I am writing to seek advice about what kind of evaluation I should seek for my son and if anyone has a recommendation for the Bay Area.
My son has always experienced problems related to writing. He had difficulty with handwriting and struggled to put words onto a page. His handwriting was oddly spaced and he seemed to visibly pause before writing every word, like there was some kind of issue with translating his thoughts onto the page. His writing was very different in character from the quality of thoughts and ideas he expresses verbally. I have checked in with teachers several times over the years and they were never concerned enough to recommend an evaluation. They recognized it was an area of relative weakness for him but not relative to his peers. I often wondered about dysgraphia but my son is an excellent speller and doesn’t seem to have other symptoms of dysgraphia. I had hoped that once my son could use a computer, some of these issues would disappear.
My son is now in third grade and continues to struggle with some writing tasks. Specifically, he has a hard time, when doing a report, figuring out which facts are important to include and then getting it down on paper. Reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be an issue. He can read at a very high level and demonstrates sophisticated understanding- as one would expect from a child who tested in the 140s on the verbal portions of the WPPSI. He really struggles, however, with tasks where he is supposed to read a paragraph and pull three important facts from it (for example).
When my son’s class recently did reports on a historical figure my son’s paper was one and a half pages long. He worked on this paper for eight weeks. It was well written and insightful but he really struggled with figuring out what biographical facts he should include and needed a lot of scaffolding to get anything on paper. Other kids’ papers were 5-7 pages and my son noticed that and felt really bad about it. He did note that copying facts down seems problematic because he doesn’t want to infringe on any copyrights. He has often expressed reservations about regurgitating material instead of expressing a new idea- but I don’t think that is the main barrier. He told me he just cannot figure out what facts are important and should be included.
Other writing tasks do not seem to pose a problem. My son has been into writing creative stories at home and he is able to write one or two pages in a half hour. Yes, the stories are a bit rambling and not well organized but they are creative and include wonderful imagery and use of metaphors. My son claims he can only write if it is his idea/interest and that he cannot write when assigned a topic and forced to write about it.
My son also wrote and made a presentation on the Large Hadron Collider to hundreds of people when he was in second grade. His presentation was fantastic and he received a standing ovation and even now people who saw the presentation stop me and tell me that he is a “genius”. But he didn’t work from a text. He pulled all the material from his knowledge based on extensive reading about the subject and wrote a very well organized, compelling presentation. So that was less of a challenge than reading a simple text and then pulling some key facts from it, which I find puzzling.
Besides his frustration with writing my son excels in school, especially in math and science. He has no problems writing about procedures for his science experiments or writing an analysis of the data. He is socially awkward and a bit uncoordinated. He took the WPPSI when applying for kindergarten. His processing speed was exactly 100, more than 40 points below his verbal and working memory scores. I also remember a relative weakness in fluid reasoning subtests. We weren’t sure if the slower processing speed was related to anxiety (my son has anxiety and Tourettes Syndrome) or a slow, careful approach to everything (which my son has).
I’ve been keeping an eye on this issue for a while and am concerned that something is going on that we need to figure out so we can help my son with this area where he is struggling. I’ve done some online research and there is an organization called the Summit Group that does testing on 2E kids. Does anyone have experience with them or other recommendations or perspective to share?
