Did your ds have any additional testing or evals to determine why his processing speed score is low? Coping with whatever is causing the discrepancy can definitely leave a child fatigued... But there is a chance that you can remediate or accommodate depending on *why* the PSI is low. For example, my ds13 has fine motor challenges which cause a large dip in PSI. We can't remove his fine motor challenge, but he can and does receive accommodations at school ( and outside of school) which lessen the impact of his fine motor challenge. He still spends considerably more tens on homework and some other tasks than his peers, but overall he is doing very well in accelerated challenging courses at school and he's happy.
My dd10, otoh, scored less than .5th percentile (yes, that was point5!) on one of the PSI subtests the first time she was tested. She had another lowish score in another WISC subtest outside of the PSI/WM, a test that depended on vision. She was referred to a developmental optometrist who discovered she had severe double vision and tracking issues. A cruise of vision therapy improved her vision dramatically and her PSI scores were back up in the same range as her other subtest scores the next time she was tested. She'd always been a kid who needed a ton of down time and sleep before her VT, and that disappeared as here vision mproved.
So, yes, for both of my low PSI kids there was a tie to frustration, fatigue, and the low PSI score...and for both of them, having the additional testing to determine what was causing the dip in scores was extremely important.
Best Wishes,
Polarbear
