I first heard the term “asynchronous development” in a book called Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, Depression, And Other Disorders. I found this book rather by accident: I was ordering my tangible, touchable, lickable copies of the first two MBT books along with a second copy of my favourite book on Asperger’s in the whole world (Kitty wants a copy and I promised to purchase it for her). It turned out that alibris.com was the much better deal as a seller there had all three in stock (the total was about $10 less than amazon), and I glanced at the reccomended books before checking out. This book was on there.

I am not the sort to buy books before I’ve read them. I place great value in libraries, and tend only to purchase books I like enough to actually wish to reread or reference. I checked the local library system, and it was in stock at the Churchville branch, so I finished my order and headed over to Churchville (the libraries have been losing items between branches lately, so it was easier to drive 15 minutes myself).

Despite having been identified as ‘gifted’ in school, I didn’t know very much about gifted education–how it could be done, what type I had had versus other types, or even how I had been tested versus other tests (though I happened to have a copy of the paper verifying I needed gifted services, so I was able to find this information). This book was helpful in pointing me in the right direction: Hoagies’ Gifted and SENG. The rest of the book was mixed. The opening chapters on gifted theory, especially the introduction to the concept of overexcitabilities, were very good, but the section on Asperger’s was pretty craptastic (1).

So, asynchronous development. It’s this idea in the gifted community that I’d never heard before–keeping in mind that I work in a kids’ psych hospital and am a semi-active participant in the autism community. Giftedness is thought of as developmental acceleration, but kids can be accelerated at different rates for different things, and not at all for some things. So a child of seven, in 2nd grade chronologically, might read at a ninth grade level, do math at a fifth grade level, and have 2nd grade social skills. Her development is asynchronous.

This is, naturally, frustrating for everyone involved because you want to challenge the child, but when her social peers are her own age, but they can’t keep up mentally, and she is socially unable to keep up with her academic peers in any of her advanced subjects, it becomes difficult to educate such a child in a traditional setting.

I would like to propose the autism community begin to use the concept of asynchronous development. It is an easily understood, non-judgemental, and quick way to describe a person’s functioning level while remaining respectful of their skills and adaptations. This would be a much better shorthand than the currently used “mild/moderate/severe” which tend to imply “possibly can improve/work very, very hard/there is no hope” and are discouraging for parents and autistics alike.

I’m going to try to come up with a set of scales, but I could really use a researcher to work with me on this. Anyone know anyone? Children’s scales are the easiest, of course, because you can rate against other children of ‘typical’ development. But I think we can formulate an adult scale as well, with different criteria.

There is also the idea in the gifted community which would be helpful to bring over into the autism community of different paths of development. Giftedness perhaps should not be thought of as accelerated development at all, but as a different way of developing that looks accelerated compared to peers as children. Intellectual giftedness involves deeper ways of thinking, leadership giftedness involves an outstanding ability to be a leader that is a life-long skill, musical giftedness is lifelong as well. These talents all begin with earlier skills in childhood, but also quicker learning and more depth of learning. The gifted inevitably perform with a deeper understanding, whatever their field.

If we can stop conceptualizing autism as developmental delays, but instead begin to think of it as a different way of thinking and being, I think it would being a positive change to to lives of many autists. The social skills of those on the spectrum are only delayed for a handful of years before, realistically, they ought to be called ‘divergent’. Our social skills are certainly developing, but not in the average, NT way! Now, yes, some developmental delays associated with autism probably should stay under that label (things like toileting or other ADLs). But communicating and social interaction are major hallmarks of ASDs and often cited as “delays” when they are really just different developmental paths altogether that those on the spectrum might take.

It is also important to remember that one can simultaneously be on the spectrum and be gifted. This lovely asynchronous development makes it possible; it sometimes makes life even more frustrating, because you can write 1280 word blog posts about your current topic of interest and forget to eat food all day, but, you know, I don’t think I would choose to be any other way.

1. I actually have a good idea of why this was, and expect you to go read the link on overexcitabilities and then come back here, if you don’t already know what they are/haven’t been exposed to my excited rambling. Open a new tab, I’ll wait.

So, the authors of the book put forth a few times that a kid with psychomotor and intellectual overexcitabilities might be mistaken for ADD/ADHD, or even genuinely have this disorder at the most extreme level. That seems pretty logical to me–a kid that’s a little bit bouncy and very smart might get slapped with a label because he’s disruptive in the classroom due to boredom.

What they seem to overlook, though, is that the sensory/sensual and intellectual overexcitabilities combination is pretty much the profile of a mild ASD. The authors spend the section on Asperger’s talking about how aspies cannot ever, EVAR have empathy (and then using examples of sympathy–they don’t seem to have a clear separation?) and strong stereotypic interests like deep fryers and vacuum cleaners. Frankly, most of the aspies I know online demonstrate well-developed sympathy and a number of us are just fine with the empathy (it just takes a little bit more Theory of Mind, and it tends to be the older aspies because of this). We all have different interests, and while some have been a bit, um, weird, many are things that NT folks are commonly interested in, too–it’s the level of interest that is definitive.

But, see, that’s the sticking point for the gifted community and these authors, because the level that aspies are interested in things is the level that gifted adults and kids are interested in things, a lot of the time; also, as aspies get older we tend to get interested in more things at once (so rather than one or two interests, we might have three or five or six) and all of the sudden you can’t tell an aspie apart from a gifted adult. Funny, that. The gifted community does not want labels for their kids; it is strictly antilabelism, as far as I can tell. Oh, they want labels defining HOW gifted, but they don’t want anything noting any psychiatric or other developmental issues like ADD or an ASD. So the fact that being intellectually gifted with sensory issues looks pretty much exactly like a mild ASD does not compute.