Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional High Verbal/ Low Processing Speed

My son's WISC IV results:

VCI 144
Similarities -16
Vocabulary -19
Comprehension-17
Information - 17
Word Reason - 14

PRI 123
Block Design - 12
Picture Concpt- 15
Matrix Reas - 14
Picture Comp 11

WMI 120
Digit Span - 15
Let-Num Seq - 12
Arithmetic - 19

PSI 91
Coding - 7
Symbol Search - 10
Cancellation - 11

He is currently in 9th grade at a private school and we just began medicine for ADHD (these score are without medicine). None of his teachers would have ever guessed he was ADHD, but the medicine seems to be helping significantly and he is so much happier on it.

With the meds he is finally able to begin and complete his assignments. But he still has a lot of trouble studying for tests and doing work that requires a lot of output. Studying info without any context (like memorizing a list of prefixes, suffixes and roots) is also very hard for him.

He does great with input. He seems to have an amazing gift for reading, yesterday he read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, all 500 page in one 2.5 hour sitting. He has great comprehension of what he reads or listens to.

He took Algebra I in 6th grade and Geometry in 7th, both with A's and no trouble. Last year in 8th grade he took Algebra II and ended failing in the last quarter because he could not bare to write out all the steps of a problem and gave up on all homework. He was fine orally and conceptually, but not if problems had to be written out. He is redoing Algebra II this year with a tutor who is accommodating his needs- actually, he is flying through the material and loving it.

Next year we may need to put him in a public school. I have no idea what to call his "output" issues. Teachers see him as lazy, but I think that 53 point gap between his VCI and his PSI constitutes a learning disability.

Does anyone have experience with a kid like this? What accommodation should I be asking for in a public school setting? Any other thoughts?

Aculady posted this link in a previous thread regarding accomodations for ADD that I thought was really useful.

http://www.addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/article4.htm

I think ADD is a LD that would at least entitle him to a 504 plan. She also posted a link to Wrightslaw which has a ton of info on special education.

Just looking over my son's scores as they are VERY similar to yours. He has the same characteristics that you describe - almost to a "T". He has a 62 point gap between VCI and PSI. Output in written form is very difficult for him.

One thing that really confounds me about my son is that for some with a low PSI small motor control is an issue. Although my son does have terrible chicken scratch handwriting he draws beautifully! How can someone have terrible handwriting and yet draw so well??

We have been homeschooling and just this year he started at the school at which my husband teaches. It is a part cyber, part in person program for gifted kids and a public charter school. It appears at this point that the written output area is going to cause some problems and we are looking to have him evaluated with more testing by the private psychologist who did the WISC IV in order to determine what accommodations to request.

I am very interested in any information you find!

I too have a son with a big gap (43 pts) between VCI and PSI. Writing is excruciatingly painful for him. He has the hardest time just getting started on any homework when he knows it's going to require time and concentration. Even though tests have shown him as borderline ADD, I'm thinking more and more about medicine to see if it makes the difference some have talked about in this forum.
I'm new so I'm still reading a lot of posts. Thanks everyone for posting.

My son was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD at the age of 8. I put him on medication, and it of course did what medication will do and calmed him and got him focused, but he never got better grades on Ritalin. I tried Concerta, and he reacted badly to it, so I switched back. He is now 14, and in the 8th grade. He has failed math pretty much every year in the last 4 years, but never held back or given help. He struggles overall with completing work; handwriting is horrible; forgets text books; struggles with being overwhelmed with the amount of work given; can do very well in creative writing; can answer questions much better verbally versus written; scored with a high VCI OF 121 and 80 PSI in the 6th grade on the Wechsler IQ testing. Discrepencey of 41 points He also has a 116 Working memory score from that test. He was on 40 mg of Ritalin last year, and it still did NOT help ever him with progressing well in school. I have now gotten involved with the middle school team, and he will be retested using the Wechsler as well as other sub tests to find out why my son is struggling so much in school. He is currently failing both Pre Algebra,and his math help class which is only 5 students. He struggles in Science at times as well.
Because I never saw him do any better with his grades, homework, etc on 40 mg of Ritalin, I do not have him on any drug right now.
Why do that if it makes no difference in his grades or grasp of what is being taught?
I have in the last two weeks read every single article I can get my hands on, on line, as well as read the book, UNDERSTANDING NONVERBAL LEARNING DISORDER which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Once I stumbled on this disorder, I am reading daily more and more about it, and increasingly convinced that THIS is the issue at hand with my son. There are several sub types to the disorder, and it takes a major amount of assesment to tease it out. Not all kids with the disorder are alike. It is a learning disability that medication DOES NOT HELP.
It is an impairment of the right hemisphere of the brain in the cerebellum The symptoms of NLD, often mimic ADD/ADHD, but medication does NOT help improve issues in school, unless it is found that the child suffers from both disorders. Most ADD kids have low scores of working memory as well.
I urge any of you with kids with a high verbal ability and slow processing speed to look into this disability/disorder. I am awaiting new testing to be done now in the 8th grade, as well as a full spectrum of testing done by a nuero psychologist to get to the bottom of why my son continues to struggle in school. I hope that for all dealing with the issues will do their due diligence of looking at NLD (nonverbal learning disorder) to see if some of the descriptions fit and to get a proper LD diagnosis. My son does not have all the NLD symptoms, but for sure has enough of them to have a strong enough argument to rule it in or out during testing phase. I will keep this board posted with results by December.
I hope my post helps some of you looking for answers or places to research. I have been reading on NLD for many hours and gotten pretty well educated on all it entails. It for sure is not easy for any parent to deal with a kid with any LD that is gravely affecting their education and life.

Have you looked into neurofeedback? My eg/pg 2e son (6.5-yr-old) was born with severe plagiocephaly - severe flattening to the right hemisphere to his brain - which is seen as a cosmetic issue that doesn't affect cognitive or behavioral domains by the medical profession, though this is completely erroneous. My son's symptoms also mimic ADHD and he was misdiagnosed with it too.

Everyone wondered why we just didn't medicate him, but I refused because I wasn't entirely convinced that he had ADHD. I just had a gut feeling about it.

We started neurofeedback and have since 'discovered' that he has excessive delta brain waves and this is NOT ADHD, but describes some of what you've had with your son and what you've been going through. And yes, medication would not have helped at all.

Neurofeedback may completely eliminate the need for medication and may be the solution to your issue (emphasis on may). In any event, it might be worth investigating since it does sound like you're facing a somewhat similar brain-based disorder. My DS (6.5-yr-old) too has high verbal ability and low working memory, similar struggles, and issues of being overwhelmed like your son.

I hope brain mapping with neurofeedback will become much more accessible and available to parents - and eliminate the misdiagnoses and medication. It's much more objective and definitive than a clinical observation or paper-pen tests and the guessing games. Either a child has high theta brain waves to confirm an ADHD diagnosis or they don't. Instead, too many of us get the run around and spend years and a lot of time and energy on a detective hunt for answers.

This is actually somewhat common among kids with fine motor dysgraphia - handwriting requires the brain to communicate a series of steps to the hand to create letters, and the pathways required to do that never develop automaticity. When you draw, you aren't recreating anything or having to remember how to make a letter. My ds12 is severely dysgraphic but has been drawing amazingly detailed accurate pictures since he was old enough to pic up a pencil. The other little odd thing is that the way many dysgraphics hold their pencil (odd pencil grip) is similar to the way many of the artists I know hold pencils etc to draw (but it's *not* the way we are taught to hold pencils to write).

For the OP, and the others who have children with similar gaps between VCI/PRI and processing speed - our ds also has a gap that large (> 43 pts). His working memory when first tested had a similar gap (not quite as large); when he was tested in 5th grade his wm score improved some but is still lower than his VCI/PRI. When he was in early elementary he was diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive) and dysgraphia; as the years went by and his dysgraphia was accommodated it became clear that he did *not* have ADHD. I do know that children who have ADHD often have handwriting challenges and written output challenges, but for anyone who is wondering about their child re ADHD/handwriting/low processing speed scores - when you see all of those together - my suggestion is to get a referral for a neuropsych eval so you can have someone look at the full picture of how your child is functioning. Much of what is mentioned here could be ADHD, but could also be an LD.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks polarbear! That was a really helpful explanation of handwriting vs drawing!

Tonight I found this checklist for GT/LD and my son's characteristics really seem to fit their GT/LD pattern: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/...istics%20Checklist%20for%20Educators.pdf

Would you mind explaining what a neuropsych eval is comprised of? What would we be looking for in a neuropsychologist?

Thanks much!!

Naomi,

Thanks for all the information! Do you have a good link that explains non-verbal learning disorder?

Looking forward to hearing more when you get some results!

To the OP: My kid looks like yours in a lot of ways, though his gap between VCI and PSI is a couple of points larger.

For writing (and all writing-intensive work, including in-class tests in history, English and science) typing and strategies on breaking the work into bits has been his savior. For research papers, he uses Noodle Tools. For essays, he takes care to outline first. He MUST do those things. Probably always. I was always able at his age to just let the writing flow. Not possible with him. He has no trouble sitting still to do the work (for hours if necessary) as long as he's not too tired or his allergies aren't too bad. We all can lose focus some days. Now if I were to put a pen or a pencil in his hand, nothing would get done. He almost failed a recent English test because he forgot to type his answers and his essay question was answered in TWO words. And he knew the answer-- he just couldn't get it out.

For math, the jury is still out. He's in 7th and taking algebra and does not like to show his work. However, I've watched him and talked to him about it extensively and I believe it's more of an issue with him of just being flabbergasted that someone would expect him to write.down.something.so.obvious. He seems to be able to do it. Just doesn't want to. But a couple of grade dings seem to be helping that.

I would be interested to know if there are any examples of students WITH that type of gap between VCI/PSI who do not have difficulties with writing.

I've always waffled about whether to try and get a formal diagnosis for my son. What we have works for now, but I worry about HS.