I think DD13 finds ME "asynchronous", and she's giving me a lot of grief for using the word "jammies" in DS's bday party invites, .

Wow, I like the article delbows pointed to. I've never thought of DD10 as asynchronous developing since all her academic areas seem fairly even, but her emotional maturity has always been remarkable for her age.

That's comforting right now, since her time management skills are driving us all nuts (me, DH, teachers, coaches).

This is exactly the sort of situation I always think of when I think of asynchronous development. The world-at-large sees most clearly the kids who are emotionally intense, which means the child seems to be (or perhaps even is) behind age level in the emotional front.

But I think the more common issue is that an HG+ child seems like such a little adult intellectually, but then s/he gets hungry or tired and throws an age-appropriate tantrum, and the adults around can't understand what happened to the little adult. The contrast is so glaring that the tantrum seems much less age-appropriate than it is.

Child #1 in our family--the HG+ one--tends to be emotionally advanced, well-behaved, rule-oriented, and highly logical. At maybe 8 months old, he was figuring out EXACTLY what the house rules were by testing the boundaries and looking to me for a "no" so he could understand precisely what it was that I was saying "no" to. Can I roll the car on the wall with my right hand? How about my left hand? Can I bang the car on the wall? How about rolling it on the floor? When he got a nod and "yes" from me instead of a "no," he never did the "no" things again. I could almost see the wheels turning! It was one of the moments that told me for sure he was a GT kid.

Now, Child #2 is a drama queen, an emotional mirror and every other emotional intensity you could dream up. At age 3, however, he's pretty much right on target for his age, I think.

Interesting conversation!

This is absolutely true! I have found that adults that know dd7 expect so much more out of her and when she acts 7 they look at her cross-eyed.

We get the same looks when my 5 year old actually acts 5 on those rare occasion usually involving fighting with his 3 year old sister.

We're all so asynchronous at my house that I often forget gifted people can be otherwise. My kids are PG with AS, PG with ADD, PG with ADHD, and probably PG probably ADHD again. We have lots of sensory issues as well, which tends to compound the situation.

Sensory overload at a crowded birthday party used to make my oldest melt down, and the fact that he was socially a few years behind the other kids already just made it that much more difficult. Expectations for gifted kids tend to be that they behave as a child of their mental ability, but that doesn't work out with an aspie kid. So he'd be eight acting five, and then the sensory stuff would pull his behavior down to age three. Never mind that he was able to read and do intellectual tasks many years ahead...

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.

Oh Lori!
It sounds like your son has a wonderful character! I do so hate looking back at the years when my son was getting the message that he 'wasn't trying.' I'm glad your son knows better!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

By the way Delbows, thank you so much for that link! I could see myself and a past relationship in that first scenario, and it was very healing to read that writeup. Thanks for sharing!

Asynchronous Development to me is more a case of not knowing which "age" child (physical agge is 8 1/2) I'm going to be interacting with at times. Is it the child that just finished reading an advanced article on global warming and wants to discuss alternative to whatever creates greenhouse gasses? Is it the child that cannot sit still through dinner because there is a really cool meteor shower starting soon and he "needs" to be ready? Is it the child that can only talk about the evolution of pokemon and which one he wants to catch next? Is it the child that is throwing himself on the floor in a temper tantrum because he tore the picture he was drawing?
Each of these aspects of my son require a very different interaction from me. Even more intersting is that in the course of a conversation or activity these aspects can overlap and comingle.