Speech delay and gifted traits.

[littlemslazybones]

My almost 3 year old is AMAZING! I'm only stirring ;-)

I've been a bit concerned about posting because it seems a bit silly to be talking about toddlers and giftedness and I can see why it often generates a fair bit of eye rolling. I'm just looking for some advice :-).

My little one has a severe speech delay. When he was 2 he had no speech and little indication of decent receptive language (which now I would be happy to attribute to stubbornness). He was happy and sociable but couldn't care less about language. I had his hearing checked a number of times to makes sure he didn't have a hearing disability and then started running the SaLT gauntlet.

Almost a year on and I would say that his receptive language is very good but his expressive language is poor. I'm not sure what the therapist thinks, if she thinks anything she's not telling me.

O.K. So about 3 months ago I found out that my son seems to have a - (trying to avoid a medal moment) - much better memory than I have. My eldest (4) came home from school and wanted to 'teach' ds2 all the letters he had learnt at school, 22 letters at that point. I watched as ds2 learnt all the phonic letters in about 10 mins (demonstrated only through pointing not talking).

The next day, he remembered all those letters. I think he was memorizing the picture that accompanied the letter, rather than the sound. I'm only saying this because I think it only points to memory not reading ability. Since then, he's done other a number of other things that make me think that he has a number of gifted traits. (I only imagine he is gifted in the average sense, he's not balancing equations yet or anything)

I haven't told the speech therapist because it might not be significant and, if it is, I'm worried they might withdraw their help. But, maybe it is significant and it may 'mean' something else. (Like I could stop doing these mind-numbing speech exercises and get on with just playing with him).

Right so, after all that, I suppose my question is: For those of you with smart children who talked late, do you think that your child's lack of speech ran alongside their ability or do you think their ability influenced their speech acquisition? Did this change your approach to helping them to acquire speech?

Thanks. Sorry for the length of the post.

Has the speech therapist not spoken to you about WHY he may be speaking late? Did his sibling always talk to him, is there any physical problems eg cleft palette? The speech therapist really should be communicating with you.

As to the memory, little ones constantly amaze me with that & letters are all around us so I would be surprised if there was no prior knowledge so a case of too early to tell perhaps?

Even if he is gifted you need to keep doing those mind numbing speech exercises I'm afraid. you should be playing too, though, I'm a bit concerned that you might not have got the balance between therapist and mum right? It's easy for it to get out of whack....

Fwiw, we were told dd2 would be unlikely to speak (she has complex oromotor issues as a result of a birth injury). We started using makaton and early on she had a 'big mac' device to teach communication response and turn taking. (she has a cerebral palsy dx). She had slt from birth (obv started as more of a feeding therapy, but we attended the feeding and communication group weekly as well as having 1-1 slt).

Anyways, she did eventually start to become verbal at around 3, (and at that point we discovered that she had taught herself to read) but her speech was severely dysarthric, etc etc. We could all tell she was a bright cookie, but just hampered by her disability. (she obv wasn't walking etc either, so was having lots of other therapy and intervention, too). We were trying to emigrate (which with a child with a disability is no fun, believe me) and had to prove that her problems were just physical and that no learning disability was present, so in yr r we had to pay to get a full ed psych test done. (she'd had an EP observation in school, but there were really no concerns about her cognitive ability, so they weren't going to waste LEA money assessing her on that score - she had a full statement of sen for the other cp aspects though).

Her testing showed her to be in the VS range across the board, with an IQ in the HG range.

She still needed lots of speech therapy. and even at 8yo, school still ask for more.

On the other hand I went away for the weekend when dd1 was 18mos, and came back to find out that dh had taught her the alphabet and she knew all the letter sounds, and could go and hunt out the letters at will from the toy box when he asked her to find any of them. It was a bit of a freaky party trick, but kids of that age are total sponges and you can teach them anything. Dd1 does fit into the gifted range, but nowhere near to the extent that dd2 does. She's just a hard worker and a people pleaser. (her iq is about 12 points below dd2, but still 'gifted').

Sooooooo, I think I'm trying to say that I love it when kids with sn surprise us with good stuff. We are always looking for clues as to how they are going to turn out when they are older, and stuff like this gives us a real boost.

He might turn out to be gifted, he might not.

I think that for dd2 that makaton was the link that encouraged communication - she pieced the written word stuff together herself - with being read to, and having two older siblings who were reading, she just absorbed it like a sponge - her speech wasn't really 'connected' to that. The makaton kind of made the link between 'symbolic' communication and speech, iykwim. (she couldn't sign v well herself as her fine motor is also pretty compromised) but with us speaking and signing, she could make a visual/ aural link. I think it definitely all helped.

No, they haven't really pinned down what is happening. He has just finished 12 weeks of play-based therapy which was mostly an extended observation of what he is and isn't doing with speech. From the questions that they have asked and a handful of non-committal mumblings, I presume they have considered and then discounted asd and that they intend to pursue this as a specific speech delay. I'm awaiting a copy of a report that they will put together which may tell me more but I'm not hopeful it will have much to say in addition to what I've written above and then we have a couple of months before they will reassess and decide on the next course of action.

He has a chatterbox for an older brother and my dh was a late talker. I've told them this a number of time in the hope they will go, 'oh, that's fine then, he'll get there in the end' but they are not interested. I feel stuck because I pushed really hard for this help but I'm not convinced it is helping although I carry on because I might be wrong.

I'm sure it is too early to tell, I just find it hard to tally his lack of speech on the one hand with the fact that he is really bright and engaged. His lack of speech feels like stubbornness, and we have more than a healthy dose of that sloshing around in our house.

It's ridiculous really, I was hoping I'd go...'well he has a good memory, good number sense with single digit addition, completes big jigsaws quickly, rides a pedal bike without stabilizers and he laughs at my jokes' and someone would go...'he's fine, mine did that, ditch the speech therapy and go play with your son'.

Bah, posted in the wrong place didn't I? Is there a deluded and optimistic mother's board?

Hi madwomaninthattic,

I have definitely got the therapist v mum out of whack. Somewhere I read about a year ago I should be doing this type of thing

look, there's a fast train
fast train
train
choo choo

And not I always bloody do it and it's driving me demented. It feels like all my speech with my son gets filtered through a 'he's broken' lens. Thanks for replying, the more I type, the more I realise this isn't the kind of help I need. I think I might need a holiday.

And now... not not. Can't type, just crying.

We all need a holiday.

Honestly, relax.

When kids have issues it can become all-encompassing. Try and concentrate on all the fabulous stuff for a few weeks, and then pick up the slt stuff again after Easter. Everyone needs abreak from worrying.

Aw, bless you.

He sounds lovely. It's our job to worry and stress and fret. But you need to be kind to yourself as well. Bath, glass of wine, and early night?

No chocolate?

Thank you. It's good advice.

God, yes. If you have some in the house.

I took that as a given. You don't need to wait until tonight for chocolate. Any time is choc time.

Little, come and post on the SN Children board. SALTs and other professionals, as well as very experienced and knowledgable parents hang out there.

G&T can sometimes be seen as a SN depending on the situation and support needs.

I can see you're struggling so don't want to give you anything else to worry about, and certainly nothing in your posts leads me to suggest ASD, but please don't be mistaken about thinking if it was suspected it would be raised. Rarely it would be, and actually very few professionals can ethically raise it and referal to those who can is usually instigated by the parent.

Thanks Starlight, I thought about doing that but didn't want to naff anyone off by posting on a sn board when he only has a speech delay and totally inappropriate to bang on about the interesting stuff he can do. Worse than that, I didn't want to look like I was trying to shake off the sn label as though it were a bad thing.

I think I need to take some time out from the therapy and then hit it with renewed vigour when the SaLT starts up again.

There are plenty there with dcs with just speech delay, and plenty with extraordinary talents. I believe there is even someone who's DS can fly .

I think we get a bit of a reputation for being fierce in our defence of our children but I can assure you it is the absolute best place for support and for helping you ti shape your questions to get the most out of professionals.

There is actually a thread running right now with dcs talents and although some are silly, some are quite some talent.

Right, in that case, I'm in. I'll join you in a month or so when, hopefully, I'll be less of a bloody wimp

wimps welcome as well.

My DD2 is very similar. At 9 months she tried to start talking and couldn't and instead started screaming. She screamed for 9 months solid, and lost all confidence. She is also preciously bright, and made up a sign language in order to be understood. We still lived in South Africa at this point, where you pay through the nose to see doctors on request - so by 18 months I managed to convince people she needed assessing. She was diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia and sensory integration disorder. We had to two 2 hour speech therapy sessions a week, as well as neuro-physiotherapy for an hour a week. She slowly improved. When is she 2.5 we moved back to the UK, where all therapy for course ground to a halt. Funnily enough, in the 6 months it took to get her a speech assessment she improved a great deal. By 4 she was discharged from the therapist as having an advanced vocabulary and only minor speech immaturities. I guess what i'm trying to say is this too shall pass?

My MIL works in G and T research, and often talks about the concept of the "double gifted child" and has said from the very start she thinks DD2 is double gifted - meaning she is very bright but still has a learning disorder. So maybe this is true of your DC. Hang in there OP is all I can say - I know its hard, and I got depression as a result of all this with my DD, but she is so much better now.

I hope this helps and that you feel a wee bit better soon? :)

Hi

Really you could be describing DS1 several years ago. I was treading the same path as you - getting more and more disillusioned with NHS SaLT and turning into a mini speech therapist myself to try and elicit a response. There were occasional words from the first birthday, but they were very very rare and always repetitions. The speech therapist said she had never seen anything like it before.

Against advice we had DS1 tested for ASD as I wanted to be sure that we were providing the right support from the start. Just before that appt we discovered an amazing memory and could conduct 'conversations' with DS pointing at answers for us. He asked questions by using various sounds. We were told the social skills and self help skills were very advanced and a spectrum disorder was ruled out. The receptive language strengths were a huge breakthrough in the journey.

I then read a book called 'The Einstein syndrome - bright children who talk late by Thomas Sowell. A lot of that fitted DS and our family background was typical of the children in his study. That book gave us hope but the pressure was incredible due to what seemed to be his frustrations and demands - he would occasionally hit me. He had an incredible thirst for knowledge and would spend hours a day wanting me to name (label) objects for him which he would then remember. He also loved jigsaws, modelling and books from a very early age.

We took a much needed (for me!) holiday and I decided to forget talking to him in the speech patterns you describe as it was driving us all insane. Lo and behold he just started speaking in sentences! However, I must admit, by 2.5 he had totally caught up with his peers, so it was not a long delay.

Quite a few years on, DS1 is very sociable, confident, has very wide interests and uhm........... yes, does have a very high IQ. We had that tested for other reasons, although it was very obvious, fortunately, in a non geeky sort of way.

It is exceptionally hard when you are going through all this as the outcome is totally unpredictable. I could go on for ever.......

I hope it will become clearer for you soon and you get a breakthrough. PM me if you want to chat.......

My db had speech problesm, both vocab and pronunciation. Dm started teaching him to read using flashcards, and by the time he was 3.6yo if he couldn't say something he wanted to he'd write it phonetically.

Slightly unfortunately for him, people raved about this and he found it a bit of a shock when he discovered he was bright, but not in the genius level. It also didn't help him with peers as he regarded himself above them. Suspect he could well be on the AS spectrum too, but he wouldn't like that idea.

My child is pretty bright, but not in the gifted range, and had language delay, which he has pretty much overcome (had a huge spurt between 4 and 5). TBH I didn't find the brightness or good visual memory led to many shortcuts, particularly with receptive language. Having said that, when private SALT advised us to use PECs pictures to help him speak in sentences, having the visual structure really did seem to make something click with his language development. Also when he was a bit older and started reading, that really helped him get the hang of past tenses (-ed) type words.

Summary
Gifted Children often identified as being gifted when they begin to talk much earlier than
their peers. However, there is lesser known group of gifted children who display their
intelligence in every other way apart from speech. These children are gifted late talkers.
This factsheet covers the characteristics that these children share and offers support
and advice to parents of gifted late talkers.
Introduction
Around 15% of 2 year olds are developmentally delayed with their speech ability. Of that
15%, a small minority are Gifted Late Talkers. These children are displaying a Specific
Language Impairment and this is the term that health professionals and speech therapists
will use to describe this form of speech delay. These children have an excellent
understanding of speech, but have difficulty expressing themselves using language. Very
little is known about exactly why these bright children experience speech delay. Gifted
Late Talkers are essentially developing asynchronously. Their intellectual development is
much more advanced than their chronological age and speech ability. Their speech can
take years to develop; most do not speak intelligibly until they are 3.5 or much older (can
be up to the age of around 6-7).
Characteristics of Gifted Late Talkers
Boys are 3 times as likely as girls to have speech delay
Strong family history of late talking
Exceptional memory
Excellent understanding
Communicate well using other means
Mischievous
Long concentration span when engaged in activities that interest them
Personal quirks
Independent
Like music (although not always the usual nursery rhymes- they tend to prefer more
complex sounds)
Interested in mechanics/engineering and how everything works
Extremely curious
Affectionate
Very good at puzzles
Highly active, enjoys physical play and time outdoors
May have problems sleeping and ?switching off?
Pick up on conversations and responds accordingly (non-verbally) from a very early age
Late to potty training

www.nagcbritain.org.uk/file_upload/factsheets/447P65%20Late%20Speech%20and%20Gifted%20Children.pdf

Thanks for adding, CURIOUSMIND, was just about to link this! Just want to add (re notpodd) that children who are gifted with learning disorder (or physical disability) are called dual and/or multiple expectional (DME) in UK. There is information about this on NAGC website NAGC Britain. This organisation also offers an information line and consultation service on 01908 646433.

Thanks for all the replies. It's food for thought.

Thanks for your reply Warmmagnolia, I should have a look at the Einstein syndrome. I think the title has always put me off but I might find it useful (Although we don't fit the family profile Sewell highlights but I imagine we may have done if circumstances had been different).

DeWe, I get your point. I have a brother (with no speech delay) who sounds just like yours. If he still maintains the superiority complex he had as a child, you have my sympathy. If that's how things pan out for us I'll have ds2's feet firmly on the ground.

Thelightpassenger, I'm not sure what pec pictures are, I'll have a look and see if we can make them work for us. It's good to see speech delays can resolve themselves later. I think I was worried, from instinct rather than research, that the further away from 2 we get the less likely this going to go well.

Curiousmind, I would say that describes me son to the letter. I'm a bit flawed by that to be honest. Thank you for the link.
(And from a purely selfish point of view, I'll be a little relieved if this is what is happening. All those personality traits up there, when in abundance, look an awful lot like outright naughtiness and the lack of sleep (for me, not ds2) is debilitating, and I always thought that I was getting something wrong).

And twice exceptional routinely elsewhere.

I have two of them.

Thanks for this info Purplepeak. I think I will need some help if ds2 is gifted with a learning disorder, I'll have to get my shit together on two fronts, so it's useful to know where to start if that's how it goes.

Curiousmind, whilst I am flawed, I mean floored! Clearly if he is gifted it has nothing to do with me.