Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ADHD and behavior

You may wish to read up on how IEPs are written with measurable goals describing "what the school will do to meet your child's unique needs." You may later need to hold the school accountable for providing the necessary support to your child.
- roundup on Individual Education Plans(IEP) and 504
- Wrightslaw: Writing Smart IEPs

This ties in to the concept which others have mentioned upthread: "relative" weakness and "absolute" weakness. He may not have an "absolute" weakness as he is able to learn "what he is expected to know", however he may have a relative weakness as some of his scores are significantly lower than others.

For example, how is "what he is expected to know" defined? For this tester, it may be defined by common core standards for his age and grade level. However, it may be better defined as the achievement typical of children with his high IQ. Looking at it this way, we may begin to see gaps. The goals would be providing the support and remediation which allow him to learn to his potential. He may currently be compensating for deficits, and learning effective strategies now will help him continue to learn all he can in future years.

Thank you. Yes, I need to educate myself on this subject. I can already tell that I may have an uphill battle.

And I'm definitely going to address the weaker VCI score. He had an early intervention eval at 3 and there was a speech pathologist there.

If anyone is interested,

They did the CELF P-2. His core language SS was 112 (79th percentile)
For the GFTA-2 the SS was 86 (16th percentile)

They also did the BDI II and his cognitive SS was 123 (94th percentile)

I think my comments were being held for review since I'm new. They're now going through when I submit.

Thank you again. There is a neuropsychologist in the area that seems to have experience with the gifted. I'm going to give her office a call. I was trying the hospitals before.


I see my son's silly behavior as a way to avoid failure, which is probably very similar to avoiding rejection. I see this in DS in other areas too, to be honest. He will behave the same way if he is unsure he can do a task (in the past when I've tried to teach him to hold a pencil, ride a bike, swim, tie his shoes...) for the physical tasks, I've learned that I just can't push him. I can show him and then let him try it on his own when he is ready. He's now learned all this things but to swim.

So his EI eval definitely found language skills slightly below cognition (the gap has widened even further, since), and articulation markedly below both cognition and language. Articulation delays can affect phonics and phonological awareness significantly, as they break sound-symbol correspondence (the sound he produces when he says or reads a word does not match the spelling/phonemes, because he is not using standard articulation). Notably, you listed a number of motor coordination tasks that were late developing for him, which suggests that there may be some kind of motor planning or motor coordination, or automaticity factor in play, which would indicate that further evaluation by an occupational therapist (and possibly a physical therapist, if there are lingering gross motor delays) might be in order. I distinguish between novel motor activities and routine motor activities, as he is described as having strengths on several creative and novel perceptual-motor tasks (Block Design, Legos, etc.). Handwriting is another issue, as are bike-riding, swimming, tying shoelaces, learning to swing, holding a fork properly, dressing oneself, etc.

And, as an aside, I have every sympathy for the school evaluator, as that is my professional role as well. But the reality is, most training programs allot very little instructional time to GT, let alone 2e. I have benefited from many other sources of skill development.

Thank you so much for taking time to share your wealth of knowledge here. I really appreciate it. Everyone has been so helpful. I feel like I now have some idea where to go from here, which is so much better than feeling like there is something my son desperately needs but having no idea how to help him.

All of those routine motor tasks you listed have been a struggle at some point. I don't think he's terribly outside the norm, but he's always been so resistant to being taught or even encouraged to attempt these things. Since having DD2 (who seems pretty NT), I've really realized how 'different' my son can be. She doesn't know her alphabet, she mixes up the colors and counts out of order, but she likes to try to emulate grown ups, she responds (usually) to correction and she plays make-believe (which he never did. He played "race the cars across the floor" almost exclusively for years).