Thanks everyone for your comments. It is good to see how your kids have faired with and without diagnosis. I went back to the rough draft of the report I was given and found the actual attention and concentration tests that she gave him during the evaluation. On the Children's Color Trail Test 1 he scored in the 1st percentile which translates to "moderately impaired". Then on the more challenging CCTT 2 he scored better, 24th percentile or average. She also gave him Conner's Continous Performance Test II and the results indicate "that chances are 99.9 out of a 100 that a significant attention problem exists. His profile is similar to an ADHD clinical group.
So basically, if I read this right, the tests she gave him definitely suggest an attention problem. However, it was ameliorated by more challenging material. She also noted, as has his gifted teacher, that he would miss some easy questions during the examinations, but answer harder questions correctly.
What prevents him from easily being classified as ADHD is that the behaviors are not consistent across environments. It seems that he is ok when he is engaged but apparently less able to tolerate rote or uninteresting tasks than other kids his age. Is that ADHD? I don't know what to call that.
My own observations, he has always had a much better attention span than other kids with regard to things like listening to stories, going to plays, movies. Anything where he is being mentally stimulated. However, he bounces off the walls in "down time". When he was younger we were constantly going somewhere (museum, library, park, etc.) because he just didn't tolerate hanging around the house that well. An example, if he's watching a television show he will be very involved in it, but as soon as there's a commercial break he is up literally bouncing on the furniture, jumping around, often bothering his siblings. When the show comes back on he sits down and watches quietly again. He's 10 and that has been true since he was a toddler.
We have another meet with the psych on the 28th so I have the opportunity to task more questions.
I don't want to get the diagnosis if its inappropriate. But I'm having a hard time understanding what this is and what to do about it.
