"Einstein Didn't Speak Until He Was Three"

My 18-month-old daughter has developmental delays in gross motor skills and expressive language. This is still not easy for me to say (or write), but it would be infinitely harder to deal with if not for my husband's attitude about the whole issue. He says things like "Einstein didn't speak until he was three," and "we already know she's different from other kids, the question is how much do we really want to worry about it." He says that society is telling us that there is something wrong with our child, but that she is going to develop just fine in her own time. She is just our little late bloomer he reassures me.

For a long time I avoided doing much research into what causes developmental delays. I think that I was overwhelmed enough just trying to process the results of her tests and then jumping all the hurdles that were necessary to get her into physical therapy. Recently I worked up the nerve to ask my daughter's therapist what causes these types of delays. The therapist said that there really isn't an explanation, some babies are just that way. So, I looked to the Internet. Surprisingly I didn't find a lot of info there either. What I did find didn't apply to my daughter, she doesn't have a genetic disorder and she wasn't born premature. I'm also pretty certain that she doesn't have autism either, given her social, emotional and receptive language abilities. I did find one article that said 8% of children from birth to six years have some type of developmental delays. For some reason I found that comforting, maybe she is not that different--8% seems like a pretty big number to me.

Before I had children and even after my first, I wondered how I would feel if I had a child that was somehow not "normal." I would see parents with children that had some type of disability or disorder and wonder if that changed how they felt about that child, and also if they felt closer or more bonded to their other children. Of course no one ever thinks that they will end up being in that situation themselves. But being on the other side of it now, I can honestly say that my daughter's differences don't change how I feel about her at all, and I don't feel any less bonded to her than I do to her brother. Sometimes it is difficult to be around other babies that are about the same age or even considerably younger than her, and see them doing and saying things that she can't yet. However when she does make progress or achieve a goal, it is so sweet.

My husband and I watched a lecture on PBS by the author of Go Put Your Strengths to Work the other night. The jist of it was that instead of focusing on your weaknesses and trying to improve in those areas, you should really be trying to find ways to play up your strengths and use them to your advantage. It made me think of our daughter and how we spend so much time worrying about what she can't do. I think instead we really need to celebrate her strengths and focus more on what a wonderful little girl she is.