Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Language Processing Help

Not sure if it would be helpful, but the Eides who wrote the Dyslexic Advantage have this slideshow talking about trade-offs in gifted minds. http://www.slideshare.net/drseide/brains-on-fire-gifted-thinkers

Just strikes me that swapping in written instead of spoken and your descriptions sounds like dyslexia. Dunno, but maybe that slideshow can offer at least some abstract measures to look at it.

Yes... I fully agree I think a label guides you towards a set of therapies and solutions but in no way should restrict you.

It's just so interesting. Our district psychologist is so convinced DS is ASD that he recommended, if we believe the ADHD dx, that we medicate him diagnostically for six months and we'll see that the meds don't work, and that we have an incorrect diagnosis and it should be ASD. The problem that I have with this is that this doc hasn't spent any time with DS - he's basing his opinion on a screening report done by an intern who observed DS for a couple of hours in class. Meanwhile our psychologist who said he's not ASD spent over six hours with him, albeit in a totally different setting.

It's just so hard. No one can seem to agree. He was PLAGUED by sensory issues when he was younger and he seems to have outgrown most of them. In defense of the school psychologist, he really did seem much more spectrum-like when he was younger, but he's outgrown most of it.

He used to love to spin... helicopter spins... ohhhhh my. He'd crash right into people. (eeeesh!!!) sigh. Again, another behaviour that has disappeared with age, so I'm thinking it was sensory/vestibular seeking, I guess, and it was just developmental.

On another note, Have you read "Bright, not Broken?" Kennedy/Banks w/forward by Temple Grandin ? It's an interesting read. They discuss the similarities between ADHD and ASD, and the different ways that the disorders are viewed and treated. I haven't read the whole thing yet but am enjoying it so far.

It's funny because I asked DS's grade 1 teacher about dyslexia and she said it was too soon to tell, but OH MY you should have seen his writing. So many letter reversals... he even wrote a couple of sentences in complete mirror image (it was bizarre). It has gotten much better though.

He's had five tests... ALL in sound proof booths... three by audiologists... two of those at the hospital... all normal. I was thinking that hearing might be the issue, but... nope.

I have not. I did see her speak earlier this year, which was fun. She is full of useful information, and she is really a very engaging public speaker.

I find it a little odd that your psychologist said she didn't know why anyone would suggest that about him. That seems strange given the behaviors you described. Maybe he's not on the autistic spectrum, but making that suggestion when he has those behaviors is not an outlandish idea.

I think one of the difficulties with ASD diagnoses is the stigma attached to the word "autism." Especially with an obviously gifted child -- it's like we don't want to saddle the gifted child with the autism label unless he's stimming and rocking in the corner and refuses to make eye contact with anyone.

Even among professionals who should know better, there's a fear of labeling that seems to keep kids from getting diagnosed. At the end of ds7's first big formal evaluation every single professional in the room said "I don't think he's AUTISTIC, but..." Like they were saying "I don't want to say it's FATAL, but..." The autism specialist walked in the room and five minutes later she said, "yep, autism." Years later and he's obviously on the autistic spectrum, albeit with many traits that push the diagnoses in the PDD NOS category. (He's my more autistic child. My older, DS8, is much more borderline in his presentation.)

That said, I dont think there's necessarily a reason to label a kid unless it will help them. If their support system already uses all the same therapies and support, there's not always a point to labeling. But living in a household where autism is almost the norm, I find it irksome that it's still considered such a death sentence. It should be a diagnoses that helps point people toward the correct and most useful support strategies, nothing more.

Just looking at it now... thanks I've heard of the reciprocity of different cognitive functions before - it makes a lot of sense.

I'm at slide 48, and it says "Visual thinkers process words through picture areas"

Um, wow. DS is not particularly phonetic, and finds it easier to simply memorize words (i.e. take a picture? process the word in picture areas?) rather than sound them out. This means that longer, more complex words are easier for him to remember because there's more to "hold on" to. Whereas the smaller words (he, she, was, saw, we, etc) usually mess him up.

It is interesting, isn't it?

There's a cynical part of me that thinks the school wanted the ASD label for funding, because there is none for ADHD, and the psychologist gave the ADHD label because there's less stigma attached and therefor it's easier for parents to swallow. is it bad that I think that?

Or maybe I am being too cynical. Like my family doctor says, with issues like these that aren't diagnosable medically, it always comes down to opinion - it doesn't necessarily have to be political.

At the end of the day I don't care what the diagnosis is, as long as he gets the help he needs...

Always the most important part.

My middle kid had some similar characteristics to those described in the original post, though not everything matches. She mixed up words, mainly abstract types of things. I should have kept track of what she mixed up, but the most notable mix-up was hot and cold. Despite correcting her every time she mixed up, the hot-cold thing continued until she was at least six.

She had some speech issues - articulation - and went through speech therapy at age three and then again at age eight. At age two/three, she would often say only the second syllable of a two syllable word, or the third and fourth of a four syllable word. While I didn't really pay to much attention to them, elementary reading assessments seemed to put her at a lower level than her true level. She would substitute for some words and start/stop (not fluid) reading when asked to read out loud. I see my youngest do that too with both reading and speech, and one teacher called it stuttering (which it isn't - more of hesitation). Lexile level assessments for middle kid which did not involve reading out loud (ie MAP testing) yielded much better results.

At 14 (15 in a few weeks), she still will sometimes ask a definition of a word that she should know (but a word you seldom would use). Often these are words that her eight year old sister knows. I did ask a psychologist at an established local child study center (center has been there at least 50 years) and she did suggest possible reasons for the language issue. However the testing seemed expensive, and she was in middle school by that time, and no issues in school.

She had some sensory type issues as well such as tags on clothes and food texture. We never looked for any help with those. We tolerated them for a while, then as she got older, we just told her to "grow up".

She has always done well on aptitude and achievement tests, and shows very "even" scores across subtests, so no one ever mentioned possible language issues, though some stuff she did was a bit odd.

And just an interesting similarity to the OPs case, all three of my kids attended a French immersion school (youngest still there, just started 3rd grade). We think the immersion has helped all three of them, and we don't think any issues we have seen are related to foreign language immersion.

I'm glad you said that... I'm pretty sure it's not as well: as far as I know, my DS is the only one in the program with these issues (currently there are over 200 kids in the French side of the school).

It was kind of comical, actually, the way his two (job share) grade one teachers reacted at our meet the teacher night (the year before last...he's just started grade 3 now). I said to them: "so... is he really that different?" and they both tilted their heads in the same direction and simultaneously said "Yesss!" It kind of caught me off guard - I didn't realize until that moment how quirky he was.