All of your responses really helped me a lot. This whole communication disorder idea is totally something I had never considered due to DS having such great speech so young, but it makes perfect sense that the expectations for the types of ideas communicated change a lot with age and could make a problem become more apparent as he gets older.
Looking back at prior testing it seems like he may have had a gradual decline in this area since that first test at 2.5 where he was at the 99%ile in expressive communication (score of 142) to the WPPSI at age 5 where he got a 17 on Information (the only verbal subtest he was compliant with during that failed testing session) to the SBV, also at 5 (because we needed a valid and completed IQ test to apply to current school), where he got 132 verbal IQ based on subtests ranging from 12 to 18 (although I'm not sure how much sense subtests that measure things like verbal visual spatial actually make). This 118 definitely has me concerned though!
I did email the psych and mentioned that I would like to have the subtest scores written in the report, but she didn't get back to me yet. If and when I get them I will post them as hopefully they will be useful as far as figuring out what might be going on. I really hope we can figure out what is going on before the end of the school year as we still haven't decided what to do with DS next year. We have a meeting in 2 weeks with his current school to discuss our plans for next year and the more info I have for that the better.
I am not so sure that an all gifted school is a great fit for a kid who is barely above average verbally as so much that they do at that school is based on reading and writing. OTOH, I'm not sure how he could be accommodated in the public school for math and science. Even without great verbal skills he has an amazing memory and strong reasoning abilities that would probably make grade level social studies pretty boring too.
And then there is the issue of true peers. He has actual friends at his current school whereas when we tried public school last year the other kids just flat out ignored him because he was always making up rules and trying to get kids to play complex games they couldn't even begin to understand. At his current school the kids all just add more and more complex rules to their play and seem to enjoy building on each others ideas. This doesn't even get into the financial difficulties and some of the issues we've had with the private school.
What to do? I'd at least like to get a handle on what is going on with DS as we go into this decision making process. Somedays I really envy parents who have perfectly normal kids. I love my son so much and truly appreciate his uniqueness, but a little easy would be nice every now and then!
