Bill Gates.Photo:Ian Allen/Gates Notes
Ian Allen/Gates Notes
Asked inan interview with PEOPLEwhat the most personal and revealing moment of his memoir was,Bill Gatesdoesn’t hesitate.
Speaking aboutSource Code,released this month, the Microsoft co-founder says it was “the question of whether to say explicitly that I probably would’ve beendiagnosed as on the spectrum” had he been growing up today.
“It’s just being honest,” he says, explaining that it also made sense to him to include that at the very end of his book (which covers the early years of his life), because growing up “those words didn’t come up.”
As he notes in the epilogue, when he was a child “the fact thatsome people’s brains process information differentlyfrom others wasn’t widely understood” — and “the term ‘neurodivergent’ wouldn’t be coined until the 1990s.”
“I do think when I got to college, the term ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] came up and people started to be prescribed medicine for that,” Gates, 69, says. “I never was, but I probably would’ve been diagnosed with that as well.”
Bill Gates' Lakeside school directory photo (1971-1972).Lakeside School
Lakeside School
But since that wasn’t experience, the question of neurodivergence didn’t come up until years later.
“It’s only as an adult that in a few cases people ask me that question,” Gates shares, adding that after the question was posed, he “had to reflect and say, ‘Yes.’ "
Although, as he writes in the epilogue, his parents were ultimately able to “intuitively understand how to guide him,” it was also true that they sometimes “struggled with their complicated son.”
“My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects … missed social cues, and could be rude of inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others,” he says.
Gates Family
Still, dad Bill Sr. and mom Mary managed to give him the “precise blend of support and pressure I needed,” something which Gates knows made him a “lucky kid.”
“They gave me room to grow emotionally, and they created opportunities for me to develop my social skills,” he writes inSource Code.
“Even with their influence, my social side would be slow to develop, as would my awareness of the impact I can have on other people,” he continues. “But that has come with age, with experience, with kids, and I’m better for it.”
And while he may wish that those skills had “come sooner,” Gates writes that he “wouldn’t trade the brain I was given for anything.”
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Speaking with PEOPLE, Gates says that his candor helps contextualize some of his childhood stories for readers — including the time he turned in a 177-page report on the state of Delaware.
“I think in a way, unless I’d said that you might’ve thought — oh, sure, he wrote a little bit longer report or sure he was fidgety at his desk,” he says. “But it was extreme enough, like 200 pages versus 10 pages and going off to read at long periods of time and not wanting to be interrupted and trying to make sense of things more than most other kids.”
Bill Gates.Ian Allen/Gates Notes
While his social skills may have been slow to develop, Gates did go on to form “very deep friendships” with people he felt similarities with, includingPaul Allen, who shared his love for learning, computers and software, and with whom he’d eventually co-found Microsoft.
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All in all, Gates feels fortunate for the way everything played out.
“If somebody said, ‘Here’s a pill that your social skills will be better, but you won’t be able to concentrate so much,’ I would not go back and take that pill,” he tells PEOPLE. “I’ve had the most amazing and interesting and fulfilling life.”
Source Codeis available now.
source: people.com
