If you are ND do you have a superpower?

[AuADHD]

I fucking don’t. It’s one struggle after another despite ADHD meds. I don’t think I’ve ever had a superpower or even close. I’m a Jill of all trades: can turn my hand to everything I try and do it reasonably well but I never excel at anything. Nothing positive anyway.
My son is being assessed for autism and the psychiatrist said to me last week that all this talk of superpowers is great at focusing on strengths but it can downplay the struggles people have.
A friend says she loves the way I see the world, as in the details that others miss, but that’s hardly a superpower.
I’m not sure that talk of superpowers is good for children who don’t have any either. It could feel like yet another thing they are failing at as though they aren’t doing autism or ADHD to a good enough standard.

Do you or your child have a superpower? You don’t have to share what it is, I’m just interested to see if people do actually have them. Maybe it was something to try and make ND people seem less “weird” to others or feel better about themselves. Just musing.

I think all this “super power” crap is just used as a way to downplay the struggles that people are facing.

DS ability to name any train he sees and memorise timetables didn’t override the fact that some days just getting out of bed is a struggle, or that he can’t go and see many of the trains he would like to because he knows it will be too crowded to cope. (Or any of the other many daily struggles he faces)

Also ADHD and I remember pointless dates/stuff to a ridiculous degree of accuracy. We went to the safari park for the first time after DS was born on 7 June 2021. I saw the boy I liked kissing someone else on 18 December 2002.

Also clothes/toys/stuff - that Lego set was a Christmas present from Nicola and Peter in 2023. DM bought those trousers for DS in a pack of 3 from Tesco when we visited in July 2024.

it takes up brain space because I struggle to get people’s birthday cards and gifts sorted in time, despite this requiring recall of dates.

I don't like the super power crap either.
But it took a long time for me to realise I'm good at organising - I can doggedly organise get togethers of far flung friends. I'm useless at talking much when the get together happens, mind!

My brother has autism and struggles to understand most of life which frustrates him. Yet if anyone tells him their date of birth, straight away he can tell them the day of the week they were born on and it's always right. I always think this 'super power' stuff is nonsense and condescending.

I agree with the psychiatrist. I have a fairly normal ability to spot BS even in ND world, so no superpower either.

The superpowers talk is infantalising at best and it is glossing over people's actual problems to be more 'affirming'.

Yeah, but the abilities you're describing are amazing to those of us with 'normal' brains!

I suspect they're not exclusive to people with autism, but they do seem more likely to have these gifts.

My superpower is needing medication to function on a daily basis - does that count? 🫣

Nope. Not unless you count being able to identify other neurodivergent people within about 3 seconds of meeting them.

DS on the other hand just listed 36 minerals and rocks from a poster, in order, without looking at them. He could also tell you what they look like, where you’d find them, what exactly they are, and where they are on the Mohs scale - which is not on the poster. He’s only been interested in geology for about 5 minutes. So at least he’s got a superpower. Even if it does come with crippling PDA which means he’ll probably never be able to put it to use 😩

Not a fan AT all of the superpower trope. It really does negate the difficulties of being Nd in an NT world.

I feel the same about the high functioning descriptor, as it only describes what the outside world sees and not what's happening behind the mask.

Absolutely this!

it’s a complete shitshow. Life is a struggle that people mostly don’t see

Unless you can fly/teleport/shoot lasers/use telepathy/have telekinesis, it's not a superpower, imo.

I'm quite good at finding 4 leaf clovers!!

There was an article in the Guardian not so long ago in a similar fashion where it was gushing how dyslexia is some kind if superpower with the usual tropes of seeing the world differently, being imaginative and creative and good with your hands. I went to a school which specialised in treating kids with dyslexia and saw first hand the struggles they had and barriers they had tto overcome. Did not seem so super then.

Nobody has superpowers. We are all human and struggle at times. Life can be very hard for ND people but they get on with it like everyone else and may enjoy some aspects of the way the brains work.

I had a photographic memory as a child which waned as I have become older however my memory for anything I have read is very good and at times photographic meaning I can read it like my brain has taken a snapshot of it. That came in handy for uni with exams but hasn't been much help with anything else apart from remembering passwords haha

Actually I do. I have ADHD and can work much faster than my peers and achieve deliverables at pace. I can also make links between concepts to deduce causality* quite easily but whether thats an ADHD thing or just general intelligence idk.

*aware this probably sounds a bit twatty. Also don't care.

No

No.

Yeah but can you find 4 leaf clovers tho?? Huh?

from the other side of this, I find NT brains amazing. How all the steps of a task can be executed and the task completed without 47 side quests and accidentally reseeding the lawn is nothing short of mystifying

That's my next project

you're not being unreasonable no.

It's a massive pain in the ass. Noticing patterns in everything, things most people miss.

But, we are who we are, this is the hand we were dealt, I'd rather be me than not me, all these years on I suppose.

Oh and it's reading, my reading and comprehension speed is about 4 times higher than average.

Oh and I hate the phrase neurotypical. I am absolutely certain it does not really exist as anythign more than the average of a load of divergent brains. Don;t sweat the labels. they rarely help

None of us think the things we CAN do are hard or special or interesting. They come easily to us so we dismiss them, instead focusing on things we struggle with.
The super power trope is good for helping people know they may have strengths, and would benefit from finding a purpose for them. But that’s the really hard bit, IMO. DH is good at choosing cars, because he knows all about them at a reading adverts and newspaper articles level. Can’t drive, but is useful about every 8 years when we need to change the car in a hurry. The same skill makes booking a holiday, hell. He overwhelms us both with the options, spreadsheets, comparators and then can’t commit to one.

I can remember every numberplate from every car that my parents and grandparents had in the early 80s if that counts?

@NewNameOldGame, you should limit your holidays to once every 8 years 😂