happening with my correspondent.
And, I believe, also with my father; but he was at a great disadvantage in relation to the other two, because he didn't know he was autistic. He couldn't know. It wasn't even identified as a thing until he was in his late teens, and even then he probably wouldn't have been recognised as autistic because the children who were being studied were so autistic that they were largely shut off from the world. My father was more like my brother-in-law; he was intelligent and could work round it, to a large extent (and, indeed, it had its benefits for him - he was an outstanding accountant). Nonetheless, I'm quite sure now about what must have happened.
Both of my parents wanted children; however, when I came along, my father rapidly discovered he couldn't cope with me. That, obviously, wasn't the sort of thing he could accept or admit, even to himself, because he'd always had it instilled into him that everyone could automatically cope with their own children even if they had difficulty with other people's. So if I was too much for him and he needed to go and listen to a record while my mother kept me out of his way, then, logically, that meant that I was simply the wrong sort of child. If he'd only had the right sort of child, everything would have been fine. And so, of course, everything that happened after that needed to reinforce this narrative; and when my sisters were born, it became even worse. Obviously my father wasn't going to decide he now had three wrong children, so if he couldn't cope with my sisters, that again got put onto me. I was the scapegoat for my sisters long before they were old enough to do anything actively wrong. (My mother went along with all this because of course she did; I thought for a long time that she was the one in charge, because she was forceful and aggressive while my father was quiet and apparently laid back, but no, it wasn't like that at all. Most married couples end up with compromises, so that they have things this particular way in this particular situation to please one partner and then a similar thing elsewhere to please the other one. With my parents, everything actually revolved around my father. My mother just did everything the way he liked, and what she liked never came into consideration; so of course he was quiet and laid back. Life was running in the grooves he had dictated for it. When he died, it took her a long time to get used to the fact that now she could use the hi-fi, watch television whenever she felt like it, and even have her eggs the way she liked.)
So, obviously, I knew I was the wrong sort of child; and I spent my entire childhood trying to work out who I was supposed to become in order to be the right sort of child, and therefore gain some measure of acceptance and tolerance from my parents. (I knew very well it was who I was, rather than what I'd done. I was a very well-behaved child, mainly because I thought that would help. It didn't.) But I now know I was completely missing the point. My parents couldn't tell me who they wanted me to be, because they didn't know; and they didn't know because "the right sort of child" didn't exist. No matter what sort of child I'd been, I would inevitably have been the wrong sort; and once I was established as the wrong sort of child, I had to remain so. If my parents had ever admitted that I was even nearly as good as my sisters, they'd have had to ask themselves a lot of hard questions, and neither of them had the introspective capacity to do that.
It occurred to me this morning that the amount of money in this disputed legacy is roughly about a third of what I could reasonably have earned during my lifetime if my father hadn't sabotaged my degree (this is assuming I didn't take any particularly high-powered jobs, since I probably wouldn't have wanted them). It also occurs to me that if I don't get the money, I'll have to give up on my current degree, which means that my father will have sabotaged it twice, in effect.
I think I understand him, at last. He couldn't have risked my doing as well as other people. That might have suggested I was just as good as other people, and I think he literally could not have handled that.
