Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Neuropsych eval (long post)

Hi all. My DGS6 met with the neuropsych on Monday. It went very well. She didn't do much additional testing, since we had quite a lot done already. She "got" my DGS and his dad and our whole family. She ruled out ASD of any kind. The school had concerns about hand flapping and some noises. She says all her gifted kids make the same hand motions. She thinks it's just a coping mechanism for the speed of their brains and to combat boredom.

She is putting together recommendations for us and for the school and we will get those in a couple of weeks. She took all her observations and all the previous psych and educational testing and is evaluating them as a whole to put together recommendations.

We were thrilled. She is very smart, very personable and took the time to speak to DS and DGS each separately and won them both over. Preliminarily we are looking at anxiety (we knew that), probable ADHD, and maybe a SLD in reading. So, we are definitely looking at counseling, but I don't know yet about school accommodations.

She is an hour and a half from us, and doesn't want to us to drive that far for weekly counseling. (My boys trust her, so we will, of course!) The part that impressed me is that she said she writes her recommendations so that "if they don't know what they're doing, I will tell them what to do and how I want it done." It was such a pleasure to find someone who cares, who "gets" gifted and twice exceptional kids and understands that schools need very specific, detailed recommendations.

It went far better than I had ever hoped and I am looking forward to her recommendations. Hope is a wonderful thing!

leahchris

So great to hear! Sometimes it's just so nice to feel that someone gets it!

Great News Leahchris -
I like this too - she can 'codeswitch!'
smiles,
Grinity

Hi, Leahcrhis,
Your neuropsych sounds awesome--I had never heard before that the hand flapping thing was a possible gifted trait, because that was one of the big things DD's teacher focused on when DD was 3 to refer her for the first of many evaluations. Now DD is 8 and we are still having problems with her behavior and with teachers, which has led me to a search for an expert neuropsych who might be able to give us an expert opinion to refer to in the future. I have gone through all the tentative diagnoses we got this year and compared them to what is said about them in the Misdiagnosis book by James Webb and don't think DD (now 8) meets the criteria for any of them (although she is definitely a bird of a different feather)! If you get a chance, could you please PM me (or post) the name of your neuropsych? We are in NC and I'm hoping to find someone on the East Coast or Midwest to do an evaluation to counteract the one we got earlier this year, with which we very much disagree.
Regardless, I'm glad you found someone who can help you! Good luck going forward,
Dbat