Funny thing……News came out today that breastfeeding mothers do not get "smarter" kids. I’ve already been told my son, who has Down Syndrome, will be challenged/mentally retarded/disabled/differently abled. So, now I’ve completely screwed him over by breastfeeding.

I was hoping I’d done something right. For, there’s my daughter over there, bouncing, dancing, almost beating me at chess, clever, insightful, empathetic…..but, she’s out of luck too. I breast fed her for 4 and 1/2 years!

I am reading this book by this incredible human being, Temple Grandin. She was the first to write a book about what life is like from her point of view. She is an assistant professor at Colorado State University. How many people said she was challenged/mentally retarded/disabled/differently abled? As I read her book, I saw so much of myself. My anxieties, inabilities to talk in numbing social situations, aversion to crowds, love of solitude, inability to ever really get applied physics or linear algebra - never led to a diagnosis of challenged/mentally retarded/disabled/differently able or autistic. I was often just called "not that good in science/math/English.

Temple Grandin hooked on to a few key things: a few smart mentors and a mother who wouldn’t accept labels. These teachers in Temple’s life understood that she approached the world in a different way and helped her to channel her thinking in those directions. Hmmmm…..sounds like a reasonably smart way to approach intelligence. Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me! There IS actually other theories and models to measure intelligence. This guy, Howard Gardner, came up with the idea that maybe all of us approach learning in a different way. He broke it down to eight different types of intelligence: verbal/linguistic, musical, naturalist, kinetic, visual/spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and logical/mathematic, which most of today’s intelligence standards are measured by.

So, unless we fit into the logical model, we have a hard time learning in the regular world. Those that hook on to a mentor, cheers! - for they may have found a way to their destiny. I struggled for years to fit into "their" world. Finally, I broke free. At times, I am more unsure of myself than ever, but that’s because I have to make my own model, I can’t follow "their" way. Scary, but freeing.

My son will approach the world in a way different than I do, but then so does my daughter. It’s our job as parents to help them figure out their way. My son already understands two different languages (and babbles in both); he’s healed three major medical problems without ever going to a doctor; and he has a whole gaggle of people that adore him and run circles around him. Now, who’s calling who a dummy?