Hello. New here and looking for a little guidance from others who may have been down this road already.
We recently had DS (9 1/2 years old) undergo a neuropsych evaluation to rule out ADHD. His Montessori teachers had been complaining about him for several years, saying he wasn't engaging with the material, reporting various disruptive behaviors, and implying (but never requesting) that we should do something (non-specific) about it. They had no concerns about him academically; he just seemed to be unmotivated, class clowning, lacking self-regulation, etc.
We also have noted tendencies to be strong emotionally reactive, impulsive/lacking self-control, and needing lots of prompting to complete tasks in the home environment. Since the school wasn't seeming to have any ideas on how to help, and individual therapy for more than a year didn't seem to be changing anything in the classroom in a significant way, we thought maybe an evaluation would reveal a diagnosis that could help make a significant difference in the daily struggles.
Results revealed a moderately gifted profile, pretty balanced overall (with outliers VSI 147, PSI 105) and the giftedness (and suspected lack of proper educational setting) are what the neuropsych focused on in her recommendations.
However, in doing so, she seems to have blown past elevated or very elevated subjective ratings from us parents in the categories of Inattention, Hyperactivity/Impulsivity, and Defiance/Aggression, and though her report even talks about her own observations of dysregulated behavior during the evaluation ("He was more impulsive and silly on the second day. He hid under the examiners desk, turned off the lights, took materials from the examiner�s desk, and made inappropriate comments."), she attributes this behavior to his giftedness and the inappropriate educational setting.
As much as I really WANT to believe that changing schools (which we will do for next fall) is going to magically fix everything, I feel skeptical that the behavioral issues will evaporate and am worried about where we'll find ourselves if the same thing happens all over again at a gifted school.
In short: we don't have a diagnosis for him, but our experience of him FEELS 2E. I know that's vague, and I feel a little silly suggesting that I might know better than a neuropsychologist does!! I just don't know what to believe (or how to proceed), and I don't want to set him up to fail in a new educational setting because we haven't adequately identified a plan for dealing with ALL of his challenges.
Any advice or experience to share?
