In a bit of a hurry here, so not much time for detail, but here are my 2 cents, fwiw.
If you can, I'd reconsider seeing a developmental optometrist. The issues they pick up aren't necessarily picked up in a conventional eye exam. I totally understand how odd the concept can seem and how it may be something that sounds bogus to people - because when our dd had a relatively low score had a relatively low score on symbol search and her neuropsych suggested a developmental optometrist eval I was *very* skeptical - and then completely surprised by the results. I'm now a believer
And I'm very glad we went through the eval back then rather than waiting and having my dd move forward in school with an undiagnosed vision challenge.
One thing that makes me wonder about vision with your ds (aside from the symbol search score) is that he was a preemie. Another thing - do you have the PRI subtest scores (I think it was PRI that was lower than VCI?). I think there was a subtest in PRI that my dd did relatively poorly on due to vision issues.
Re the reading - I wouldn't put much thought into a PG child not reading way ahead of grade level at 5 but being there at 7 - not all HG/+ kids learn to read early. It's also possible that the reading evils he had done at 5 aren't accurate. At 5 my ds did not want anyone to *know* he could read, and he had me (and his teachers) completely fooled.
The other thing that can happen with reading and HG/+ kids is that it may be more difficult to read at lower levels of ability because they have to read/decode each word. Once they are reading at slightly higher levels and have a lot more words/paragraph etc they can read quickly because they can pick things up from context rather than having to read each and every word correctly.
Sorry I didn't have more time to explain - let me know if you have questions!
Best wishes,
polarbear
