Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Cross road - need advice

My son was diagnosed with Asperger's and is now 10. He just recently did a WISC IV and the GAI is 154 (not using the extended norms). His scores are: VC:149, PR:143, WM: 154, PS:115.

He is now in a gifted class. However, because he frequently disrupts the class: rocking, making funny noises, sleeping during class, the school has suggested I remove him from the class and send him to a special needs school. The new school handles children who are autistic, and none gifted.

Does it make sense? While he is capable of doing Grade 9 maths consistently correct, he does not always get his grade 5 maths right. Why is this so? The teachers do not believe he is highly gifted or need acceleration. Is he highly gifted? Should we focus on 'righting' his behavior at the expense of his intellect development?

Hi 2ppaamm, I have a similar son, but he is only 7. We are very lucky that he is now in a school for the gifted. Before attending his current school, the teachers only saw his autism and not his gifted-ness. Your son's scores show that he is extremely gifted and he would be thrwarted and miserable in a school for kids with autism. (My son attended such a school when he was younger and while it was good for him at a young age, it would not be appropriate for a highly gifted elementary school age kid.)

It does sound like your son needs outside therapy to help his behavior in class. But you need teachers and/or a school that understands that his scores show he IS highly gifted, yet also has Asperger's and requires accommodations. Does he get any therapy now?

Nan

I would certianly take a look at the special needs school, but I wouldn't jump to move him out of the gifted class.

Is the gifted class full-time? What criteria does the school use to place a child in this particular program. There may well be a LOG (level of giftedness) issue causing him stress.

Is the person who did the testing availible to make any suggestions? Has the school provided 'friendship groups?'

What provisions are in place so your son can take a break appropriately when 'it' gets to be too much?

Are there any triggers that can be noticed and managed?

Do you think he's bored in school and that is triggering the unwanted behaviors?

I would certianly get that Davidson YSP application cranking if you haven't already. He is certianly highly gifted, profoundly gifted by my definition. And his processing speed is probably enough slower than the rest of him that it creates some tension, unless it is an artifact of the testing situation, or perfectionism.

Does your son have an IEP? or 504? what's in it?

What does your son say about when he disrupts class? Does he like school?

What is your son like at home? My son is high in WM, although not as high as your, and I've learned through experience that he can track an argument much better than I can!

I'm so glad that you are here!
Love and More Love,
Grinity

Hi NanRos and Grinity, thank you for the responses! Here are my answers to your questions.

1. No the school does not think he is highly gifted because his performance in school is not sterling. Sometimes, he will do extremely well, but on some days, he completely switches off and sleeps in class.

2. Yes, the gifted class is full-time. It is meant for those tested at 99 percentile.

3. Our private psychologist who tested him had worked with him for 9 months on his behavioral problems. We have put in some incentive program for him to behave in school. It was a smiley system, where he can earn smileys if he behaved. However, the school gave up two weeks into the program, saying it did not work. The school thought so because he was very angry that one smiley was taken away and retorted that he didn't care and that the smiley system won't work on him. However, I know that deep within him, he cared a lot about the smileys being removed. The school did not believe me. The psychologist who tested him did not believe he should go to the special school.

4. The school has not made any provision for him in case things get too much. I have asked that he be exempted from activities that will cause sensory overload, but the exemptions only comes when he had acted out. What provisions should I proactively ask for?

5. Noise is the main trigger when he was younger. Nevertheless, I notice no longer bothers him that much in recent months. However, I notice that he gets really angry when I repeat instructions to him. He will ask me to keep quiet and let him think. When he was doing the IQ test, he hit the ceiling for Arithmetic. In the last question, the psychologist wanted to repeat the question. He stopped her, and began singing and incorporated the answer in his 'song'.

6. He has his own ways of looking at things, and can find a solution to questions in an unusual way. He does not like people telling him how to think or solve anything their ways. He is not always right, but very often. He gets very irritated when teachers won't listen and impose their methods on him.

7. Could his processing speed be low because of his poor motor skills? He is clumsy and I am getting his vision checked. He appears to have binocular vision.

8. No, I did not manage to get an IEP for him thus far. That's why I got his IQ tested to see where he is.

9. My son loves school very much. He does not know that he disrupts the class when he asks too many questions, sleeps or rocks the chair. We notice that he behaves much better in a structured and quiet room, but only one teacher in the school is willing to offer that environment.

10. LOL! My son has no problem at all with his siblings and us. As I have five children, I have very little time for him (he is #4). He will read most of the day, and then prepare his own meals, he eats six meals a day. He plays with his younger brother, the piano, and sleeps. He does a bit of computer (an hour or so). When he argues in this house, he loses most of the time, the older teenagers will not let him have the last say. So he has learnt not to track an argument! Maybe because of that, he has brought his argumentative skills to the classroom?!

11. No, he has no therapy right now, because his asperger's is newly diagnosed. He compensated well when he was young. I am still not sure which therapy classes to enroll him in.

12. Maybe he is bored in class, because he is already doing Grade 9 work while the class he is in is at Grade 4.

Thank you very much for the encouragement!!! I did not think he was highly or profoundly gifted. Now I know to look in different directions!

Argh! First of all, the teachers gave up on the smileys because they were doing it wrong: you can't take away smileys, you can only give them (you CAN not give them in the first place, but you can't take them away).

Here is what my son has for sensory accommodations: a squishy seat pad and squishy foot pedals to help prevent rocking and kicking. A hand fidget to help when quiet listening is required. He used to have headphones. He has a place in his classroom that he is allowed to go to at any time he needs a break. His teachers provide movement breaks for him in between lessons. He gets advanced notice for fire drills and substitute teachers, optional attendance at assemblies, and we hand picked a quiet, low key teacher. He does poorly with inflexible teachers...they butt heads with him and nothing gets accomplished.

It has taken us 5 years to get here. He has had an IEP since he was 3, but teachers have not always followed it. If I were you, I would apply to DYS to have them advocate for you. I think it will be hard to find an advocate comfortable working with an exceptionally gifted kid with Asperger's, but you need someone to help you. We are lucky in that we have been doing this for 5 years, so we have a whole team to call on for help depending on what is needed.

The different therapies we have used that you might find helpful are: ABA or CBT to help teach appropriate behaviors so that they become second nature, OT to help with sensory issues, and speech therapy to help with social skills and social/language pragmatics.

I bet you are right that your son is bored, but teachers do NOT like to hear that! My son also thinks of solutions in a unique manner and gets irritated when people tell him that he has to do something a certain way. My son also gets frustrated when questions are repeated...he has to process the question and it takes longer sometimes to form the answer.

Anyway, I didn't answer you in a very organized manner, sorry! Just wanted you to know you are not alone, and I think you will find lots of help and good advice here. Keep pushing for your son's academic needs to be met, and make them accommodate for everything else...not vice versa!! Nan

What Nan said!
My son got a lot of accomidations without an IEP, although he did eventually get a 504. He doesn't have spectrum issues, but needed a hand fidget toy to destroy, hard candies, one teacher gave him 5 'question' cards and he had to hand her one for every question he asked. He got them all back the next day. It worked a charm!
Friendship group was very helpful. The teacher would keep an eye on him and send him to carry something heavy to the Principles office when he got 'antsy.'
When DS was older, he would use 'bathroom trips' and 'nurses office' trips to help break up the day. He was also famous for sharpening his pencil many times during the day.
Your son may well need a gradeskip,with extra accomidation in Math. but I would get the psychologist to be the one to bring it up. Is it possible for the psychologist to visit the school, observe and make suggestions?
It's so sad that they took away his smiley face. ((pout))
I'll bet that if you hand pick the teacher who's class he skips into, he might have a great rest of the year.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Piping in to say:
- Getting a good iq test performed with solidly above 145 scores is a big step in the right direction.
- the Misdisagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children book might give you some ideas if you haven't read it yet. http://www.amazon.com/Misdiagnosis-..._1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289269542&sr=8-1
- Smiley stickers would not work for my child either. Getting intellectually appropriate work does dramatically improve her classroom behavior.
- Is there an OT at the school who could help with the fidget equipment?
- Would the psychologist be willing to meet with the school?

Hi Chrys, thank you for the recommendation. I have already ordered the book. For the last two days, I've been wondering if he was midiagnosed. He has good eye contact, he used to have no friends, but since he started the gifted program he has made a few good friends. His sense of humor is never appreciated by his friends (even now), and he can read facial expressions. Sure, he has sensory issues especially auditory, and he can hear the mosquitoes fluttering around and tell you how many there are. He cannot stand loud noises and noises at certain frequencies, especially people singing at an imperfect pitch, could it be because he has a perfect/sensitive pitch?

I am going to read the book when it arrives.

Is there a possibility of highly gifted or PG kids being misdiagnosed as Asperger's? Could he be rocking because he is bored because he never does that at home. He does no flapping. He also does not like to follow routines, but he'll get upset if a new routine affects his dietary/sleeping patterns. He is clumsy, though. He reads widely and has love for many topics, and talks in depth about many topics, and not particularly any specific topic. He can, however, go too in-depth about a new topic he just learnt and loses his audience completely, and he wouldn't know others are no longer interested. But now that I've taught him to read people's bored cue, he seems to have learnt when to stop.

The psychologist has gone to the school to listen to the teacher's complaints and that's when the smiley system came into place. I'm going to look to the OT for fidget equipment and see what are available.

DS also makes frequent trips to the toilet, but the teachers are very concerned with his safety and wants his trips lessened. He used to hide in the toilet when he did something wrong. He was afraid the teachers would 'attack' him for being bad. Grinity, how did you get the privilege of handpicking our teachers? Did you have to produce some papers?

Wow NanRos, 5 years. It doesn't matter how long, as long as there is hope...

Thank you so much for the help. At least I'm seeing some possible steps to take, and definitely some possible answers.

ha ha...I hope saying 5 years wasn't discouraging, I didn't mean it that way. I meant that it is a process to find what works best for your child.

I also had the question as to whether a PG kid could be misdiagnosed with Aspergers, but eventually gave up on worrying about it because the accommodations he gets for his autism help him so much. I don't know how easy it would be to get accommodations for being fidgety because he is lightyears ahead of the teacher....

We handpicked our teacher also by stating that the psychologist (who is well-respected at the school) determined the best fit. We have learned how to name-drop!

Nan

Sadly, the handpicking never actually happened for us. We randomly got a terrific one for 3rd grade, and she reassured me that there was someone 'similar' for 4th grade - but in the end we didn't get the teacher, and ended up leaving that school at the end of 4th grade. I did ask the principle what was the qualities that the 3rd grade teacher had that would be 'ok' to request on the paper that gets sent around at the end of the year.

Princ said that Mrs. 3rd has a 'tremendous fund of knowledge' and that would be ok to request, as in "We have noticed fewer behavior problems when placed with a teacher with a tremendous fund of knowledge." It still didn't work.

But a few years later when we returned to that district for 8th grade, I said: "We have noticed that there is a more positive social adjustment when he is placed with several children who excell academically, such as 'Sam X'" And that got him a wonderful placement in a school that claims to have totally heterogeneous classes. ((shrug))

Good luck!
Grinity