If you can pronounce "asynchronously," there's a good chance you do have a child developing that way. But before I tell you what that big word means, I want to explain how I came to discover it.
If you follow my blog, you might know that I've written about our daughter's sensitivities and anxiety. I've written about our son's sensory issues and odd quirks like cleaning constantly, running into walls, and touching everything. I've also written a lot about parenting ideas to make your house run more smoothly. But I didn't realize that all of these quirks and struggles were pieces of a bigger puzzle. I knew that we have two highly demanding, sensitive, bright and picky children. I knew that our house often dissolves into chaos because of our children's intense demands and intense emotions. And I knew that even with our kids being 6 and 3.5, we still feel like we have to prepare for battle everyday in our house. We wake up optimistic that a peace treaty will be put in place, but we are prepared for D-Day.
In yet another effort to try to problem-solve some of the challenges in our house, I came across a term I had never heard of before - Asynchronous Development. And bam - it explained so much about my two kids. It gave me language to describe the development and parenting challenges we are facing. And I think it's so unknown that I wanted to share it with you. Not because it's unknown and rare, but because it's unknown and not rare...not rare at all.
So what is it? Technically speaking, "asynchronous development occurs when advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm." Translated into English it means that a child's brain and central nervous system may develop different parts of the child's cognitive and motor skills at different rates. Therefore, you can have a child who may appear intellectually to be 6 but emotionally to be 4. You can have a child who can quarterback a football team and play football like they are 12 but is struggling to read at a 3rd grade level. You can have a child who has ADHD and whose impulse-control is that of a 5 year old, but they have expert knowledge of theoretical physics. A 3 year old could know every construction vehicle and dinosaur ever documented but not be able to keep himself from running into walls and falling down the stairs.
Unfortunately, in our traditional school system and quite frankly, in our American value system, we tend to think the ideal student and child is calm, compliant, studious, goal-oriented, and matches his/her peers on the typical physical and emotional development path. However, this idea of asynchronous development suggests that kids who have gifts in specific areas might not fit into this mold at all. Due to their heightened intensity, they are likely to be very sensitive to fairness and causality. Thus, they will challenge authority a lot - not because they are rude, but because they perceive things aren't fair or because they need to understand the why in order to comply.
These kids may read at age 4 but they also might not read until age 7. Well, by our standards, if it takes until age 7, we assume the child isn't that bright. Not true. It could be that the child is very gifted in analytics/math, and that part of the brain has been working overtime and hasn't had the capacity to develop the reading cognitive ability yet. One of the most famous cases of this is Einstein - he didn't read until he was 7, and no one thought he was a genius.
They can be intellectually aware of worldly concerns and fears but not have the emotions to cope and thus, they develop anxiety at a young age. Anyone who has been around a child with anxiety, knows they are anything but calm. They are often 10 seconds away from a meltdown at any time. For example, at age 4 when our daughter started having chronic sleeping issues at night. I asked her why. She said she was scared. I instinctively and foolishly said, "Are you afraid there are monsters in your room?" She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "No. There's no such thing as monsters. I'm afraid someone is going to break into our house and kidnap me or there is going to be a tornado and I'm going to die." Huh. "Why do you think you can die?" I naively asked. "If a bug can die, I can die." Huh. Didn't see that one coming. But I could definitely understand how a 4 year old would not be emotionally prepared to cope with those types of fears.
These kids also often have overexcitabilities. That means they often seem to "bounce off the walls." But really, their brains are very sensitive to stimuli, so it might not take much to get them emotionally and physically excited. An emotionally and physically excited kid could appear to have ADHD or at the very least look hyper and non-compliant. Again, something we oddly associate with lack of intelligence. But this very same kid might have the same knowledge of sharks or dinosaurs that your could expect from a child 3 years their senior while their "bouncing off the walls behavior" looks more like a child 3 years their junior.
These kids may also be chronic liars, because to them, lying is an obvious way to problem-solve and meet their intense emotional or physical needs. They might be smart enough to tell great lies but socially immature enough to not realize the social consequences to lying. Of course lying is wrong, and they have to be taught that is not appropriate problem-solving...BUT it's an indication of intelligence not evil or stupidity.
So you get an idea of what asynchronous development is. The other reason I like this term is because it is a better descriptor than "giftedness." Giftedness (which for the record, neither of my kids have been tested yet for giftedness) has a lot of negative connotations. People either use it to brag or they are afraid to use it because they fear they will be perceived as bragging. Why? Because everyone perceives that having a "gifted" child means having a perfect and easy child who will do amazing things. Not true. Truly gifted kids (which is not the same as kids who make good grades and have good standardized test scores) are likely not easy to raise. They are definitely not perfect. And if not parented and guided well, they could end up doing far less than amazing things. They are susceptible to not only low achievement but also mental disorders like anxiety and depression.
I look at my daughter, who I fully believe will grow up to be smarter than me, but I assure you our life is anything but perfect and easy. It's hard...some days devastatingly hard. I feel emotionally exhausted regularly. And I see so many challenges that she faces because of her emotional intensity and sensitivities. I worry a lot that she won't reach her full potential because I won't know how to properly parent her through all of the challenges of asynchronous development. And some days I feel judged because I don't have a child (particularly a girl) who is calm and compliant. I don't have a child who happily eats vegetables. (I mean she can go bananas over chicken tenders at a new restaurant because they don't look like chicken tenders at Fuddrucker's.) I don't have a child who can sit quietly and entertain herself. I have a children who feels things so intensely and believes everyone can see things as clearly as she does. So when she feels "wronged", she can unleash extreme anger. And by "wronged", I mean I gave them her the green fork at dinner instead of the blue fork. Or I told her we would stop at HEB to get groceries but we stopped at Randall's instead. She is not calm and compliant. In fact, because she loves order and structure so much, she is often bossy and dominant, because she can see exactly how people should be behaving, playing or organizing...and she feels it's her place to notify them of the correct way to do things.
On the flip side, because our son is experiencing delayed motor skill development and because we are often too preoccupied with our daughter's emotions, I have weirdly (embarrassingly) assumed our son wasn't as smart as our daughter. Once he started going to therapy, I realized he could do so much more than I knew he could. Now I'm also starting to wonder if his sensory processing issues are just a part of asynchronous development. Because as he gets older, his emotional intensity has increased, his sensitivities have increased, and his moments of 3 year old smartness have started to show through. For example, we were at the San Diego Zoo recently where they had a play area. There was a shell of a construction vehicle)that kids could climb on. It obviously wasn't real, nor was it a complete replica. It just had the left side, right side, and top. Me, not caring about construction vehicles, was having a hard time recalling which vehicle this was. So I asked our son, "Is this a bulldozer? Is this a front loader? Is this an excavator?" He just looked at me with a very uninterested look and kept replying "No." I really thought he wasn't actually paying much attention to me and was bored by this line of questioning. Finally, with a tone of disgust in his voice he says, "Mom, it's a Bobcat." And then, he walked away. Huh. It wasn't so much that he knew it was a Bobcat that surprised me. It was that he clearly thought I was an idiot for NOT knowing it was a Bobcat that surprised me.
Anyway, I'm sharing this idea of asynchronous development with you, not because I'm an expert, but because if you think it applies to your kids, it gives you something to go research yourself and learn more about. It's so important to see the gifts in all of our kids. And some of the most amazing kids out there may not always fit into a nice little box of even development. But it's also important for parents of these kids to know they are not alone. It is challenging and exhausting and you might have to wait 25 years before you see the return on your investment (okay, hopefully not that long, but it might indeed be very delayed gratification). And if your child is developing evenly and as expected, don't judge other parents whose kids may be on a different development path. We are all in this together.
