Our ds had delayed speech but we didn't recognize that it was delayed until he was older and went through his first set of neuropsych testing. We did realize he wasn't talking, but just thought he was cute and quirky (he was our first child lol!). He didn't vocalize hardly *at all* when he was an infant or toddler. I can count on my hands the number of times he tried out a word, and then once he'd said it he'd drop it and go back to being quiet for months. The only words he even tried before he was almost three years old were "bye" and "ma". The main reasons we never thought twice about it were that he scored ok on the questionnaires that we were given by the peds office when he had his well-child checks, and he clearly was a-ok cognitively - he used sign language and we could tell by his responses he understood everything we communicated to him. When he was 3, he started talking all of a sudden and none of it was testing out words or anything - he was speaking in full-on complex sentences and talking about some very deep and complicated subjects... so we just thought that those early years of no speech happened because he was observing.
Fast forward to early elementary school, and life got very stressful for him. We didn't realize until he was in 2nd grade (and school was literally imploding on him) that he (like blackcat's ds) has developmental coordination disorder. The early speech issues tied in with it, as well as a few other early milestones which ds was late at - crawling, walking etc. He wasn't so late that he was obviously delayed, but he was definitely on the late end of the wide spectrum when those types of milestones typically occur.
As the school years went on, the speech issues that we'd never recognized as challenges showed up as a huge challenge with written expression (particularly open-ended questions) and also some types of verbal expression. Articulation is ok (although he is a bit monotone compared to most people), but he struggles a lot with getting his ideas out.
So yes, it's quite possible to be intellectually gifted and have a speech challenge (and many other types of challenges too
). Outside of his specific areas of challenge, my ds is clearly intellectually gifted, and when he is able to get his thoughts out in writing, they also are on the level you'd expect based on his intelligence.
You're doing exactly what you need to be doing right now - you have your ds in working with an SLP. I wish so much in hindsight that we'd thought to do so when our ds was young, or that someone would have asked and told us that the lack of vocalization was not typical. I don't know that it would have made a difference in where he's at now (he has been working with an SLP for quite a few years on written expression).
I don't know if your ds will have ongoing issues with speech and expressive language - chances are he won't! I hope that what I wrote didn't worry you - I just wanted to let you know that yes, it's quite possible to be gifted and to have an expressive language challenge!
Best wishes,
polarbear
