Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Any Late Talking Gifted Kids?

Anyone Read "Einstein Syndrome"
My son did not talk until almost 2 and 1/2 not even MAMA.
Then by 3 he was reading full books.
Weird but we were worried for a while.
He had speech therapy.
One phychologist said it wasn't typical to know the letters b4 speaking, said he was hyperlexic. Never even mentioned the possibility of being gifted.
Anyone else?

My 7 year old ds didn't talk until he was well over 3. I read several books on speech delay and Autism. Yes, he had many symptoms of autism. Except that he enjoyed interacting with people but just wouldn't speak. He communicated his desires and emotions through facial expressions, laughing and gestures. Then one day he started talking in complete sentences and asking ton's of questions. He has always been his own person even as a baby, we ended up figuring it was a quirk of his personality.

He is extremely observant and figures things out very quickly.
He taught himself how to read and picks up basic math skills with little of no repetition.

Sounds like my DS too. Since the main sympton of autism is not interaction w/people and not being social I guess we should have known not to worry. My son also very social, I dont get why that was never brought up. No one asked us "is he friendly is he social". He didn't look the therapist in the eye that day and he didn't point for her, oh and he was fixated on a puzzle, she thought that was not good like he was lost in the puzzle. I feel they were quick to label and didn't really test my DS just assumed he is not talking something is wrong.
Maybe better safe than sorry give all the services it can't hurt. But of course we worried for nothing.
Oh and a medical dr a phychiatrist did not make the same conclusion, and for him when he saw my DS do a puzzle he said "oh he can do that" and that was almost enough for him to say there is nothing wrong. So that did relieve us.
But 2 completely diff feelings about the puzzle , so weird.

My DS3 has Apraxia. It's sort of a disconnect between the brain and the vocal cords. The language is in there, slowly starting to emerge. He goes to speech therapy and the therapist told me that one day it will be like someone opened the flood gates, she said usually when kids are about 4.5. Got my fingers crossed!

The most common way to identify the possibility of Apraxia is a childs inability to stick out their tongue.

Yes, DS5 was late talking - at his 22 month check-up, I couldn't tick the box that said "uses at least 5 words regularly". I wasn't exactly worried, since he was communicating well, but not being worried was consuming more and more effort, IYSWIM!　We have no diagnosed ASD in the family, but I think both I and DH's brother might have been diagnosed with Asperger's today. DS actually seems less that way than I remember being. We talked with the health visitor about maybe getting him speech therapy if he didn't talk soon, but the HV was reassuring and she was right - in the next few weeks he had the most stunning language explosion, and was talking in 4-5 word sentences before he was 26 months. He could read at least a bit before he could talk - hard to say how much! Certainly knew his letters by name and sound, and many of his first words were numbers.

GT kids tend to do things in strange orders, so hold the worrying. My daughter was not interested in reading early. However, she wanted to write. Since then, I have heard of quite a few GT kids who write before they read. She began reading (or the interest of) afterwards and now is a huge reader.

Her Kinder teacher (who I loved) was perplexed, but went with it and did not push the reading and let her write. Her first grade teacher (who I also loved) let her learn cursive and once she mastered that, her reading accelerated several grade levels in a few weeks. They had both been around gifted kids quite a lot and learned to "go with the flow".

I guess she had to do it her way. If anyone would have forced her to read first, I have no idea of the outcome so no data there. I guess she needed depth to the symbols.

WOW I never even heard of Apraxia!

The Book was about kids exactly like ours, it was a good read.

Very interesting. Thank God our kids are fine.
It is weird thought how they spoke late.
I do recall early on how my DS did say one word but said it wrong, instead of Apple he said "Appen" and that was it, didn't speak at at until 2 and 1/2 about.
In the book "enstein syndrome" he suggests it could gifted kids have a higher standard and being perfectionists they don't want to make a mistake so therefore don't speak.
This is a possibility.

Mine DS was the opposite read long before writing.
He knew the letters early maybe at 1. But writing came after 3.
I had to push the writing.
We sat there every day for one summer practicing.
I had to get a dry erase board and practice saying stuff say for letter K (Down, kick in and then kick out), or H (Down Down and across) B (down around around). E (down Top Middle Bottom). I had to do this over and over before he could write them.