When I did my pediatric neuropsychological assessment practicum, the most unforgettable moments were my supervisor’s feedback sessions to our young patients (ages 3-18). The children we saw were commonly referred to neuropsychological testing due to concerns for neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., ADHD, ASD), learning disorders, and complex neuro-related medical conditions (e.g., brain tumors, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury). After administrating 6-8 hours of testing and writing up 10-20 pages reports, my supervisor always said “here comes the highlight of the event”, that is, the feedback session. Regardless of the diverse clinical presentations and diagnoses, she would draw a superhero with strong muscles and showed the picture to the kids, “do you know what we found in our testing? Do you know you have superpower? Has anyone ever told you that before? Let me tell you what we found in our testing results, our data shows that you have superpower in…”. In that moment, you can’t imagine how bright the kids’ faces became, their posture changed (for instance, they would lift up their heads higher), their eyes glittered with confidence, and their smiles became as brilliant as sunshine. The superpower metaphor affirmed and empowered these young patients especially when these comments were made in front of their parents! More importantly, these “superpower” comments are not merely encouragement out of good intention, they are also supported by data.
Some autistic individuals have extraordinary ability in cognitive domains required by engineering or architecture such as visuospatial reasoning, visual perception, or visuospatial construction. In a similar sense, some people like to identify some children with ADHD as a Ferraris whose minds run very fast. Media often deifies people with disabilities (e.g., Shaun Murphy in the show “good doctor”). Gifted individuals do exist in clinical settings, yet people are gifted in different ways and often their gifts may not as obvious (e.g., academic achievement). One of our jobs as psychologists is to discover the gifts of the young people we see.
However, the most interesting thing is, no matter how distressing the overall data seems, no matter how long the list of diagnoses is, no matter how severely functions are impaired, there is always a strength that stands out. We only need an eye to see, an eye with hope, an eye with love, and an eye with belief. Once I saw a boy whose testing data showed that his performance on most cognitive domains and social skills fell into exceptionally impaired range and multiple of his family members had disabilities. I struggled with how to share these results with the family and the child and how to convey a message with hope. My supervisor reviewed the datasheet and said with a face of surprise, “look at his scores on behavioral and emotional function and imagine the stress in his daily life”. When I imagined how heavy the burden he carried every day, it is indeed amazing that he had the ability to regulate his emotions and monitor his behaviors well in the midst of chaos. It was a big comfort for the exhausted family while they struggled with inadequate resources and supports from the bigger societal system. When we take a microscopic scrutiny on our lives and other people’s lives, we will find many “superpowers” we possess that we may have taken for granted.
