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Wondering if others have children who were late-talkers? If so, did it 'mask' their giftedness?

Our DD7 is PG (we only recently found out) and we feel like terrible parents for never realizing it. The psychologist seemed to think that her late talking (10 words at 3.5) and her severe visual problems (functionally blind in one eye, patched for over a year) held her back from showing us at a younger age.

The reason I ask is because her brother is 21 months old and, like his sister, says almost nothing. He may have 8-10 words that he uses on occasion. He communicates by pointing, pulling you around, stomping and crying. I have been trying to teach him signs but he is not interested. He learned 'Thank you' and then stopped paying attention. He seems really bright in many other ways, just incredibly stubborn. It will not make a lick of difference to us if he is gifted or not, I guess I am just really afraid we are going to miss it again. I feel like we did DD a great disservice by never recognizing her abilities and would hate to have that happen to DS. We would love to follow his cues in terms of what he is interested in, but this is getting so frustrating. Right now all I can gather is that he loves trains and water. Who knows what else goes on in his head?

Just looking to see if others have had similar experiences they could share.

First ... stop beating yourself up. You now know and will clearly do whatever you can to advocate for her needs. She is 7, which is still young. Lots of people on this board didn't know when their children were toddlers. It's what you do with it after you figure it out.

Second ... if you have read Ruf's book you might jump to the conclusion that early talking is a requirement. (Not saying you specifically, but more for anyone else who stumbles upon your post.) Ruf points out the characteristics of toddlers who align with gifted, but this does not make it absolute. Every child is different and develops in different ways.

My sons (twins) didn't really start talking until 24.5 months and then by 25.5 months were very obviously ahead of the game with extremely good vocabulary. We came to understand later that they had, and still have, articulation issues. One of them still has difficulty hearing the difference between vowel sounds. They also had some gross motor issues, so the verbal and motor skills not only masked their giftedness, but we thought they might actually be slow. There were other signs of intelligence before the speech came on board, but we didn't look closely at it. They are HG, not PG overall. Both of them had some very high scores on their testing, but also some very low ones, so there may be something else going on. We have not yet had an opportunity to explore this.

Everyone on the family has been slow with speech for at least a few generations back, with both my family and their father's. We have a 22 month old DD now, and she is 'average' with speech, aside from some very early incidents of accidentally clear speech. Again, her articulation is a problem, but I am far more aware of of the nature of the difficulty now than I was before. This *would* mask that she is bright, if I hadn't been through this before. Even so, I don't know anything more than that she is sharp, with an excellant memory and a neat sense of humor.

Thank you for your responses.

We are trying to stop feeling badly about being clueless about DD. Well, DH is doing a good job, anyway! Me... I just can't wrap my head around it. But that is another subject.

cricket3: Our pediatrician is not even remotely concerned. She was the one who pointed out how like his sister he is. He gets his point across eventually and can generally tell us what he wants (in a round about, scavenger-type fashion). His non-verbal is acutally pretty impressive. He is social and happy and interactive in so many other ways. There are no other red flags. He just turns off when we try to engage him in something he does not want to do... like talking. The words he does say are clear, there just aren't many of them.

My DD also had speech therapy after she turned three. I didn't find it helped much at all. She just wasn't ready to talk. One day she just started speaking in full sentences.

I guess I also feel the need to say that we don't CARE if he is gifted and have no plans on hothousing in any way. More, we are just curious. Almost as if we have a chance to do this over again and do it the right way (i.e. give the kid some credit rather than trying to medicate the activity away).

Again, thanks for the response.

You might like to read Thomas Sowell's books
"Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late" and his follow-up book "Late-Talking Children".

They are really interesting and relate to this very topic.

Cheers

Thanks, cricket3... I agree with you wholeheartedly about the lack of benefit for screening a toddler. I think my questions are stemming more from my shock about my older DD than anything else. I really need to get past my mommy-guilt. Maybe I am transferring it onto DS and trying to see what I missed with DD. I want to be very clear that we have NO intention of pursuing any type of screening. My curiousity is surrounding how giftedness might be masked. I mean, how does a parent NOT know?? And how can you be a good advocate for you child once they reach school if you don't know? I just don't want to repeat any mistakes with DS.

I read 'Einstein Syndrome' recently and it gave me goosebumps. Sowell described my kids and our family perfectly.

Here is an earlier thread reply of mine that described my son's expressive language disorder.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/75351/5.html

Some kids are late talkers and catch up right away and use proper grammar and such right away. If it's not like that, it may be expressive language disorder, which is the "Einstein Syndrome." Just something to look into. I plan on testing my DS when he turns 6 to see his degree of GT and if there are any LD's. He had one right at 4yrs old and was non-compliant for most of it. DS wouldn't answer things he's known since he was 3. The psych had nothing up his sleeve and no experience with strong-willed kids obviously; although DS's ped referred him.

You can lookup some of my non-neurotic;) threads as well to see some of his progress. Ha. I had a few unfortunately. School-issues made me this way. (homeschooling saved us both) Look up "late talking" in the search engine as well.

I had lots of puzzles (A,B,C), blocks, legos, trains, trucks, hot wheel cars, all the Leapfrog letter videos, Leapfrog refrigerator magnets that said the sounds, and used many of the Bee Smart Baby videos. His ST recommended all of the Leapfrog stuff. The 'tactileness' of the frig letters were great. These were his favorite; and he liked spelling words with them too - simple things like his name, Mom, Daddy, cat, dog... My DS is extremely visual; so incorporating as many things as possible has been very effective. With ELD, the kids don't have the filing system in their heads that other kids do; so creating groupings of things, i.e. dog, cat, mouse = animals and such are needed first; so it is easier to get the words out that they are trying to speak. I have a female friend who suffered from a stroke; and it is much like that. You know what you want to say, but can't get it into words. It is entirely frustrating. BUT, it can be taught/cured/worked through. It really needs speech therapy though. If words and pictures are incorporated together, it sticks more. Also, it has been proven that one-on-one time learning these things, sticks better than them watching a video about it. Also, physically showing them with their mouths how to make the sound is important. These smart kids can do things if shown properly; so it actually helps to physically help them and/or put a mirror in front of them. Overly exaggerating the sound too (liking "hacking" to say the k sound - sorry for the grossness) - that's how the ST did it. I like the videos as we rode in the car to add another element to his development/teaching.

My DS is about a year behind now in his speech still; but he is progressing steadily with speech therapy. He has been in therapy since he was 2. See the other thread for more details, or if you have any more specific questions, write here or PM me. I am an open book. DS is doing 1st grade math with RightStart Math and is reading at 2nd grade now (using time4learning.com).

One last thing that helped with him was being consistent/relentless in getting him to repeat things correctly (with love), lots of love and understanding, and showing him how proud we are for his just trying - and staying calm. Our ST made us make him ask for things, even when we knew what he wanted. Hugs to you!

We have been trying to be more firm about getting DS to ask for things before we give or do what he wants. While he hates it and has been displaying what a wicked temper he has, it has helped. In the past week he has learned 5 new words and two new signs. This brings the grand total to 15 words and three signs at 21.5 months. What is most bizarre is how he strings his words together. DH came home from work the other day and DS greeted him with "Hey there, Dada." And yesterday he drove one of his trains under the TV cabinet and came running to get me saying "Uh-oh, uh-oh! Come, Mama, come help!"

We just realized that he recognizes his name as well and can pick out the letters in his name from his letter magnets. He found his name on a keychain attached to his backpack and played with it for a few seconds before pointing to himself.

I guess there is hope for him yet! It makes it so much easier to follow their lead when you know where the heck they want to go.