My son just had physical delays--he has always seemed more mature emotionally than kids his age, maybe because he had to learn to deal with being different from a very early age. Several years ago, when he could see that I was so upset about the school refusing to provide an appropriate education and I spent too much time being frustrated with the situation and worrying about how I could change things, he told me that I needed to stop worrying about the way things "should be" and just deal with "what is." I realized then that he had to come to terms with "what is" instead of the way things "should be" at a very early age, especially in Kindergarten when people were telling him he "should be" able to do things like coloring in the lines and cutting and drawing because he was obviously intelligent since he could already read and do math grade levels ahead of age mates before starting Kindergarten. He had already learned some difficult life lessons. He has always been able to talk about it, so emotional maturity always seemed advanced.
He knows that he is academically advanced but he does not show off his intelligence, even around kids who have teased him about not being as strong or as fast or athletic like they are.
He did not seem too upset when an adult was guilty of "verbal bullying" toward him. He told me he understood that she had "issues" and he was able to let it go.
I think doctors thought my son's delays might just be asynchronous development and this is why my son was never really given a dignosis. It was as if they were blind to his mild physical delays and only noticed the advanced vocabulary and they seemed to enjoy talking to him. In my sons medical records they wrote things like "seems to be high IQ" but not much about any physical problems. The developmental pediatrician's report from a few years ago only mentions proprioceptive and vestibular issues and she recommended having him do activities from the Out-of-Sync-Child Has Fun. So I thought he was just asynchronous.
So here we are at age nine and other kids notice that he is not as physically able to do things as they are and he is talking about quitting scouts--the only activity he is involved in with age mates. People whose children have sensory integration issues and are receiving therapy for it notice him. People whose children have hypotonia and are receiving therapy notice him. But because he was so bright and able to compensate for some of his differences, he was not referred for OT or PT for his differences. I guess they thought he was just asynchronous. Asynchronous with all of the overexcitabilities, smart and funny and quirky.
People have a really hard time believing that my very articulate nine year old who is able to talk intelligently about the latest happenings in the news and loves to share his opinions about the things he hears, is able to memorize scripts and songs faster than much older gifted kids in his musical theater class, and who seems so obviously gifted, could have a physical problem that would cause him to not be able to learn a complex series of dance steps as fast as younger kids. They tell him he is not trying when he is trying very hard and he continues to try very hard because he does eventually get it--usually at the last possible second.
