His asynchronous development, which was most obvious from age five to nine, presented because he was so intellectually advanced as compared to age and held mature social expectations that his classmates did not meet. Additionally, he is very emotionally intense. His feelings were easily hurt before he accepted common boy world behaviors and he didn�t hide it.
This is exactly the sort of situation I always think of when I think of asynchronous development. The world-at-large sees most clearly the kids who are emotionally intense, which means the child
seems to be (or perhaps even is) behind age level in the emotional front.
But I think the more common issue is that an HG+ child seems like such a little adult intellectually, but then s/he gets hungry or tired and throws an age-appropriate tantrum, and the adults around can't understand what happened to the little adult. The contrast is so glaring that the tantrum seems much less age-appropriate than it is.
Child #1 in our family--the HG+ one--tends to be emotionally advanced, well-behaved, rule-oriented, and highly logical. At maybe 8 months old, he was figuring out EXACTLY what the house rules were by testing the boundaries and looking to me for a "no" so he could understand precisely what it was that I was saying "no" to. Can I roll the car on the wall with my right hand? How about my left hand? Can I bang the car on the wall? How about rolling it on the floor? When he got a nod and "yes" from me instead of a "no," he never did the "no" things again. I could almost see the wheels turning! It was one of the moments that told me for sure he was a GT kid.
Now, Child #2 is a drama queen, an emotional mirror and every other emotional intensity you could dream up. At age 3, however, he's pretty much right on target for his age, I think.
Interesting conversation!
