Bright Not Broken Quotes

“Or, as neurologist Jeffrey Victoroff describes it, “ADHD is a symptom in search of a disorder in search of a syndrome.”38”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism

“Instead of questioning what is wrong with your child, we encourage you to consider that something may be fundamentally wrong with the diagnostic and education systems that are failing your child,”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism

“Although we recognize that poor parenting practices and deliberately defiant children do exist in our culture, most oppositional behaviors in 2e children—stubbornness, impatience, low frustration levels, and tantrums—are caused by underlying deficits in emotional regulation and in social cognition (mind-blindness) or by characteristics of giftedness. For a large portion of the 2e population, oppositionality is not simply a learned behavior. The diagnosis of ODD is a very real danger to 2e children because it opens the door to their being seriously misunderstood, misjudged, and medicated. Unfortunately, the notion that ODD is a learned behavior arising from poor parenting echoes a long-held assumption that parents somehow “cause” their children's disorders.”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism

“As Thomas Armstrong explains in his book Neurodiversity, the ADHD label is a “tragic decoy” because “the child is reduced to an ‘ADD child' where the potential to see the best in him or her is severely eroded (since ADD/ADHD puts all the emphasis on the deficits, not the strengths).”22 This concern is echoed in the field of dual exceptionalities, which recognizes that many characteristics of giftedness are commonly misdiagnosed as ADHD.”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism

“impairment in executive function may be the most disabling result of having an autism spectrum condition because of its negative impact on life outcome.”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism

“Like many 2e children, he's endured more than his share of suffering because of academic underachievement, peer rejection, bullying, and even judgment by adults who thought he was too smart to be autistic and too autistic to be smart.”
― Diane M. Kennedy, Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism