Looking at all the back posts I noticed I have not really mentioned my other child — my daughter, who is about five years younger than my son. I was hoping, hoping so hard, she would be typical. But she isn’t…

I should have known better. Yet, her challenges are different than those of my son. She does carry the same diagnosis as my son — PDD-NOS, but she “presents” (as the psychiatrists like to say) very differently. She’s far more social than he ever was, she has good memory for faces and names, and she recognizes social connections pretty fast (she learned pretty fast who is whose mommy or daddy at daycare). On the other hand, she stimms (she lays down flat on her belly and twitches), she has a tendency to line up things, she can get upset when plans are changed, and she gets upset when her clothes get wet or dirty and when her hands get wet or sticky.

She also has been diagnosed with apraxia of speech, a condition I was wholly unfamiliar with, because my son’s language, despite initial delay, was pretty well developed by the time he was three. My daughter talks very haltingly, cannot pronounce certain syllables, and has a hard time repeating words, especially words that are longer than two syllables. She tries, she tries very hard, but it just is not coming out right. Her pronunciation is very hard to understand.

Is she twice exceptional as my son? I don’t know yet. I seem to have been discounting her intelligence because her “output” is so poor, but the other day she was playing “point to a shape” game and I was floored that at three she knows what a hexagon is, and sees the difference between a square and a rectangle. She does seem to have pretty good visual memory, like my son. She’s very good at card memory games and seems to remember events that happened a long time ago. So she might be smart… Yet, I worry that just as I still sometimes do, others will also discount her intelligence because she.. well… she just doesn’t sound very smart.