Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Not Gifted/Gifted/2e?

Hi there! I was hoping I could find some guidance in your amazing community. I realize this is very loooooong but I am new to all of this and just can't seem to figure out what, if anything, I should be doing for my son. He just turned 9 and is already one year ahead in public school. He has always had what I believe is a gifted way of learning. He began to read very early, almost overnight and on his own, has always read over his grade level (at the beginning of this year in 4th grade he was assessed at school to be 7.5 grade level reading). We have always noticed that he often absorbs information from his surroundings and remembers it. At a very young age it was dinosaurs, he could remember scientific names and attributes and regularly just blew us away. Last year it was football, stats and players and scores. He can still rattle off who won what college game last year etc. Now it is history, facts, famous figures, battles etc. and space. The last couple of years since he entered public school, his teachers have mentioned that he often spaces out and needs to be redirected and his writing skills are lacking. The school administered a small-group Cogat test when he was 7 and he scored a 94 for age and 91 for grade in the verbal section and was above age but at grade level on Quantitative and Nonverbal. Due to the "distraction" type behavior we also were noticing at home, we had him psychologically tested. He was given a WISC IV last year at age 8 and his full scale IQ was 121 with low scatter. He was also diagnosed with ADHD (which confuses me with the low scatter) at that time and has also since been diagnosed with Convergence Insufficiency, an eye disorder that causes him to see double when reading or doing near work like writing. He compensates for the CI by using an enormous amount of mental energy to dissect the overlapping images, or mentally shuts off the vision in one eye. I personally think he is more ADD because he is a mostly quiet, calm, shy kid. I think he may be misdiagnosed. When they tested him at the Vision Therapist office at age 8, and he showed a logic and form reasoning ability of a 14 year old. We will be doing vision therapy soon but have chosen not to medicate for ADHD at this time. He constantly complains about being bored at school for 6 hours every day and is scoring near 100% on all of his tests. He mostly falls down when it comes to expressing himself in written form. Which makes it extremely difficult to have work samples for gifted program consideration along with his low IQ score. I tried to advocate with what information I have for differentiation and his teacher says if he needs additional levels of work, of course they will challenge him but his teacher doesn't indicate that he does and also keeps saying "he isn't even in my top reading group". At our last meeting she even said to me "why don't you just let him be a kid" when I asked if they thought it would be appropriate to supplement at home because I wouldn't be referring him for the gifted program. The administrators at his school feel that with his executive functioning issues, he would have a hard time keeping up in an accelerated program. I'm not sure I agree, I think with the same accommodations they make for his ADHD in the regular classroom he could succeed but I would prefer to supplement him at home than fight that fight based on the tentative position I feel I have. I know he has to be very near the top for reading, math, and social studies. Once he is taught something, or hears something, that is it. It is there for him, it mostly only takes once. Supplementation at home is an issue because after being in school all day he views it as additional work. The one piece that seems to be missing in regards to giftedness is that unquenchable thirst for knowledge that drives the child into self learning. Although he does take initiative to learn on his own when he is interested, he has a short attention span. We are now considering home schooling but that is a huge decision for us. As of now our son is sitting back in school, not being challenged, and not putting any effort into achieving. The school, of course, thinks he is doing well and his needs are met. His suite of variables doesn't seem to add up to identifiable giftedness on paper but the more reading I do about giftedness, the more a-ha! moments I have that lead me to truly believe there is something there. Is it possible that the disabilities could skew results of the WISC IV? Is there such a thing as mildly gifted? Does anyone have any comments on what they would do with my kid if they were me? Suggestions about retesting or homeschooling? I am new at all of this. Thank you!!

Hi Leslie- welcome! I am kind of new here myself- there are some very knowledgable posters here who I'm sure will chime in! I can't speak to everything in your post, but I can speak to the Cogat scores. My DS 10 took the Cogat twice upon gifted referral based on some achievement test scores- he did not make the gifted cut either time. We later discovered that this test can miss gifted kids, as he didn't finish any of the subtests, but what he did answer was nearly 100%! He later had the KBIT that yielded a score in the gifted range , then a full scale score in line with that score. So I wouldn't trust the Cogat due to group setting and nature of the time limits. I hope you get some answers - he sounds like a very smart boy!

Oh yes, absolutely.

I'm somewhat in the same boat with my DS8: ADHD, language disorder, strabismus, binaural integration imbalance (a piece of CAPD). Our psychologist couldn't even calculate his IQ because his behaviours interfered with testing so much. She flat out said the cognitive scores (average except for perceptual reasoning, which was above average) were wrong. She went as far as to write this in the report "due to his difficulties with language processing and his inability to sustain attention, the current results are not representative of (DS8)'s true cognitive potential."

I'm not sure about "mildly" gifted... as far as I know, gifted starts at 130 as "moderately" (I could certainly be wrong though).

I supplement DS8 after school, and he's ok with it. He actually enjoys being pulled from the class and working one-on-one with me (which we do once or twice a month, with his teacher's blessing). He's in French Immersion and I don't want him to miss too much French or I'd do this more often.

We're sort of in a different situation in that my son is being challenged at school because he's in language immersion and he has a language processing disorder... but it sounds to me like your son could use some extra challenge.

You could retest, I suppose, but find a tester who is experienced with 2e/ADHD (like, could he have frequent breaks during testing?)

We're not considering retesting at this point. If he wants to he can as an adult, or maybe we'll revisit the idea when he's in high school.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in and say that absolutely testing can be wrong, even for kids who don't have disabilities. You're a better judge of his level than a one time assessment.

My 2E son's first IQ score was in the double digits, so yes, learning disabilities can definitely mess with WISC IV scores.

Has your son had vision therapy? If not, that is where I'd start. Also google "stealth dyslexia" to see if it fits. Also, if he has ADHD (or ADD), medication might help his IQ score if you choose to retest.

I homeschooled my 2E son (he is HGish and has dyslexia and ADHD) for ten years. He is now 16 and will be entering the local community college full time in a few weeks to study engineering. It has been a long road, but homeschooling was the only way to give him the challenge he needed while working on his weaknesses.

In brief - if you are looking at FSIQ, the GAI may be more appropriate.

To calculate, find the addendum regarding the GAI from the publisher. This will tell you the amount of discrepancy req'd to make it a statistically appropriate option AND how to calculate AND other goodies. This includes charts showing the % of children with types of discrepancies and specific groups - from asperger's syndrome to dyslexia, etc. About 16 special categories to see the breakdown of scores and percentile ranks.

For example - my son has a 22 pt discrepancy:
FSIQ 114
GAI 136

He scored lower than his ability on block design the first time because he opted to disregard the instructions and build his own more complicated design, so he got the first, easiest question wrong.

He also has convergence insufficiency, saccadic tracking disorder, etc and "the visual spatial orientation difficulties" that underlie dyslexia but hey - can't diagnose it because he reads waaaay above grade level.

So, yes, sounds like 2E. High ability/intelligence can allow compensation or masking of LD. You are lucky - his memory is awesome. My son's is so glitchy. My son fluctuates between "brilliant" and "seriously not brilliant.". When you see things that don't fit - you'll know. My son could make the most astounding connections and abstract thinking yet couldn't remember how to spell his last name or being able to read "yellow" easier than "dog". Knowing fractions and using them before he could count to 20. Just very uneven and atypical development are often cues.

Look at the lists of G/T though - they'll help, too, Personally, I look for quick understanding of concepts, creativity, inventiveness, and insight. Often subjective but you can compare between G and not G or even 2E.

Sorry about length,
A

Thank you all! My son has not yet had vision therapy because our pediatrician told us that it probably will not help and and to get a second opinion from an opthamologist. The opthamologist sent us home and told us to have him do pencil pushups and not to waste our money. After doing much research and speaking to two people who have had their children do vision therapy for the same condition, we have finally made a decision to start vision therapy this summer. We have considered medication but we are trying removing food additives like dyes, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives as much as possible first. If medication will make a huge difference in getting him identified or not identified, we may try that for a short period of time after his eye therapy just to see how he does, get him tested so we know what his potential actually is, then make the decision to continue or not. I just want to know if, and how hard I should advocate at school or if I should pull him out and home school to give him the opportunity he deserves to live up to his potential. We do not want to do drugs long term until he is old enough to decide for himself. Does anyone know what the best formal test for identifying gifted tendencies is? I just feel like everything is masking everything else. He is very quiet and doesn't talk a lot so I don't really know what is going on in his head. He doesn't seem self motivated but I don't know if that is due to lack of attention. I just don't want to be "that" mom who thinks her child might be gifted without any backup. In my heart, my intuition tells me he is but it is not obvious or profound. Thank you for your input!