When he began school he had mechanical problems with handwriting, which affected his self esteem. His writing is still poor (and relatively slow), but he is not thought to be dysgraphic. His fine motor skills are also poor: he was 11 before he could tie his shoelaces. However, his gross motor skills and coordination are generally good.
Shell, I am sorry we didn't notice this when you first posted!
I am in a hurry at the moment so not much time to give you a thoughtful reply, but fwiw, what you've described above sounds very much like my ds13 who does have a dysgraphia diagnosis - but his dysgraphia is a result of Developmental Coordination Disorder, which if you haven't looked into you might want to google for a list of symptoms. Note that there is a *wide* range of how this impacts adults and children, so you'll find a long list of symptoms and might come away thinking *NO WAY* does that apply to my child... but fwiw it caught us totally by surprise when ds was diagnosed! Anyway, the handwriting challenges, difficulty with some fine motor tasks like learning to tye shoelaces late, and challenges with organization are all part of DCD.
In many circumstances he thinks and acts very quickly, but not all, because it took him twice as long as it should have done to do some of the cognitive test. Most of the time his memory is impressive, but he has been forgetful recently, and he complains of having short term memory loss. It is extremely difficult to get him to organise himself.
This also sounds a lot like my ds, except for the short term memory loss.
DS can certainly concentrate when interested, but he often has trouble staying on task.
While this can sound like an attention challenge, I've also seen this with my children who have learning challenges - related to the learning challenge, not a true attention challenge.
He achieves highly in reading, spelling, and oral language and is an excellent writer, although his work riddled with *careless* errors.
Again, that sounds potentially like dysgraphia! You've noted he has slow handwriting speed - do you remember why dysgraphia was ruled out? Did he undergo any tests to determine why his coding speed and symbol search scores were relatively low compared to his VCI subtests? One typical test that neuropsychs give is called the Beery VMI - it assesses visual and fine motor coordination (dysgraphia can result from a challenge with either). Another test for fine motor involves "finger tapping". It might be useful to you to google "dysgraphia symptoms" and look for a list that outlines the different "types" of dysgraphia - in some legibility is impacted more, in others spelling impacted more etc.
I've got to run but have a few more thoughts to share later when I have time -
Best wishes,
polarbear
