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Late Talkers and Einstein Syndrome
My daughter is a Late Talker with characteristics of Einstein Syndrome. Until she was 2 1/2 years old, she spoke barely 15 words clearly or with meaning. She depended on modified ASL Sign Language, grunting, and pointing as a method of communicating to us. Around 2 1/2, my mother (Anna`s Gza-Gza - her “special” language) purchased “The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late” by Thomas Sowell. FINALLY! An answer and explanation telling us our daughter was normal! Well, normal in her own right.
Anna attended a daycare school from 8 months through 18 months that taught and reinforced baby Sign Language. At first, we thought it was cute and fun, but we didn’t realize it would be our main method of communicating with our daughter for the first few years of her life. How lucky we are to have found a school and method that would help us communicate with Anna.
With the basics of Sign Language down, Anna began watching Sign Language DVDs that, to our amazement, actually taught her the signs. At 12 months old, she was learning the signs quicker than we could! Month after month, her speech development was slow-going. We searched and searched for answers to what was “wrong” with her. Thanks to Dr. Sowell, there was nothing “wrong” with her. She was just smart in different ways.
This is the way I understand Einstein Syndrome and Anna’s characteristics. Einstein Syndrome children think logically. Meaning, they are phenomenal with memory, puzzles, and math - anything that requires higher-level thinking. However, because they are so smart logically, their verbal communication skills do not get to grow and develop at a “normal” pace. Another unfortunate characteristic of Late Talkers: late potty training. Joy. No interest whatsoever in the potty. Actually, an aversion to even speaking about pee-pee and poo-poo. Double Joy.
So, after searching for months to find the right tools to help our daughter, we found a few products that helped us. Specific Einstein Syndrome activities are not on the market, but I’ve found some that work great for Anna. I am offering the materials we found have worked (or we hope will work), and we hope will work for you.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:37 am
Wow, I just gasped when I read this. My daughter turns 3 next month, and seriously has about 10 English words. The rest are ASL, made up signs, and her own “language” (i.e. gmaah means cold, snowman, refrigerator, outside, wind, snow, rain, ketchup (cold from the fridge) and also Yoshida sauce (again, cold.) She is SO LOGICAL! She can do 48 piece puzzles, plans her day in lists and repeatedly asks me to list our activities as she ticks them off on her fingers, and at 12 months would spend an hour stacking 30 yogurt cups together and then taking the stack apart and stacking them the other way. I’ll have to look around to find out more. Thanks!
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:11 am
How interesting! But you don’t mention or link to the products you found.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Is she refusing to go “doudou” sitting in the toilet seat ??? Mine is and he is almost 3 1/2 years. The PP was not a problem never was.