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    Joined: Sep 2011
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    Originally Posted by sanne
    He only has had WISC IV, WIAT III, and WISC V for neuropsych. His processing speed is verrrrrrrrry sloooooooooooow. 21st percentile, low enough to drag down his FSIQ by 30 percentiles. Other than that, nothing noteworthy in neuropsych.

    That's a really large gap in processing speed - did you get subtest scores? If so, were they about the same or was there a large discrepancy? There may very well be an important clue in the processing speed scores that is indicating something's up other than ADHD. When my kids had neuropsych evals, the neuropsych included additional testing to determine why discrepancies were observed in ability and achievement scores. Both my dyspraxic ds and my totally neurotypical dd (we had no idea she didn't have a challenge at one point lol!)... had large gaps in processing speed on their WISC, and they were both also given additional tests by the neurospych to determine if there were fine motor or visual processing issues. We discovered that my dd was experiencing severe double vision, and we found out through the additional tests that my ds' dip in processing speed was due to dyspraxia and fine motor challenges.

    Originally Posted by sanne
    I get how he's unhappy most the time, but he is causing his own unhappiness. It's so frustrating. I don't think there's anything left I can do about it more than to put him in public school so it's not affecting me and DS2 during the day.

    While he may be behaving in a way that's causing unhappiness, I'd also consider that he may be struggling with things beyond his ability to cope. I don't think you can know the answer of what school setting is the right path until you know a little bit more for certain about whether or not he has a specific challenge.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    ps - my dyspraxic ds loves music, and has studied piano and other instruments for years. He impresses the heck out of people when he plays piano, but it's primarily all played by ear - he has never enjoyed practicing from sheet music and always plays by memory once he's read a piece of music a few times. I have no idea whether or not that's related to his dyspraxia but wouldn't be surprised if it is.

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    I remember it was a big difference. It was still about the same amount of discrepancy when he was on ADHD meds, but his processing speed was up to 100/50th percentile. GAI was 141. I'm not sure how good of a test of a result that was. He was on immediate release medication which is only effective from him for about a 90 minute window. I tried my best to time his doses for testing, but he was under-medicated for part of it.

    I'm discouraged by the first neuropsych. He mentioned that it was a large discrepancy but didn't suggest further exploration or even explain what it could possibly. His report is a long anti-grade-skip rant that is not remotely evidence based or even specific to my son. The first neuropsych was IQ and acheivement. My son's acheivement was 98 - >99.9 percentiles with little spread. His IQ ended up 68th percentile with the low processing speed score. There was another really low test score. Something about comprehending social norms? I've never really understood what the subtest is or its relevance.

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    Originally Posted by sanne
    The first neuropsych was IQ and acheivement. My son's acheivement was 98 - >99.9 percentiles with little spread. His IQ ended up 68th percentile with the low processing speed score. There was another really low test score. Something about comprehending social norms? I've never really understood what the subtest is or its relevance.

    That would be the Comprehension subtest, which is part of the VCI. I'm sure aeh will be along to explain better, but my understanding is that a low score on that section can just be unfamiliarity with parts of mainstream culture, or it can be an indicator of various LDs, I believe including both ADHD and autism.

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    If all you had was the WISC and WIAT, then yes, comprehending social norms was likely the Comprehension subtest, which is part of the VCI. A lot of different factors can affect performance, including social perception/social reasoning, level of acculturation, and receptive language. The meaning of the low score would depend on additional data on those other areas. (Completely leaving aside the issue of insufficiently controlled ADHD, which can affect any test. Comprehension is also generally among the last subtests administered on the WISC, so sometimes kiddos just run out of steam. You note that his dose ran out before the end of the testing session, so this is among the subtests most likely to be affected.)

    Also, pm'd you.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    I picked up enrollment papers and met with the middle/high school principal. Principal is pro-acceleration. Says they'll do above grade level testing with ACT Aspire for grade placement and put him in whatever grade he only knows 50% of the material, and start an IEP for ADHD issues.

    This sounds good. If DS10 crashes and burns with ADHD issues, it will be huge reality check for him.

    I'm a little wary of that 50% benchmark for grade placement. What grade will he end up in? (Sounds like 9th) What classes will he end up in? Yikes.

    The school does not do study halls and he cannot take fewer than 6 classes. Music does not count toward those 6 classes - music is scheduled at the same time as the "resource" / study hall the period at the end of the day. Hmmmm....

    The shock of an intense schedule would be good for his attitude. But after that shock, surviving the school year is something else. smirk

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    .... but you will have teammates when it comes to SOLVING the problems. More to the point, so will he. Now, from his perspective, those teammates may seem more like a number of different task-masters, none of whom he is thrilled to be beholden to-- but it's a start, and as you say, something of a reorientation with regards to "Yeah, NO. This is not a functional way of existing. You need help, and you need to do things differently."


    The VERY best of luck.

    I don't know what to make of the 50% mark, either, but with a lot of kids who have executive issues on top of GT/asynchrony, if they aren't engaged in learning and novelty-- you've got ADDITIONAL problems with attention and motivation that are pretty immutable.

    So maybe the principal is on to something there.






    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    The 50% mark is bothering me. I'm collecting documents for enrollment. His most recent test was MAPS in spring 2016, end of 3rd grade.

    Math 247 - 75th percentile for end of 9th grade
    Reading 241 - 86th percentile for end of 11th grade
    Language Usage 245 - 92 percentile for end of 11th grade

    The RIT score for MAPS is the level at which the student is answered 50% of the questions correctly. If he made progress over the last school year and ACT Aspire is similar to MAPS (should be because of Common Core), and he tests above 50% for 12th grade, then what are they going to do with him? The high school only offers one AP english class and I know he can't handle the writing expected at the community college for their 101 and 102 courses. How is he going to accrue 4 credits of english and develop his lagging writing skills?

    I suppose the whole point of public school is to let someone else deal with that exact problem.

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    I found a research paper linking MAPS to ACT Aspire. Very interesting, maybe won't be as bad as I feared.

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    DS's MAP score was about the same at the end of third grade, and in fourth grade he was placed in pre-algebra (which is 7th grade math here). I don't have any recent MAP data and it could have shot up more in the last year, but they are having him skip another year and having him do Algebra for high school credit this coming school year. Pre-algebra last year seemed about right, a little easy since he almost never brought anything home to do or study and still got an A+. They made it through the book in about 3/4 of the school year.

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    My DS10 did Algebra 1 during fall 2016. It was a disappointing class - it was online and "dumbed down". It corresponded with Saxon Algebra 1/2. He started Saxon Algebra 2 spring 2017 and is about 1/2 through it, C average. No problem with the concepts, but he makes lots of "stupid little" ADHD mistakes. The challenge level is right. I'm guessing he'll end up placed in Geometry since he hasn't taken it yet. The Saxon curriculum includes geometry problems so he might score better on Geometry than I suspect.

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