Both my kids were referred to a developmental pediatrician by their regular pediatrician when my son�s teacher and principle suggested that he may have ADHD (the principle and THIS teacher also recognized that he was intellectually advanced). My daughter was referred to the specialist at the same time due to my assertion that she seemed to present as having CAPD (one psychologists thought she had ADD, two others thought she had ADD and/or auditory processing difficulties (public school psych stated that she was quite average with pushy parents).
The developmental pediatrician determined that ds was very gifted and under- challenged (with borderline auditory attention issues) and that dd was gifted and needed further specialist evaluations for probable auditory discrimination and processing difficulties.
The developmental pediatrician also conducted extremely thorough physicals on each kid. While doing so, she detected an irregular heartbeat from ds which led to an additional referral to a pediatric cardiologist. (The conclusion was that he has athletic heart arrhythmia.)
I would definitely recommend anyone see a developmental ped for a diagnosis for ADHD. One caveat is that she did tell me that she hardly ever sees kids that are well adjusted, intellectually advanced and social with adults so she enjoyed interacting with them. Point being that, every developmental ped may not be experienced or aware of how a gifted children present with and without ADHD (similar to the issue of psychologists for IQ testing).
