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Hi, I am new to this area and came across this forum. My son got tested recently and results came back with discrepancy. He turned 7 in September. The school wanted to test him for ADHD. Attention span doesn�t seem to be the issue but social interaction with other kids seems to be the troubling area.

Please see below:

Verbal Comprehension: 108 70th percentile (similarities: 13 84th and vocabulary 10 50th )
Visual Spatial: 126, 96th percentile (Block Design 14 91st and Visual Puzzles 15 95th )
Fluid Reasoning: 128, 97th percentile (Matrix Reasoning 13 84th percentile and Figure weights 17 99th percentile)
Working Memory: 103 58th percentile (digit span 10 50th percentile and picture span 11 63rd percentile)
Processing Speed: 111 77th percentile (coding 13 84th percentile and symbol search 11 63rd )
Overall FSIQ: 121 92nd percentile

We are a bilingual family so had not really paid attention to his vocabulary. The working memory part also surprised me. We thought his memory was very good as he can recall things happened a long time ago with very clear detail. My son was never advanced for his age. I am actually surprised to see the IQ results. He does seem to be a bright child but never particularly good at anything. Based on this IQ results, he seems to be strong in Visual Spatial and Fluid Reasoning. He seems bored in school and not always happy. Wondering if there is anything we can do to boast his learning interest, utilize his potential, and catch up on the weaker area.

Any advice would be highly appreciated!

Welcome!

None of his scores are by any means weak. Some are just stronger than others. Given his language environment and his age, it would not be too surprising if the verbal area were higher in future years. I wouldn't be concerned about this, as, long term, it will be greatly to his benefit to be multilingual.

The relative weakness in working memory refers not to long-term retrieval, which is the IRL strength you describe, but to short-term memory skills. It's more like how many instructions he can hold in his head at once. Often, it is actually related to sustained attention. Or it can be the other way around--that he appears to be inattentive because of the challenge of holding multiple things in his head. It's also often the case that attentional issues have more impact on social skills, for several reasons, including impulse control. Also, most social skills are learned from experience, which requires sustaining attention all the way through from behavioral cause to social effect.

On the other hand, instructional mismatch (insufficient academic challenge) can also produce behaviors that appear to be inattentive and impulsive, because the child is seeking stimulation for a different reason. These can have the same kinds of impact on social interactions. In addition, the absence of cognitive peers may feed into social disconnection for some high-cognitive children (not all--some children are particularly skilled at reading the room, and make adjustments to their own presentation in order to either mask/"fit in", or actually find a way to connect with diverse peers).

His learning profile would suggest that he might find mathematical and spatial puzzles appealing, which is one area you could investigate outside of school. If he likes math, there are also a number of in-person and online math enrichment resources you may find on the Recommended Resources page of this forum, giving the preference to conceptual and creative math, rather than procedural drills (unless he enjoys those).

Did the school do any other testing, such as academic achievement? That might give us some additional directions to suggest.

Thanks a lot for the information. I just looked at the Education Assessment:

Word Reading (SS 129, PR 97)
Pseudo-word Decoding (SS 111, PR77)
Reading Comprehension (SS106, PR66)
Oral Expression (SS104, PR73)
Oral Word Fluency(SS105, PR63)

Numerical Operations (SS128, PR97)
Math Problem Solving (SS115, PR84)
Addition (SS121, PR92)
Subtraction (SS126, PR96)

Spelling (SS98, PR45)
Written Expression (SS95, PR37)
Alphabet Writing (SS93, PR32)
Sentence Combining (SS110, PR75)
Sentence Building (SS91, PR27)

Listening Comprehension (SS94, PR34)
Receptive Vocabulary (SS98, PR45)
Oral Discourse Comprehension (SS92, PR30)

According to the elevator, testing errors were often noted due to an impulsive response style and failure to attend to what the task required. His performance was also impacted upon by inattentiveness.

Seems more concerning based on this results. Thanks!

His achievement profile is pretty consistent with his cognitive profile, actually, with math on-target with nonverbal reasoning, and single word reading in the same range. The remaining reading, writing, and oral language skills are in the range of his verbal cognition, although one can see that inattention may have affected his listening comprehension and some rote fluency skills (e.g., alphabet writing).

One of the challenges when considering ADHD in a child of this age who is probably significantly underchallenged in at least some aspects of his classroom instruction (math, most likely) is that many neurotypical barely seven-year-olds have questionable skills for sustained attention, especially during unstimulating activities. So is he inattentive/impulsive because he lacks challenge, because he has dysregulation of attention arising to a disorder (aka ADHD or some related neurological condition), or just because he's young?

You may need more data, from a wider variety of settings. Do the inattention and poor inhibition occur even when engaged in preferred tasks? How long can he actually regulate his attention and behavior independently? How long when scaffolded by a familiar adult or routine? How much scaffolding is needed (frequency and intensity of cues, structure, etc.). You may also find a broader evaluation useful, either through the school or privately, looking at other aspects of social interaction skills besides attention.

Thanks so much. I will consider more data. Also, we will find resources to encourage and reinforce his math skills.