Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ADD/Dyscalculia/Gifted??? HELP!

Hi All, I am a new member, however I have been viewing this forum for some time and it has answered so many questions for me!!! I'm now seeking some help to decipher what is going on with my 7yr old daughter!

Last year my daughter (then 6) visited a psych as she was being bullied at school and started school refusing. Subsequently she started writing notes saying she hated herself. Long story short, the child psych thought my daughter was very bright and part of the problem at school was related to boredom in the classroom, so she asked our permission to conduct an IQ test (WASI-iii). The results from the test were as follows;

WASI-iii
Subtest
Vocabularly Raw score 30, T score 61
Block Design Raw score 20, T score 65
Similarities Raw score 23, T score 65
Matrix Reasoning Raw score 25, T score 76

Composite Scores summary
FSIQ 267 (sum scale of scores) Percentile rank 99
VIQ 126 (sum scale of scores) Percentile rank 92
PIQ 141 (sum scale of scores) Percentile rank 99

In her report, the psych said my daughter should be recognised as G&T, with special needs that need to be taken into account (she didn't elaborate). She noted that the school should put an Individual Education Plan (we're in Australia) in place. The school has been useless and very unsupportive - I'm worn out from asking them things & am now looking at different schools in our area.

Fast forward to March 2012 and the school counsellor contacted me and said that my daughter needed to be screened for ADD - in attentive type, as after spending 30 mins with her she could instantly tell my daughter had an attention defecit. At that time, I had never heard of ADD, only ADHD (though i didn't realise ADD was part of ADHD). My daughter has always been full on, since birth! She is forever hurting her brothers (by accident), she is always breaking things (by accident), she can't remember simple instructions given minutes before - I have to constantly repeat instructions etc, if she has an idea she goes with it, regardless of what it is/how extreme it is. She is a lovely little girl, and I'm very worried about her. She always tells me, and anyone else that will listen, that she "hates" school.

On the advice of the school counsellor, we approached one of the local universities and consulted a psych to conduct IQ & cognitive testing. The testing has taken MONTHS because my daughter has had difficult sustaining her concentration or focus for long periods (especially when she's not interested in the topic). When she is interested in something however, she can focus for ages. On the w/e my friend took my daughter to church & told her kids and my daughter to be quiet while the mass was going on. Afterwards my daughter told her she found it hard to be quiet, so she said she visualized the priest being on TV and she was able to focus on him for 30 minutes even though she found it boring.

Sorry, i'm all over the shop! Anyway, the results were as follows:

WISC-IV
Subtest
Vocabulary 10
Block Design 17
Similarities 13
Matrix Reasoning 15

Composite Scores
Verbal Comprehensiion 108
Perceptual Reasoning 133
Working Memory 86
Processing Speed 91
FSIQ 109

WIAT-II
Reading 109
Mathematics 104
Written Language 108

The psych said to disregard the FSIQ of 109 as its not meaningful. However, I am wondering why there is such a big difference between scores when the testing period was only 12 months apart. The Psych told me she cannot diagnose ADHD, however it appears evident from the report that my daughter does have ADD. One area of concern highlighted in the report was my daughter's extreme fear of failure (if she is gifted, is this normal?). The psych advised that my hubby & i work with our daughter to give her a better understanding of the role of errors and mistakes in the learning process.
Another area of concern was my daughter's anxiety levels, again the psych said this can affect and increase her fear of failure etc etc. It should be noted that my daughter has always been extremely emotional and sensitive.
The testing suggests my daughter has dyscalculia, however the psych noted, "it is feasible, however, that xxx's performance in the domain of mathematics may reflect her overall approach to activities and learning; that is, her difficulties sustaining her interest and focus when she anticipates failure or difficulty completing a task".

We have an appointment with a developmental paed on 17/9, so fingers crossed he can give us some answers as i'm at my wits end... We are given information, but there are no strategies (so far) on how we can really support our daughter... so frustrating.

Ok, so here are my questions...
1. Is it standard practice for a psych not to diagnose? Ie the psych spoke verbally to me about my daughter's inability to focus etc but she said she's not in a position to diagnose ADHD.
2. We are looking at changing from a private to public school next year. My daughter is waitlisted at a public school thats offers a G&T program, however if my daughter's IQ has dropped significantly, she may not even get in. Is it possible for IQ to drop so much?
3. Looking at the test restults, does it look like anything else is going on? If she does have dsycalculia, how do we address this and support her?
4. How do we find out if the suspected dsycalculia is actually due to her inability to focus etc?

My apologies for rambling, I'm trying to get everything out before I get lost mid sentence! Any advice would be greatly appreciated! If you've gotten this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read my thesis!!!!!!

I'm not familiar with the WASI test so I can't comment on how that compares to the wisc. Do you have the other subtest scores from the wisc?

I'm also not very familiar with how ADD/ADHD is diagnosed but my oldest dd who is 9 and dyslexic had similar results on her WISC and she is currently struggling in math due to the dyslexia. She also has weak receptive language skills that were in the 16th percentile (if I recall correctly from the speech and language eval), so that coupled with sequencing difficulties from dyslexia can make it appear as though she may have ADD/ADHD. However, she has had 3 evaluations in her lifetime and not once was ADD/ADHD mentioned.

I believe fear of failing/perfectionism is not uncommon in gifted children. My younger dd who is HG is like this and it was noted by the psychologist. Luckily for us we had an experienced tester who was able to pick up on this and do what she could to make my dd feel the most comfortable to do her best during the testing.

"Full on since birth," accidentally hurting others/breaking things, having to repeat instructions, hyperfocus-these are all classic ADHD symptoms. ADHD is formally diagnosed through behaviors observed at home and school. ADHD kids typically have low working memory and processing speed on the WISC as well so that is consistent.

I am a little confused about the dyscalculia. Do you observe math-related difficulties in her schoolwork?

The disparity between your DD's working memory and processing speed and her perceptual ability is huge. She has a tremendous bottleneck of her ability by slow processing and much lower working memory. This has to be so frustrating for her. Untreated ADHD compounds this bottleneck as well. No wonder she is so unhappy!

I can't answer your other questions but I am sure others will ring in on those. Good luck with the paed aapointment.

I don't know why the psych couldn't diagnose ADHD, but fwiw it sounds like perhaps the psych didn't administer any kind of behavioral survey, which is usually a key part of diagnosing ADHD (surveys are filled out by parents and teachers).

I also don't know anything about the WASI, but re the relative drop in scores between the WASI and the WISC - in general, I'd suspect that testing is less reliable in very young children. I don't say that just as a parent throwing something out there either, one of my dds was first tested at 5 years old, and has had IQ assessments twice since then. Her IQ scores dropped by 20 points from the first testing - and having several years worth of school behind us at this point, my gut feeling is the lower scores are, for her, the more accurate representation of her IQ. OTOH, you noted that it took months for your dd to get through the WISC testing - I would look at the results with a bit of a grain of salt there. Rather than worrying over which score is more accurate, I'd focus on figuring out if the relative dips you see in WISC subtest scores match up with any challenges you've seen at home or at school, as well as taking in what the psych's comments say and seeing how they fit (or don't fit) your dd. The follow-up with a developmental ped is a really good next step.

I'm curious if the psych who did your dd's recent testing followed up with any tests to help understand the relative dip in working memory and processing speed? As fwtxmom mentioned, these scores can be depressed in children with ADHD, but they can also be relatively low for other reasons. My ds12 (dysgraphic, developmental coordination disorder) has a relatively low processing speed and it impacts his life in a *huge* way - in his case, it's due to a neurological challenge that impacts fine motor coordination. When he had his first neuropsych eval and the psych noted the dip in processing speed she administered additional tests to rule out vision vs fine motor vs executive functioning etc.

FWIW you mentioned your dd accidentally hurting her brothers and bumping into things - you might want to have her vision checked - not just her eyesight (regular vision exam) but how well her eyes function together. My older dd had severe double vision up through 2nd grade that none of us ever realized she had simply because she was so used to it she thought it was normal! She also had a relatively low score in processing speed on the WISC, and always seemed to be bumping into and accidentally breaking anything and everything. Part of the reason I mentioned this is your note that your dd has challenges with following multistep directions. When our dd was young and before we knew about her vision challenges used to seem to have some incredible challenge with memory - she couldn't follow through on most single-step directions much less multiple-step directions - we really thought she must have some type of cognitive challenge. It was all somehow simply tied into her inability to see well and once her vision was corrected the issues with following directions disappeared (and much less accidental breakage occurred!). She was also mistakenly thought to be ADHD by many people (me included)... but she didn't fit an ADHD profile on behavioral surveys and she didn't exhibit the clumsiness and always-on-the-go fidgety behaviors at school - which is one hallmark that is required for an ADHD diagnosis here - the ADHD-like behaviors should be present in more than one situation (home & school).

Can you give us the subtest scores on processing speed on the WISC? That might help shed a little light on whether or not the low processing speed score is related to vision or fine motor (of course it could also be low simply due to ADHD).

Best wishes,

polarbear

Well, once again the advices of polarbear sound very appropriate.

ADD and ADHD diag are based on surveys done at home and school. And even after those surveys, the origins of the deficit have to be found : purely cognitive, fine motor skills, vision processing, induced by giftedness, Asperger... Not a simple thing ... Maybe a book like this one one could help you.

In France, a psych is just able to make the child getting though the test. Only doctors can make a diagnosis and in the general case, they do it not only on the basis of the IQ test, but also by analysing the results regarding the point I gave before. And beleive me, it is not easy in the case of a gifted child (I know something about that). One of the main challenges in France is to find the good professionnal who is truly aware of what is giftedness, ADDness, .... Associations are very helpful from this point of view.

I will not comment on the test results. Nevertheless, I have never heard about IQ tests lasting for months even for ADD children...MAybe I misunderstood what you wrote due to my problems in English

Best wishes too !

Up the wallabies !!! (one of my youth heroes was David Campese ...)

Yup (perfectionism). Not all gifted kids are plagued by it, but it's common.

Forgot to mention raoulepetite - your English is great, so don't worry.
ps the David campese days were great!

All the best!