Came across this post as a link on another good blog: I very, very much liked her point that good news often gets treated as bad news, as does bad news. For a long time I was also told "splinter skill" or "she just happens to be interested in that" when Primera could do seriously freaky displays of memory. Part of me knew there was something problematic about it, and part of me (rightly) was also saying, "But doesn't it still count?" I mean, really, isn't it a pretty impressive display of visual discrimination and memory, which are in fact aspects of intelligence, to be able to identify all fifty states by shape when you're two, without any effort whatsoever? This blogger makes the same point more concisely:

Most people get to understand that their personal characteristics may be viewed as assets or liabilities, depending on the context. The ability to focus and persevere is tenacity in one setting, obsessiveness or perseveration in another.

It's useful, sometimes to see these mothers' takes on disability. Some of them are quite a bit, I don't know, sunnier than mine are, but intelligently optimistic.