Special needs or gifted and talented?

[claw3]

Hi everyone

My 4 year old son is currently seeing an OCT and she thinks he may have SPD, because he basically has some heightened senses. She has also commented that she thinks he may be gifted. He also has a speech delay ie saying some physical sounds probably caused from being deaf for a year with fluid in his ear.

Is it common for gifted children to have sensory difficulties or speech delays?

Is it possible to have special needs, but also be gifted?

Id be grateful for any advice or experiences

G&T means such different things in different children, Claw, that it's difficult to answer your question.

In some families, extreme mathematical/musical ability for instance clearly runs through generations.

In my family, we tend to have a very marked talent for languages. This is something I have to be on my guard against as a language teacher; I grew up surrounded by people who just "got" languages naturally, without much need for explanation, and have to remind myself that not everybody is like this.

In some of us, but not all, this is combined with a mathematical/musical talent. My younger brother has the whole lot, I am fairly musical and have a gift for languages but have never noticed any sort of gift for maths, my elder brother has the language gift but is totally unmusical and not very good at maths.
(If I had been at school today I could probably have squeezed into the G&T group for maths because you only have to be moderately bright for that; my younger brother is the sort of person who could do a PhD in the subject).

Some talents probably do nourish other talens: for instance, there is often (not always!) a link between musicality and maths.

Heightened senses would have an impact on how you learn from the world around you, I can see that. But it is not the only way: another child may attain the same level of understanding by a different path.

'I do not think there is any 'stigma' attached to having a clever child at all. What people dislike is bragging'

Yes Mabanana, but the problem is that just giving examples of a child's ability in order to provide a context for requests for help and advice etc is often construed as bragging (especially on MN). But giving the context for eg a bullying problem is seen as perfectly acceptable.
In the former case, people will immediately pile in with reasons why the child isn't that advanced. But no-one would dream of saying that a child wasn't being bullied just because there are others who have suffered more.

Unfortunately, on Mumsnet it quite often is bragging, or worse, deluded nonsense about babies who hold their heads up early or genius children who in fact do perfectly ordinary things.

JazT, often it is not part of the relevant context at all. People post about a perfectly normal part of childhood, which has nothing to do with G&T, and then mention their child's giftedness as if this was a piece of information that had to be provided every time they spoke about the child.

(I'd like to stress that these remarks have nothing to do with the current OP though)