Asychronous Development at Every Age

Understanding this hallmark of giftedness

“If I domesticate a hippo, will it still be dangerous or could it be my pet?”
That’s what my toddler asked me one afternoon as we sat at the kitchen table coloring and free-range crafting.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

While I was still marveling at his accurate use of the word domesticate (where did he even learn that?), he suddenly erupted into tears. No, not tears. Screams. The kind that makes you think a child just touched a hot stove.

“Oh my gosh, what happened?” I grabbed his hand, checking for cuts from a scissor mishap.
But he couldn’t answer. He was sobbing so hard he could barely breathe.

As I knelt beside him, panic rising, I felt another emotion creeping in: anger.
I knew he had the vocabulary to tell me what was wrong — so why wasn’t he?

• That helplessness turned to frustration.

• And that frustration? It quickly spiraled into shame.

• Which, in turn, got masked by even more anger.

The more upset I became, the more upset he became.
It wasn’t until I walked away to take a breath and regulate myself that I could finally return and co-regulate with him.

Eventually, through hiccuping sobs, my toddler (the same one who had just correctly used domesticate in a sentence ) held up a crayon and said, “The crayon was too blue.”

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What Is Asynchronous Development?

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) defines asynchronous development as:

“when the social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and creative aspects of a person develop on a trajectory that is outside of norms, and at an uneven rate.”

It’s considered a hallmark of giftedness, and the more cognitively advanced a child is, the more intense the asynchrony may be.

We often associate asynchronous development with early childhood, but it doesn’t magically resolve with age. Gifted children grow into gifted adolescents and gifted adults - and the asynchronous development grows with them, simply changing form.