aeh: Thank you so much for your thoughtful replies. My husband and I both *loved* what you said about early math being essentially language (had never thought of it that way before, but now we'll never forget it), and how VS learners often don't come into their own, academically, until much later. That certainly describes my husband's experience.
puffin: I don't think the GAI would have been any higher, or I assume we would have been given it, but I agree that the FSIQ really doesn't say anything about my son's strengths. You're totally right that we've had horrible and fantastic experiences at the same school. Ever since they discovered that DS is likely 2e, everything's been great, but it's unfortunate that he could still be sitting in a SPED classroom, miserable, if not for him suddenly demanding a closer look. We're kind of upset looking back on everything. Every single IEP meeting we ever had would begin with the other team members telling random cute anecdotes about advanced stuff DS said, or crazy vocabulary words he used, that in retrospect were big blinking neon signs that no one paid any attention to. We feel a lot of guilt as his parents, that we should have pushed for the school to recognize his strengths sooner, but his behavior was so bad that we likened it to a fire that had to be put out before anything else could be dealt with. In taking that stance, we just extended the amount of time the house was burning. Besides having so much personal doubt due to that first WISC, we also knew that the school didn't test for inclusion into their GT program until the end of 3rd grade, so I figured that, if he was in fact gifted, hopefully we'd get his behavior under control by then and his strengths would eventually show themselves. I'd assumed the school would have nothing for him until that ID process anyhow. If we had waited that long to get him help and appropriately challenging work, I shudder to think at how much more we would have struggled with his behavior. I'm just so glad we're on a better path now.
It's also super difficult to wait for our upcoming testing / results!
