Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Advice on my 9 year old son

I am looking for advice about my 9 year old son. Specifically, I am wondering if we should even try to get assistance from Davidson.

He is already in the gifted program of a magnet school that works 1-2 grade levels ahead. He is on the honor roll but there were some issues that surfaced this year that seem to indicate that he may have a sensory or visual processing disorder and some small motor skill problems. We brought him in for an evaluation and I was very disappointed with the report that we received. I don't think the Doctor (who came highly recommended) had much experience with gifted children and his written assessment contained a number of assumptions that I feel were wrong. He offered almost no advice other than bringing my son to a occupational therapist. He verbally had discussed anxiety and adhd med's but did not put them in his written report. When he mentioned those things I really became nervous. The anxiety exists but it is not debilitating and at school it stems from the issues listed above I think (once an IEP was in place everything improved dramatically) and as far as ADHD - this has never been an issue at school or anywhere else as far as I am aware. He can maintain concentration FOREVER on a host of subjects and that started when he was still an infant. This year he read the Odyssey in a few days - that just does not seem like ADHD to me. His teachers were also very skeptical about that diagnosis.

In short - does anyone think he would qualify for Davidson YS and if so could they point us towards someone that could help him? I am sick of spinning my wheels (and money) and I don't know where to turn.

SCORES

I can�t find my copy of his preschool test but I know that he was at 3.3 standard deviations above norm and his IQ score was 149 or 150 (as I recall the verbal was about 140 and nonverbal about 145 but I might be wrong).

WISC-IV (the test the doctor above administered)
Full Scale 125

Verbal Comprehension 140
Similarities 17
Vocabulary 16
Comprehension 17
Information 17
Word Reasoning 17

Perceptual Reasoning 121
Block Design 17
Picture Concepts 10
Matrix Reasoning 13
Picture Completion 14

Working Memory 104
Digit Span 10
Letter / Number 12
Arithmetic 12

Processing Speed 103
Coding 10
Symbol Search 11

So, what do you think? Thank you in advance for your opinions and ideas.

I'm sure that others will weigh in and opinions may vary, but I'd say that, based on the scores you have right now, unless you also have achievement scores that more than meet the DYS criterion, he may not have the best chance of being accepted. That doesn't mean that he's not a good candidate for DYS.

We, too, had one less than stellar testing experience with one of my dds where the report had some truly offensive parts such as a written comparison to her older sister and opinions that flat out were not supported even by the testing the psych had just done (yes, she's above the 99th percentile, but she's not that atypical and you shouldn't push to have her in a GT program that is designed for the 95th and up, for instance).

When the rapport isn't there or the tester is less experienced with giftedness than s/he put forth, the numbers may not be the best estimate. That said, I think that you're going to have to have the numbers to show Davidson that he's PG and these ones probably wouldn't do it.

The tester should have calculated a GAI with the discrepancy btwn VCI/PRI and WMI/PSI, though. Typically that would be done using the standard tests for VCI & PRI and would give you a 136 (99th percentile). It seems a lot more likely that he is a 99th+ percentile kid than a 95th percentile kid (125) based on how you describe his academic performance.

However, you could theoretically get him awfully close to DYS criteria using some of the alternate tests. If you picked the highest numbers from the VCI & PRI tests that were administered, you wind up at 143, which is the minimum number to get into the 99.8th percentile.

The one thing that does stand out that made me think this may be why the dr was suggesting ADD is the fact that both the WMI and PSI were lower. That's exactly what my one 2e child, who is HG+ with ADD, looked like on the WISC-IV. None the less, if I didn't see the symptoms in the child, I'd be very hesitant to say the least to say that this is the reason. I'd consider it inappropriate to diagnose a disorder solely based on IQ spread unless there are other indicators. The IQ spread can raise questions, but there could certainly be other reasons for it.