Hi, this is my first post here, so please be gentle with me.
Forgive me if this topic has been covered. I have a DD6 who is in a Regional Gifted Center here in Chicago Public schools. She is very smart and was the classic early talker, was reading before we realized it, etc. Long story short, I didn't really understand she was gifted until she was almost through preschool...in fact there were things about her that made me wonder if she could be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I feel bad now about being so far off the mark.
Her brother, DS2 has just gone through an evaluation with EI here in Illinois. I don't have the write up yet, but the therapists want to put him in speech, physical, and occupational therapy because of our concerns about his speech. He pretty much doesn't put two words together (has a decent vocab), some echolalia, extremely emotional with severe tantrums, sometimes all day long (probably because he can't communicate), and very rigid in play routines.
HOWEVER...I waited so long to get him evaluated because of the things he CAN do. Since well before his 2nd birthday he has been obsessed with first, numbers, then shapes, colors, and letters and has been able to correctly identify many of them for a long time now. He can count well into his 30's, backwards and forwards, and can identify numbers at least 1-20, maybe more, out of sequence. Can identify upper and lower case letters as well as say the sound they make. Can write most upper case letters (completely self taught) and some lower case and tell you what he just wrote. Can draw many simple shapes (including a happy face with eyes, nose, mouth and ears) and correctly identify. He can start with any letter in the alphabet and go forwards and backwards sequentially. I have a hard time doing the alphabet backwards.
Anyway, I don't know what to make of this. I mean, he won't even ask for a cup of milk...just barks out milk at me and stares at me blankly when I try to model the correct way to ask for things. No pronouns, few verbs, few adjectives aside from colors.
Will someone please help me make sense of this? I am completely unprepared for this kind of situation. Is this some sort of obsession with symbols that just happens to make it seem like he's really bright yet language delayed? I'm ok with that, I get that having a gifted kid is not the slam dunk people think it is (DD can be an existential, argumentative Drama Queen PITA, haha). But am I wrong to be confused by this seemingly wildly conflicting set of skills my dear sweet little man has? I just look at him and want to help him unlock language so I can get to know him a little better instead of having to draw letters and shapes for him for hours and hours and be subject to tantrums if I stop or even slow down.
Help.
