Okay, I'm back. Seriously, thanks for all of the information!
Dbat, you asked: "Also, his scores look pretty high to me--is it possible that his difficulties with handwriting have prevented the teachers from recognizing his giftedness and possibly accelerating him?"
Actually, I think it might be the reverse....I think the fact that he does so strongly in school has masked this issue to the point that no teachers have brought it up to me, and while I've always noticed these symptoms (and, *regret, regret* have even teased him a little about his pants-buttoning laziness, his allowing his little sister to tie his shoes when they were younger, etc), I never had a clue that there could be something neurological behind it. I just always hoped he'd grow out of it, his fine motor skills would improve, etc. So, perhaps because I'm guessing his case (assuming I'm right about him having it) isn't the absolute most severe case out there, plus the high ability, he has still managed to excel in school. But as "revmom" points out, middle school is a far cry from high school, and as the workload piles on, I have visions of this finally catching up with him and impeding his success.
He did take keyboarding last year in school, so is adequate at typing, but not excellent yet. But I think if he switched over to that, he'd pick it up. I am so curious to conduct a few home-tests.
In answer to the question about whether he mixes up punctuation, etc: on his first drafts of writing assignments, and also all throughout homework assignments that aren't primarily graded on "writing skills" (say, a science worksheet), his work is often riddled with punctuation errors. He does not mix up b's and d's, but capitalization can be off, periods missing, etc. But if he takes a grammar test, he gets 100% (ie he knows how to do it, when he focuses). When he works on a 2nd draft, or final draft, he corrects his errors. He does have some weird spacing. Also, he has never formed his letters properly (he does his strokes out of order, sometimes starting from the bottom of a letter instead of the top, etc.). And he does form some letters in different ways at different times. It looks so incredibly uncomfortable when he's writing!
I'm glad to hear all the points about accommodations, and the need to carefully re-think that. With just 24 hours of recognizing this, I guess I need for this to sink in, pursue a real evaluation, and do some assessing myself as to how much this is impeding his work. He is actually turning out some really, really nice writing pieces now, but most of those are done at home, on the computer. I wonder, would his writing be even more robust if he dictated it? Maybe/maybe not, but I can't wait to find out.
I'm also eager to get him some grips, and I can imagine that OT could help with the handwriting. I totally get the point that the OT can make the child capable of nicer handwriting, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem. But I agree that legible handwriting is a good skill to have when needed.
He does say that his hand gets tired when he needs to write a lot, and I can see why! One sort of sad note...he has always been interested in medicine, but he did recently say something about how he can probably never be a surgeon. I would have to agree, that isn't likely in the cards for him (but I actually think he'd be more interested in something more research-based anyway). It just is a sad thing to start realizing that maybe some of your options are limited. But hopefully not!!
Thanks again, I really appreciate all of the insights, and learning from your experiences.
PS He doesn't have gross motor skill issues....he's a pretty good athlete, very fast runner, etc. I'm curious if it is typical that this would show up almost entirely in fine motor areas?
Also, I am such a novice, but I'm wondering, how time-consuming is OT? It would be great to know what kinds of things they actually do in OT?
