Name: Late-talking Children
ISBN: 9780465038350

Late-talking Children

The painful and baffling mystery as to why some obviously bright children do not begin talking until long after the "normal" time is explored in this book through personal experiences and the findings of scientific research. The author's own experiences as the father of such a child led to the formation of a group of more than fifty sets of parents of similar children. The anguish and frustration of these parents as they try to cope with children who do not talk and institutions that do not understand them is a remarkable and moving human story. Fortunately, some of these children turn out to have not only normal intelligence but even outstanding abilities, especially in highly analytical fields such as mathematics and computers. Public figures who were late in talking include the distinguished mathematician Julia Robinson, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman and - the most famous of all - Albert Einstein. Fascinating stories of late-talking children and the remarkable families from which they come are followed by explorations of recent scientific research that throws light on the unusual development patterns of such children.

What Hacker News says

rgloverJun 2025

Sure.

I spent a lot of time in the hospital receiving treatment. Sometimes it was a few days, sometimes it was a month. My parents were working and so while I'd see them in the morning and evenings, most days I was on my own w/ the occasional nurse or doctor pop in. That led me to have a very independent (sometimes standoffishly so—mainly because I got tired of being poked at by doctors and nurses as a kid) personality and had to learn to amuse myself and be resourceful.

In addition to that, while I would attend school fairly regularly, I was "the sick kid" who was gone for weeks or a month at a time, so I didn't really form a lot of early bonds with the kids in my class. As an adult lone wolf type, I tend to smirk at that because that's essentially what I had to learn to be in those early years.

Another thing that I find amusing is that I would watch a lot of movies while I was in the hospital. I remember they would always play the same few movies:

- Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version)

- Ghostbusters

- Gremlins

What's funny is that a good chunk of my personality is a mix of the characters in these movies. I like to have fun with people and keep them on their toes like Wonka, I like to invent/build/take risk on my own ideas like the Ghostbusters (my wife also said Pete Venkman reminds her of me), and I've always been a bit of a trouble maker/chaos monkey like a gremlin.

As an adult, I've noticed that I have an in-built preference toward self-sufficiency and tend to work/be alone most of the time and I'm hyper-sensitive to people "poking" at me (or someone else—I love going after a bully). I'd also say that I developed a high EQ and awareness of and for others (like an ability to quickly read people and know what they're feeling—my grandpa refers to it as "acute awareness").

Several years back the "why" of all this started to click when I read Maria Montessori's book—The Absorbent Mind [1]—on the first few years of childhood development (~0-6 years). She explains that kids are like sponges and their personality forms relative to what they experience in those first few years. When I think about the mix of experiences during those days, I can't help but laugh—that theory is dead on.

I also read Thomas Sowell's [2] late-talking children because I remembered being taken to a speech therapist as a kid because I refused to talk. I had no problem talking, I just didn't want to. Even today, I have quiet phases where I just kind of drift off into my own little world and don't really talk much.

Would I say that having Leukemia specifically gave me all of these traits? No, but I would say that the combination of circumstances in relation to my treatment definitely did.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Absorbent-Mind-Maria-Montessori/dp/08...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Late-Talking-Children-Thomas-Sowell/d...

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dpatruNov 2009

Myopia is one of the characteristics of bright but late-talking children that Thomas Sowell talks about In his book, "The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late" (http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children-Talk...). Other characteristics include above-average math and music abilities, good memories, and strong wills.

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