Yea, I agree that the WJ-III Achievement Test is not necessarily the best test but this is test our school district uses and DYS accepts. Last year, I sat in the small closet-type room (on the other side of a divider) when the test was administered and therefore I overheard everything. I had to bit my tongue at times because ds told the tester then that he was in kindergarten and would thus only do kindergarten math and no more. Sigh. He's had issues with timed tests; he panics with Xtramath (https://www.xtramath.org/).

This year I only saw the tester briefly who gave the WJ-III by another person and another place. I wasn't in the room to overhear what comments my son may have made - though the tester provided some examples (ie. using fingers to subtract) on her evaluation.

To my knowledge, the school district doesn't offer any IQ test. They definitely don't offer anything in terms of gifted since we live in MA where giftedness is not state mandated or even recognized. After the WJ-III exam, I was told by the special needs coordinator that there are no gifted services or anything related - which I already knew.

I pursued the WJ-III because I didn't want to shell out any more money - or at least not at this point - and ds had an easier time last year with it than the Weschler. We've already shelled out a lot of money this year on medical expenses so I'm trying to mitigate expenses as much as possible. Our insurance paid for the Weschler two years ago, but the tester was terrible and we got a bunch of misdiagnoses.

Last June, we saw 2E expert, Dr. Lovecky. When we saw her then, she said she couldn't fully evaluate my ds because he was too scattered, inconsistent, impulsive, inattentive, etc. She based her verbal suggestions/advice on previous evaluations since she knew she wouldn't get far with ds at the time. She advised us to address the scatteredness/inconsistencies, work on the special needs (ADHD-symptoms, eye contact, sensory, etc.), and follow a general curriculum series to give ds some structure - which we did and are continuing to do.

Dr. Lovecky thought ds had ADHD and initially asked whether we had considered medication for him. I then immediately asked about neurofeedback since I had read about it actually here on this Davidson Gifted Forum. We then no longer talked about medication and talked about neurofeedback and how it might get to the root of ds's problems.

Last August, I took ds to neurofeedback provider #1. She's a brain injury expert and survivor herself. She said that my son's severe plagiocephaly (flattening and facial asymmetry) from in utero was a traumatic brain injury and that sticking a helmet on helped to re-shape his head did little to nothing to address the neurological wiring inside.

She had a look at his actual brain waves and confirmed that the ADHD diagnosis was, in fact, a misdiagnosis. My son has excessive delta waves - which are associated with a brain injury, delirium, or intoxication (not ADHD); he's got normal theta brain waves. An ADHD, by contrast, would have high or excessive theta brain waves.

Neurofeedback provider #2 (who accepted our insurance and that's the reason why we switched!) confirmed what neurofeedback provider #1 had said and believed it was accurate.

If you take a look at the symptoms of a brain injury (http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-children.htm), they're very similar to an ADHD/PDD/gifted diagnosis and other disorders so it can easily get confusing and misdiagnosed. If no one recognizes plagiocephaly or other conditions for what they truly are, then you're between a rock and a hard place and you often can't get the services or what you really need.

Personally, I think the neurofeedback and previous therapies have made a world of difference, but that his brain and body is still catching up to a stable state. I've been doing more cognitive behavioral therapy with him (ie. The Feeling Good Handbook) and this seems to be helping.