ABQMom I haven't read up previous posts on your child at all. So I am not commenting on your child in anyway, but I wanted to share our experience briefly.
When my eldest had her first Ed Psych evaluation at 7yrs the psychologist said during the appointment: "Well she presented like a classic case of inattentive ADHD at the start of the assessment but for reasons x,y,z she clearly is not." Despite her having index scores ranging from the 13th percentile (WMI) to the 96th (VCI) there was no mention of possible giftedness being masked by disability OR of disability being masked by giftedness and no diagnosis of anything. We were lead to believe our daughter's primary problem was a poor school fit at the previous school, that things were looking up at the new school and would all be fine soon.
2yrs later, with great intervention at school and home she was doing FAR better, but we realised things still weren't ok. I did some reading and realised that the reasons we were given for her NOT having ADHD-I were pretty much the text book argument for why she DID have ADHD-I. She was re-assessed by a variety of professionals and we have a new list :
1) FSIQ in the gifted range (only just)
2) ADHD-i (only just made the criteria)
3) Dyslexia (only just made the criteria)
4) CAPD (only just made the criteria)
5) borderline for Aspergers, as in so borderline they won't label her but are worried they have missed it and want to make a 3rd assessment in another 6 months.
ADHD of any form had never occurred to us prior to that first psych evaluation, so hearing it mentioned was a surprise and having it dismissed was a relief. We left re-assured and confident. We trusted our psych. And our daughter DID make vast gains in those following 2 years. But I can't can't tell you how badly I wish we had NOT be given the all clear on ADHD-i back then.
Now my child is one of the kids MoN mentions:
"but honestly, we'd sometimes sit in a meeting and hear, "well, we could call it this or this or this, but the bottom line is what we have is the same thing by any name" because often there were multiple overlapping diagnoses. Then as a team, we'd pick the one based on parental report that the parent was most likely to find beneficial, and the one most likely to result in the services needed."
Problem is that we started trying to get the diagnosis AFTER years of doing everything we could to help her. Now she's not quite anything strongly or clearly enough for any single professional to unequivocally give her a label and attack it head on. But she's still not ok. She's a gifted child working her butt off to look barely average.
I totally understand you not wanting your son misdiagnosed with ADHD because it's this psych's specialty. But consider also that the first proffessional might have been wrong. You don't want a missed diagnosis either.
