Let me tell you, parenting sure has been an adventure. I have two vastly different children. My daughter is more typically high achieving. I suspect she may have ADHD, but overall she's extremely academically advanced and at seven years old is doing fourth grade work. She's got all the intensity, inability to sleep, high activity, good at almost anything she does, etc.
My son.. is completely different. Kind of. He has moderate to severe delays across the board. At five years old (yesterday!) he is still mostly non-verbal, has muscle tone issues (hypotonia), etc. The school is trying to label him as severely 'intellectually disabled'. The thing is - he was humming songs when he was under a year old. He has known his alphabet since he was two years old. He knows numbers through 20 (At least, possibly more), colors, shapes, etc. But, the thing is he's super inconsistent. As his mother, I work with him a lot and see what he knows, but a psychologist at the school gives him a single test and gives him the most absurdly low 'number', basically indicating he is a vegetable. I am not trying to sound horrible with that, but it's laughably low if you actually know him. He is a great problem solver, he gets what he wants, he recognizes songs within a few bars, he loves music.. His asynchronicity is so severe and all they seem to see are the challenges. Maybe he IS 'intellectually disabled', whatever, I am not going to love him less.. but how do I explain early eye contact, smiles, the memorization, the humming of tunes, etc? I find it impossible to believe he has 'slow processing speed' by the things I witness. He's had genetic testing, which all came back negative, he had an MRI which showed no abnormalities except moderate (they say it should not cause issues) swelling with his pituitary gland. He's not a small kid. As far as Autism testing goes, we got a 'no, not really' verdict, saying that mostly he has physical and sensory based issues, but they don't actually believe he's Autistic.
So.. I guess my question is, has anybody else had kids with such huge differences? Have you had a child with such severe delays that eventually "caught up"? I see the fire in his eyes, I see those 'splinter skills'. I am frustrated to see them act as if he's just got low potential. I don't believe it. I am a realist. I don't think my children are 'perfect', but nor do I want them to ignore his potential.
Thoughts from my other outlier parents?
