Thank you all again for all of your invaluable help. I have certainly learned alot by all you have written.
Ok - I now think I know what I may be dealing with. Something called "Stealth Dyslexia" - anyone ever heard of it? In my quest for more information today, I decided on a whim to email the authors of "The Mislabled Child" and explain what is going on with my son and his scores. I really did not expect to hear back from them, but amazingly, within the half hour, they returned my message. Speaking in generalities, they basically said that from looking at ds's scores what I was most likely dealing with was a twice-exceptional (gifted and learning challenged) child.
The following are some exerpts from the email he sent me:
"When we hear that a child is ambidextrous and a bad speller and scores significantly better on the reading comprehension than the decoding and spelling portions of the testing the odds are very strong that such a child fits the profile of "stealth dyslexia" that we discussed in our book, The Mislabeled Child". The very low Comprehension scores generally go along with difficulties with pragmatic language and often social pragmatics generally, and verbally gifted children with this profile are often (inappropriately) given the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome".
"If a child with this profile is also highly sensitive, pessimistic, or perfectionistic, they almost always run into emotional problems if forced to do a lot of writing, so it is really critical to get appropriate accommodations. Any 9 year old who shows such a huge gap between oral and written expression will be very frustrated, and if the child is less emotionally resilient, the emotional results can be very severe. Also, they often need help with visual functions and oral reading fluency that are often unexpected."
"One of the difficulties with children who show such profiles is that their challenges arise from very basic neurological differences, so they span across most of the boundaries that separate different professional disciplines, so there often isn't a single practitioner who "owns" this type of issue. Your son, though, will definitely require a lot of special understanding and help during the coming years of his education, so it important that you do make sure his new school provides appropriate accommodations."
SO............ I am now breathing a huge sigh of relief that I have not been completely crazy in my assessment that Ds was probably 2E. I just had no clue what the actual LD could be. I had often wondered about possible dyslexia, but because ds has always been a wonderful reader, I assumed that I must be barking up the wrong tree. "Stealth Dyslexia" is at least a jumping off spot for us to start with. I suspect this will be a learning experience for our entire family as well as for any future schools ds will attend. Does anyone know if the state of Florida even considers dyslexia to be an official "LD"?
Diane
