Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ideas for helping with processing speed?

Hi there,

Am brand new here--just found the site this morning. Am already heartened by the active discussions and am looking forward to participating and hopefully helping others! In the meantime, I'm guessing there is expertise here that might help us. My son's recent WISC IV scores are below. Despite the low processing scores, he is an excellent reader. However, he has a really hard time extracting thoughts from his head to write down. (He is a fluent and sophisticated oral communicator.) As a result, his written productivity in school is very low. The teachers totally get what is going on, so we don't have "school problems" in that sense--but we're all searching for ideas that might make it easier for him to write. (We'll teach him to keyboard this summer.) He's in second grade. His other major problem is staying on task (because the inside of his head is so interesting, so he thinks about things rather than focuses on his work, which of course is written and thus, that much less compelling). Similar experiences? Ideas? His fine motor skills are not great, but the real bottleneck is figuring out what he wants to say.

By the way, I suspect his true comprehension and vocabulary scores are higher. But anyway, the main thing I'm wondering about is how to help him with the processing speed stuff--and how that might map to the writing and organizational challenges.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Edited to protect privacy

What did your tester say about the large discrepancy in scores and do you have a full report from this WISC?

Yes, we have a full report--but that's pretty much it in terms of the WISC (and the WISC results are the most striking in the entire report). Academic testing shows what we expected--off-the-chart math scores, strong written scores in terms of sophistication of expression, weak spelling, etc.).

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "full report"though.

The tester says that the large discrepancy is a big reason for what we're seeing in school--ie., difficulty producing written work, yet clearly extremely intelligent kid.

Sorry if I'm missing the point of your question. And thanks so much for taking the time to respond!

DD sounds like your son. She has a hard time getting thoughts out of her head, but I finally figured out that for her it is an issue in that she thinks in pictures so before she writes she actually has to translate the pictures into words before she can even begin to write it down. It is an extra step that slows her down.

For processing speed, the tester in our report wrote "Students with superior reasoning ability often tend to perform less well, although still adequately, on processing speed tasks." So apparently it is common, although dd did not score as low as your son on processing speed....she was still almost 3 standard deviations away from her standard scores in PRI, VCI, and FSIQ and almost 4 standard deviations from her extended scoring so it definitely is a bottle neck for her.

I would ask your tester what his or her opinion was of the discrepancy. DD's tester stated she saw a lot of perfectionism and wanting to do it correct and neatly so that she was not focused on speed and that that was very common. Good luck!

Your ds sounds sooo much like my ds13 in 2nd grade! FWIW, up front, we discovered through testing at the end of 2nd grade that my ds has fine motor dysgraphia (shows up in the same pattern of significant relative low in coding speed on WISC... his symbol search was higher - I think - I'd have to dig out his old reports to be sure). We later on discovered our ds also has an expressive language disorder - I believe it's somewhat related to his dysgraphia but basically it causes him difficulty in generating thoughts and then getting them out into written expression. You'd never know he has an expressive language disorder from *talking* to him because when he talks he's very clear, obviously very bright, can talk in great detail about things he's interested in etc.

A quick question for you - did your ds have any other testing or just the WISC? Did he have any type of achievement testing (WIAT or WJ-III) and did he have any follow-up tests of visual-motor integration or executive functioning/fine motor etc? These are things that are important (jmo) to determine *why* the coding and symbol search scores are so low - it could be fine motor (as you've noted a slight issue) or it could be something entirely different - vision for instance. Once you know *why* the score is low you can work toward remediating and accommodating


Processing speed subtest scores have nothing to do with reading - they test the ability to copy quickly and correctly (coding) and to find an object in a busy visual field (symbol search).


This is my ds. There were several follow-up things that were helpful in understanding what was up (and to be honest, I wouldn't say that any of us ever *completely* understood, we've just done our best to help him!) First, the TOWL-4 will be helpful to see if there are specific skills associated with writing that your ds needs help with. I'll add a disclaimer here - our ds had such a *huge* challenge with generating thoughts for written expression that the first time he took the TOWL it couldn't be scored because he couldn't think of enough words to write. The other eval that was *extremely* helpful was a speech-language eval (CELF-4). DS didn't score low on this, but he had wildly discrepant scores (from 99th percentile to 60th percentile). It's not a timed test, but his tester also noted that he answered most subtest questions quickly, except for the subtests that were lower scores, and in those tests it took a *long* time for him to come up with answers.


It's good you have understanding teachers. Try to remember though - they understand that he's struggling, but probably don't have the answer for "why" - and understanding "why" as much as you *can* is really important in putting together a plan to help him.

Keyboarding is a great place to start. For some kids with fine motor challenges, that's all it takes to open up and get the words flowing. So it's a great (and important) first step. If using the keyboard doesn't get the words flowing out (this is what happened with my ds), then I'd want to look further - if he hasn't had the follow-up testing I mentioned in my first paragraph above, I'd look into getting a private neuropsych eval if you can. I'd also suggest an SLP eval.

[quote[He's in second grade. His other major problem is staying on task (because the inside of his head is so interesting, so he thinks about things rather than focuses on his work, which of course is written and thus, that much less compelling). Similar experiences? [/quote]

TOTALLY similar experience. Our ds' inattention during writing assingments in his 2nd grade class had his teacher convinced he had ADHD - but he doesn't. He simply was completely and totally stuck with no idea how to proceed.


Neuropsych testing should provide you with a good clue re why the processing speed subtest scores are so low. And has he ever had his vision checked? If not, I'd get his eyesight checked out right away (and I'm not talking about developmental optometrist - which might be very useful too, but just a plain old vision exam). If his eyesight *is* ok, I'd also consider having a developmental optometrist look at his vision (they look at how eyes work *together* - tracking, etc). I have a dd who had severe double vision all the way up through 2nd grade that none of us knew about because she thought everyone was seeing double like she was! We discovered the vision issue through a neuropsych eval where she had extremely low scores on coding and symbol search.

Re figuring out how/if the low processing score subtests map into the struggle with generating written expression - try the keyboard. That might help right away if it's just a fine motor issue. Also check the vision - if there's a visual challenge, those subtest scores should increase dramatically after the vision challenge is corrected. BUT - I think the chances of a vision challenge causing the inability to generate written expression is lower than a fine motor (or other) challenge - partly because my severely double-vision dd had no issues with writing stories. Her handwriting was sloppy due to her vision but her ideas flowed.

Re the fine motor - you might ask your ds if handwriting causes his hand to hurt, and also google dysgraphia and see if he fits any of the symptoms.

Hang in there - and ask us any questions you can think of!

Best wishes,

polarbear

FWIW, my ds also thinks in pictures (and movies). The Eides say that it can be very tough for kids who think like this to translate the pictures into words because they have sooo so much detail in their heads. OTOH, my ds tells us that's not his challenge with written expression - he can get the thoughts out a-ok if he's asked a question about something factual that he knows - but when the writing prompt is open-ended he struggles - and he says at those time he "has nothing" up there in his head

So that's another thing you might want to look at - is your ds challenged with writing across the board, or is one specific type of writing more difficult for him?

And.. fwiw... forgot to mention - when our ds was in 2nd grade, we thought his challenge was all about writing, because he sounded so danged smart when he talked. We eventually found out (around 4th grade) that the same types of writing assignments that tripped him up in class (no ideas what to write) also weren't something he could do verbally either - we just hadn't really seen that connection when he was little.


I'd just add - I'd want a neuropsych to be sure of this. Our ds was tested with just IQ/achievement tests when he was not quite 6 years old for admission into a gifted program - and the dip in processing speed was attributed by the psych to perfectionism and being 6 and being male and not being used to timed tests (the processing subtests are timed). So we missed out on almost 2 years opportunity to be helping ds out and continued to think every time he didn't write something in class the issue was perfectionism. It *is* perfectionism for some kids - but when you've noted fine motor issues and the very low scores, I'd want to be sure it's not something else.

polarbear

polarbear and amazedmom, can you tell me more about this? What else do you see with kids like this?

We're also seeing writing struggles and generalized troubles verbalizing in my 2nd grader. The less specific the assignment, the worse it is. Journal time is torture. A highly structured assignment is easier. In parallel to this, DS has been hampered in moving forward in math because he struggles to explain how he got an answer. "Because that's the answer" evidently isn't acceptable. We know he doesn't perform math verbally. I'm curious about the pictoral imaging of stories and events idea as a possible partial explanation for what we're seeing in his writing struggles.

DS' teacher also suspects ADHD.

We did not see a dip in processing speed, though. A more complete neuropsych exam to complement out existing WISC and WJ will come in a month.

Geofizz,
FWIW, my son is definitely NOT a visual thinker, yet he has similar troubles to your son with writing ("Journal time is torture"--I'm SO with you, unfortunately)--with the exception that often if he is assigned a topic, he can't do it because he "doesn't know what to write." If he picks his own topic, he does a lot better. Don't know if you've checked whether that's true for your son. In any case, completing stem sentences is a lot easier for him than free writing on any topic.

Also--in case it's at all helpful--my son is exceptionally gifted in math and also is erratic about showing his work. Maybe partly because of the writing thing and partly because it's so obvious and partly because he doesn't see the value in writing down the steps.

amazedmom and polarbear--Thanks so much for the feedback! Will write more when I am reunited with the rest of my son's test scores (at home, where I am not). In the meantime, I really appreciate your many thoughts! I do know that his achievement scores were along the lines of
--off the chart in math (something like 22nd grade or something similarly ludicrous--definitely above the 99.9th percentile)
--quite good in terms of expression (sophistication, content, etc.)
--average for grade level on spelling (though weak on sight words).
Anyway, I'll look it all up and avail myself of your brain power and experience later!

geofizz, I have a head cold today... and honestly can't think of anything at the moment! lol! Under normal circumstances, I'm sure I could write a novel... so I'll come back to it later. I do remember that way back when ds was in 3rd/4th grade I had a very short list of questions that you can ask a person, and the way they answer reveals whether they are a visual thinker or not... I was just wishing the other day that I could remember it! Basically you ask a few questions and then after the person answers ask a few more about how they arrived at their answers. Once ds was older, around 10 or so, and very self-aware, I was able to talk to him and ask specifically how he thinks through a problem, and that's how I learned that he sees in pictures and movies. The movie description is really... well... different than the way I think!


This is what writing was like for our ds (and still is most of the time). I'll try to come back in a bit and list some of the things we did that helped. VERY briefly - things we did at home included playing games with ds where we brainstormed (whoever won the turn had to add a "whatever" to our brainstorming list), scribing for him and encouraging him when he was stuck, making outlines with him, using Inspiration (graphic organizing software - the younger kid version is called "Kidspiration"). Most important REPETITION repeat repeat repeat the same type of simple writing task/assignment until he could do it - ideally before moving on. This was really tough because all the way through school each year each teacher has been determined to teach as many different styles and types of writing as possible so it seems like every assignment is different from the last.

I have a ton of tips from his speech therapy work, will try to add those later.



Same thing happened here, although our ds was also prevented from moving forward in math because he couldn't write his math facts down quickly (argh). Anyway, those word problems used to drive *me* nuts! And it was never simply "explain" - ds' school curriculum was into "explain in three different ways". I can't tell you how many ripped crumpled math papers I had to rescue and beg ds to attempt again. His early elementary teachers would probably just freak if they saw him today, accelerated two years in math and doing very very well. I'm sure they thought he was dimmer than a burnt out lightbulb (I know his 2nd grade teacher thought that - she basically told us so...)



The way the Eides explain it is that there is so much rich detail in the pictures it's complicated and slow to figure out how to translate it to words. My ds, otoh, says that with the open-ended writing assignments, he has NO pictures.. when he has a picture he can write fairly well... although it's slow, but that's more related to his DCD (I think).


I don't think the dip in processing speed relates to expressive language (which is what causes our ds to have difficulty with generating ideas for written expression. The dips that people see in processing speed (ime) are usually related to a physical/neurological condition that's impacting the physical acts of copying/handwriting/eye coordination/etc. The reason those types of challenges show up as dips in processing speed are that the tests rely on marks made with a pencil, visual discrimination, and being able to perform the tasks quickly (the processing speed tests are timed).

The tests that ds had that pointed to difficulty with generating thoughts for written expression were:

WJ-III - one of the writing subtests, can't remember which one - will have to check, maybe "writing samples"?

TOWL-4 - test of written language, the student is shown a picture and told to write about it. DS couldn't figure out for the life of him what to write.

CELF-4 - part of a speech-language eval

pbear

We're in a similar place. Having him pick his own topic is torture (effectively what journal time is), but giving him a topic stresses him out. The best I've managed to come to lately is "write about X" and he'll respond that no, he wants to write about Y, and the produce a perfectly acceptable piece of writing about Y. However, if I tell him to write about whatever he wants, he can't.

OMG YES. That's my instinct as well, but the teacher keeps suggesting we do a bunch of different stuff. This jives with what I see in his producing the paragraphs when we sit down to work with it. Stick to one thing until it's a lot easier.


Same boat here. Remarkably similar boat.

I'd greatly appreciate it when you're feeling better. My quickie google didn't turn up any obvious hits. I do suspect that DS will struggle to express how he thinks. DD10 is just about now to this point, and she's one of the more self-aware and articulate people (kid or adult) I know.

We are so amazingly lucky that the teacher gets it, and he's not been held back in math too badly -- he does the verbal stuff with the 2nd graders, and then gets 5 minutes a day to move ahead with the teacher. She's taken him most of the way through 4th grade this way. DS will go into a gifted 4/5 compressed math class next year with everyone's fingers crossed that it goes well.

On the testing, in our case, I point to the lack of any dips in his WISC testing as evidence against ADHD, which is what the teacher suggests. CELF-IV matched the VCI of the WISC with no splits, and the WJ was shockingly high across the board. I'll ask about the TOWL. Thanks.

The board is awesome. Hopefully this conversation is still consistent with evelyn's initial goals! Hopefully I haven't dragged it in a new direction. If so, evelyn, holler, and I'll split off a new thread.

OK, I am going to try to respond to your many excellent questions and ideas--but I am a bit challenged with this interface, as I am new and not particularly interface savvy. I need to read up on how to get those nice quotes in boxes, etc! I apologize in advance for the ragged formatting. Oh--and I am also abbreviation challenged, though I am figuring out things like ds and dd!

And before I say anything else--Geofizz, I'm delighted if my questions have spawned a thread that's useful to both of us!

About this: "did your ds have any other testing or just the WISC? Did he have any type of achievement testing (WIAT or WJ-III) and did he have any follow-up tests of visual-motor integration or executive functioning/fine motor etc? These are things that are important (jmo) to determine *why* the coding and symbol search scores are so low - it could be fine motor (as you've noted a slight issue) or it could be something entirely different - vision for instance. Once you know *why* the score is low you can work toward remediating and accommodating."

This makes so much sense and I can't tell you how irritated I am that the extremely expensive and highly recommended neuropsych person did NOT do a lot of the follow-up tests that folks on this thread have suggested! She concluded that my son has poor VMI based purely on watching him--but she supposedly saw him do things that neither his teachers nor we parents have ever witnessed (use his non-dominant hand to guide his writing hand), so I am dubious about the quality of her observations.

The one useful thing she said about the coding test was that my son was looking back and forth between the "key" and EVERY SINGLE symbol that he had to "fix." I don't know what that means though--maybe that he couldn't keep the symbols in his head? That would make sense, as he is not a visual thinker. And it certainly would slow him down and account for the incredibly low coding score. I believe he got them all right--he was just really really slow.

She DID do the Woodcock-Johnson tests, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Process speed, cognitive fluency, visual matching, retrieval fluency, decision speed, and rapid picture naming were all weak. (Does that cluster make sense to anyone who knows this test? Also--caveat--my son can decided that he doesn't really feel like doing things and he is not particularly persuaded by an adult thinking that he should, so I always wonder when he scores poorly on tests whether it's an accurate reflection of his capabilities. That said, I believe the WISC processing score issue, even if the absolute number is off. It is just so far off of the other items, there's gotta be something to it. Also, when I looked at examples from the WISC subtests, it rang true to me that he'd do especially poorly on the coding part.)

As for the other parts of the Woodcock Johnson test, he scored at a grade equivalent of >18 for numbers reversed (AE >22), 7.3 GE for calculation, and--get this--5.1 for writing samples. His spelling, writing fluency, broad written language, cognitive efficiency, and written expression were all between 2 and 3 (grade equivalent).

It is so ridiculous that I am writing all of these scores on an internet chat board rather than having had them explained to me properly by the person who did the test! I am very grateful to all of you who are helping me with this and am growing increasingly ticked off at the disappointing neuropsych experience!

Do any of the following tests address anything that's covered on the CELF or TOWL or anything else you're asking about? If so, do you know what I should be looking for?

CVLT (California Verbal Learning Test)
TEA-Ch (Test of Everyday Attention for Children)
Test of Problem Solving (TOPS3)
Wide range assessment of memory and learning (WRAML2)

I don't think there's anything remarkable in the TOPS3 and the WRAML2 results. As for the TEA-Ch, the scores are all over the place. Hmmmm...Maybe because of varied interest? We ran the report by a special ed person (a friend), who did not think he has ADD, despite those scores. I can't remember what her reasoning was. She might have said that it was really clear from the report that when he is interested, he has no trouble paying attention.

I have no idea what the TOPS3 scores mean. I have the printout of the results, but the report has no discussion of them.

Grrr....

As for my son's attention to his work, I don't think it's so much that he doesn't know where to begin--I think he is often thinking about something that is far more interesting to him than the task at hand.

Vision is fine, though he did have a tracking issue a couple years ago. We worked on that and it got a lot better, but it still could be somewhat of a problem. (The optometrist said he was OK at the end of the vision therapy work, but his friends certainly can track a ball hanging on a string much "cleaner" and faster than he can!)

He says it does not hurt to write, nor does his hand get tired. "I just can't think of what to say."

About this:
"he can get the thoughts out a-ok if he's asked a question about something factual that he knows - but when the writing prompt is open-ended he struggles - and he says at those time he "has nothing" up there in his head"

I don't think we have asked him to write facts. My guess is that he would have a lot less trouble with that. Thanks for the idea! I really don't think he has THAT much trouble with the writing per se; it's the preceding thought process that's problematic.

Thanks also for this idea:
"when our ds was in 2nd grade, we thought his challenge was all about writing, because he sounded so danged smart when he talked. We eventually found out (around 4th grade) that the same types of writing assignments that tripped him up in class (no ideas what to write) also weren't something he could do verbally either - we just hadn't really seen that connection when he was little."

Again, I GREATLY appreciate your incredibly generous and thoughtful replies! I hope I can repay the favors as I stick around on this website and hopefully can help others.

I'm not sure if these scores necessarily imply anything about writing. (It's a complex subject.)

But one thing that jumped out at me is the pattern of scores. My son, and at least one other I've seen here, had the profile of being very good at mathematics, and on WISC-IV having the Comprehension, Picture concepts, Coding, and Symbol search subtests being notably lower than the other six subtests.

Thanks, 22B--very interesting.

One more piece of information for anyone who is wading through all this: Although the recent neuropsych eval left out a visual-motor integration test, he apparently scored in the 90th percentile on one of those (Beery-Buktenica) before 1st grade. (His school does a battery of tests with all kindergarteners and I just remembered that I had notes from my conversation with the person who did those tests.) That seems weirdly high--but it does square with my sense that VMI is not the main issue here because the problem with writing happens before anything visual is happening at all!

In defense of your neuropsych, you aren't exactly dealing with the run of the mill client for this neuropsych exam. Yes, it's their job to tease out what's going on, but when you have a child presenting with such an unusual profile, it's hard to see the whole child. Take each exam like this as one of the steps towards figuring out the child. My son will be going for his 3rd go round of evaluations as we narrow in on what the issues are, I ask better questions, and my spouse and I make more focused observations. I am hopeful that our upcoming exam will get us answers, but it might be a process of ruling out what we're not dealing with.

Polarbear brings a HUGE amount of experience gained after addressing the needs of her unusual child and going through the same process of circling in on a diagnosis and treatment.

OK, I'm not sure anyone's asked it of you -- do you see slow processing speed in your son? Does the number seem consistent with what you see and observe? My daughter has near average processing speed with a strong working memory. This means she can work out multi-step math problems in her head, but it takes so long that I often wonder if she's forgotten the problem or decided she's not going to work on it. My son has gifted-range WM and PSI, and this same thing takes maybe 1/3 the time. What we do see with him, though, is that even after we can tell he's got an answer, it takes several moments for him to form the verbal or written response. Make sense?

From your description, it seems like it might be wise to circle back to the vision issue, giving the evaluator the description of how he kept looking back and forth on the coding test. It could be as simple as that, or it might be part of the issue and not all of it.

What do you see in the way of perfectionism or anxiety? Anything? That kind of behavior is not dissimilar to how my anxious kid started acting when she was spiraling down the perfectionist well.

Geofizz,

I will try to channel your good neuropsych attitude.
:-)

Mine comes from many bits of sloppiness (won't go into that here) and slowness along the way, an inability to explain some of the test results, and the strong feeling that this particular neuropsych person was more interested in her pay than in my son. But anyway, I take your point--and thanks for it, because my irritation is not productive.

I hope Polarbear chimes back in! I also was hugely impressed by her knowledge about all of this.

If processing speed is literally how long it takes for someone to think, no--I don't think my son is in the 5th percentile (which is what the combination of the coding and symbol search scores work out to), though I do think he is not a quick processer. He more closely matches your description of your daughter ("she can work out multi-step math problems in her head, but it takes so long that I often wonder if she's forgotten the problem or decided she's not going to work on it") than your son, though maybe he doesn't take quite that long. He definitely does not take long to form a verbal response once he's got an answer. Actually, not a written one either, if it's math.

Back to those kindergarten scores--he got 25th-50th percentile scores on rapid-naming tests, which I believe also indicate processing speed.

If he is perfectionistic or anxious, it is manifesting as something different. (Ie., "This is boring.") He comes off as extremely confident--and in generally, he's a strikingly cheerful kid. He recovers quickly from setbacks/disappointments and moves on--so neither of those descriptors rings particularly true. He seems quite committed to being a happy guy--if anything, he has a knack for denying things that bother him. Ie., "I can see that you're sad." "I am NOT SAD" (with tears in his eyes). But mostly, he lives in a pretty content place.

Hi Evelyn & Geofizz,

I'll chime back in tonight - it's our last day of school and I'm off to all the school activities for the rest of today!

polarbear

I was talking to my son about touch typing and whether he thought that would make writing easier for him. Yes, he says, for topics of interest.

"When I'm interested in something, my brain goes 100 billion times faster than my hand and when I'm not interested in something, my brain goes 100 million times slower than my hand."

I really really think that a large component of the writing issue maps to interest (lack thereof).

Still befuddled about the processing speed thing, especially how the different manifestations relate to one another:
1. Very low score on the WISC coding section (weak visual memory--and thus the need to look back and forth between the key and every sample that needs to be marked? But in regular everyday life, we don't see strong signs of weak visual memory).
2. Long time to come up with answers to some things--even when it's things that he enjoys doing and has very strong aptitude for (math).

evelyn, the inability to write on a topic which isn't of innate interest... may well just be a maturity issue; one which is related to executive function.

It's only been in the past year or so that my DD has been able to do this with any kind of efficiency at all. She's almost 14. Up until now, we suspect that pretty much ANYTHING else flitting through her brain or going on around her would take precedence over a task she didn't want to do or found boring (for any reason).

Pair high ability with low-value/low-interest tasks in a child without fully developed executive function, and OF COURSE that looks like any number of other problems, basically.

My DD has no underlying problems as far as we have ever been able to determine-- it's 110% situational. She has to be motivated to do it, and that is just the bottom line.

What does his output/processing look like to you when he IS working on something which interests him and offers him intrisic reward?

Howler- were you ever successful in getting dd's teachers to recognize and accept the motivation/interest factor and how it contributed to her performance? I firmly believe that's a big part of ds' situation but the school just keeps pointing to lack of superstar performance in the classroom. He gets almost all 100s but does what he needs to to the letter of the instructions but doesn't go above and beyond. And he has little to no interest in spending time rereading and retelling his reading stories (I think he feels he invested enough time in the initial read). Then he gets his personal book out and reads 😃

Nope. No leeway, really, most of the time. It's not as though the teachers who know her well don't see this problem-- she lets just enough of her actual brilliance show through the cracks that they KNOW as well as we do that she's capable of knocking their socks off every time she opens her mouth or puts words to paper.

Honestly, we didn't push them flexing things for her, either. Because it's not exactly a disability or anything like that, and it's going to be a lifelong thing that won't be eligible for accommodations going forward, so...


well, no way were we going to be "those parents" pressuring teachers to make things more entertaining for DD's benefit so that she could show them what she could actually do.

I mean, I'd love it if DD actually demonstrated her true potential more often. I would. But then again, she has to learn to 'just do it' as well, and that lesson is pretty important. I also made it a habit starting in about 7th grade or so to hand back a rough draft to her and tell her "this is garbage. Rewrite this and do it while paying attention to what you're doing."

She gets very lazy with things that she doesn't want to do. Please understand that I am in no way advocating this approach for a child who has an underlying or probable disability causing difficulty with written expression. Only with kids who are failing to be self-motivated enough to do even a half-hearted effort. While that might be good enough for a B on an assignement from most cream-puff teachers these days, no way does that kind of EFFORT make the grade for me personally.

We have used this to explain to DD that others will only treat her appropriately relative to their PERCEPTIONS of her intellect, however. In other words, if she wants to be treated as more intelligent, she'd better act like it, too. That means not blowing off things that she finds uninteresting.

Howler,

You raise a really good issue. I do think that maturity is a big part of his lack of productivity--but he also really seems to have a lot of trouble doing any kind of writing work, even if it's about something that interests him. Writing tasks go much more easily if he chooses the topic, but even then, he struggles. Maybe it is just that writing is inherently harder than speaking, but if your only interface with him was writing, you would not have a clue about how well he can express himself. Perhaps part of that is because he is verbally precocious, but my sense is that numerous other kids in his class who are not as verbally precocious as he is write better. Furthermore, there have been plenty of times that he has been motivated to, say, finish his writing work and he hasn't managed to do it--and has been really upset because the upshot was that it wound up interfering with a play date (for instance). One time he wanted to stay back from play practice, which he loves, because he really did not want to take the writing home, which he knew he'd have to do if he didn't get it done in school. Yet he couldn't manage to get it done in the ample amount of time (for most kids) that he had for it.

In other words, I really think he has some kind of challenge associated with writing-related productivity in addition to the motivation/interest component.

Anyway, you put your finger on one of my biggest parenting conundrums: How much of his school "issues" have to do with motivation and how much have to do with something else? There are times when he just hunkers down and writes. The quality is still not good (or anyway, it's not remotely commensurate with how he thinks and talks), but it does get done. Other times, tears.

And of course there is this processing speed issue, at least as measured by the WISC, which is probably true qualitatively if not quantitatively. (Ie., maybe he's not really in the fifth percentile, but he does take a long time to think about things sometimes, even if the product of his thinking winds up being extremely sophisticated.) Of course, other times he just "knows" things in a heartbeat--he immediately grasped base 7 numbers, sat up in bed when he was three and said "when you are right in the middle of the merry-go-round, you don't feel any force," and so on. (I love it that most everyone here probably has similar stories!)

One thing that I've found with my DD-- who is NOT a natural writer, whereas I am...

is that she MUST follow a "process" that organizes and forces her to work within a framework. She cannot ad-lib her written work. Well, of course, she can do it a sentence or two at a time NOW (she's almost 14), but certainly not in elementary school.

The problem with her output was that she was so gosh darned stubborn about this fact of her existence. She kept trying to skip the outlining/prewriting/organizing steps of the process. Oy. Why? Because writing just TOOK so much longer than anything else, that's why.

I always knew. Always. So that is where my remark about handing stuff back to her comes from. I've even been known to simply hold the rough draft and tell her "Okay-- now go follow the writing process. For real this time."

It was a brutal 5 or so years, but I seem to have prevailed.

Yes, in your case, evelyn, I'd say that this sounds like more going on. Because I could always get work out of DD if she was actually movitated. It was just that sometimes the motivational strategy had to be pretty extreme to move her. Having to methodically follow a plodding process felt so awful to her-- made her feel "slow" and "stupid" in ways that she found intolerable-- that pretty much any punishment/natural consequence was fine in comparison.

My DS sounds very similar. Despite having an amazing vocabulary and imagination, he struggled to get his thoughts down on paper throughout the 1st and 2nd grades. We tried all sorts of story webs (early outlines), etc., but nothing seemed to work until we tried IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing). -- By the way, he is a movies in my head kid.

Anyway, IEW helped him tremendously. It gave him a step-by-step method to get his thoughts narrowed down and onto paper. And, now that he's been using it a couple of years, he has found he can skip several steps without impacting his writing speed or ability.

Thanks, blessed! I will look into IEW. Never heard of it before. Hopefully there's a "how do I even approach thinking about this" step!

The first step in IEW is to take a sentence you read and pick three/four key words from the sentence and write them on a line. Then the child speaks the words back to a parent in the form of a sentence. Next the child writes what they just spoke to the parent. -- Most kids will say the sentence back substituting their words in-between the key words. (My DS could memorize and repeat exactly and that is okay, despite the goal of using your own words eventually.)

The second step is to perform the same task on a simple paragraph (5 sentences). Now it becomes a little more challenging to just memorize, which is good because they start creating their own sentences around their key word outlines.

When they have this down well, they can start to create key word outlines for their own original works. At first, the child can just start talking and the parent can help them pick out the key words from their sentences and write them down. As you look at the outline together, the child can decide which sentences fit and which should go. Next the child can begin the writing process using the key word outline you helped to get down on paper. At this point it is really quite easy to write because the main messages are right in front of the child.

Eventually, they learn to write their own key word outlines and begin to add quality adjectives, strong verbs, and -ly words (adverbs). From there, they learn alliteration, metaphors, etc.

I've used this same program with my two children who have learning disabilities and it works wonderfully for them as well.

Thanks for explaining more about IEW! Definitely seems worth pursuing for us.

In the meantime, my son seems to have gotten it together a bit on the writing front. It has apparently registered on him that if he doesn't do it in school, it comes home--and he really doesn't like that. So for the past week or so, he's been doing his writing in school.

It is so hard to figure out what is going on with him, given that he can suddenly get it together (to some extent--because the writing is still quite weak) when sufficiently motivated.

We also laid out clear motivations about school productivity and ASKED him how he was going to make that happen. He came up with a plan that didn't seem to address the challenge at all--yet he is doing somewhat better on the productivity front too.

Hi Evelyn,

I finally remembered to come back to this - sorry it's taken me so long!!! And... fwiw, I probably won't have time to read through the rest of it tonight, but will get as far as I can and finish up on Monday.


I'd want a follow-up test on the VMI rather than just making a conclusion based on observations (the Beery VMI that my kids have had sorts out at least two different types of Visual Motor challenges.. I think... it's been a few years since we've had it! But I distinctly remember at least two parts to it). However - even though I'd want the follow-up testing, I'd be sure to think through the psych's observations. Using the non-dominant hand to guide the hand that is writing happens frequently in kids with dysgraphia - but otoh, my dysgraphic did this quite a bit, and his issue is fine motor, not visual-motor.


One thing it *might* mean (and there are probably 300 things or more that it could mean, so this is just one possibility) - is that he had difficulty focusing his eyes on the symbols. My dd who has vision issues was assessed for intake into a reading program when she was around 7 years old, and part of the assessment was to copy a short paragraph off of the board. The person administering the test said that dd looked up for every single individual letter, which she'd never seen any child do before. I'm sure, now that I know about her vision challenge, that the reason she did this had nothing to do with a reading challenge, and most likely happened because it took so much effort to make her eyes focus together.


I'll be back to look at this - not enough time to think it through tonight


I would go back and ask your friend to explain her interpretation to you again, so that you understand and remember what she tells you. If it doesn't cost an arm and a leg it *might* be worth making a follow-up appointment with the neuropsych to give you a chance to ask more follow-up questions about the testing. If you don't have confidence it would yield you any useful info, I wouldn't bother - but fwiw, I've done this second follow-up with our neuropsych every time my kids have had an eval simply because that typical post-testing parent/neuropsych meeting where you are discussing the report for the first time is so full of new info coming at you quickly that it's next to impossible to expect to have all your questions answered at that point in time - it usually takes me at least another week just for my questions to bubble to the surface


My dd, that I mentioned above, had a year of vision therapy starting when she was 7. VT really helped her a ton (she had tracking issues as well as double vision). Yet starting last summer, when she was 10... we realized she was starting to have issues with her vision again... so you might want a follow-up vision exam by whoever did the VT to be sure he hasn't lost any ground with his vision (especially since you have the low coding subtest score and the note about how he looked back and forth at every symbol on the subtest).


That's my ds' issue as well - he scores very well on "writing tests" where he is simply asked to diagnose grammar issues, or asked to put together a sentence in correct order etc. His challenge is in generating ideas to put into writing. None of us (myself, my ds, or his speech therapist) have a clue really what's going on... but he basically says that when he is asked to write about an open-ended prompt, he simply has no idea what he is supposed to do/write, and he has no ideas in his head to pull from. When I re-read that last sentence, it sounds like something any of us might say from time to time, but it's much more severe than a simple writer's "cramp" or whatever. He really has *no* idea whatsoever what to write.

I'm going to read on further on Monday and finish up my reply - tomorrow I'm off on a road trip

Hope some of this helped!

polarbear

Blessed, Do you know of any place where the IEW basics are spelled out? The materials are not cheap and I'd like to learn more about what I'm signing up for before making the purchase. I realize you just gave a sense of the program--but any website or other source that provides more info?

Polarbear, Thanks so much for coming back and weighing in with more thoughts! (Hope your road trip was good too.)

Your description (in the last long paragraph of the post immediately above) also describes my son's writing situation. EXCEPT when he doesn't seem to have trouble. We're planning to dig in with numerous new ideas this summer. If either one of us has any insights about what the heck is going on with our children, I hope we can both benefit!

Thanks for the prod to follow up with vision testing. Last time we checked, it was fine (except, as I said, I bet there's still somewhat of a tracking issue--but he can read music reasonably well and is now a strong reader of books, so what gives? Then again, maybe he struggles to read the music and then memorizes quickly...)

Yes--a VMI test does seem in the cards. Score was supposedly in the 90th percentile two years ago (Beery-Buktenica), which seems weirdly high, but the special ed person at the school said at the time, "he won't have trouble writing." He usually does not control the pencil with his non-dominant hand. The neuropsych person is the only person who has ever witnessed this so I don't know what was going on. I double checked with the teachers when I read that in the report--and they have never seen the behavior.

News here is that we just had an in-depth visual processing workup done to try to sort out that low WISC processing score. It turns out--and this rings true to me--that DS's visual processing per se is actually very strong (high 90th percentiles). But his VMI (or maybe just fine motor skills period--don't yet have the report and didn't think to ask) are so weak that any time there's a timed test that involves writing, he bombs. Also, because he is not great at keeping his mind on things that don't interest him, he can just completely check out of a test in the middle. Yesterday I was in the room, behind him, during the testing, and at some point he said "Oh wait--I was thinking about math."

So now we are thinking that OT and learning to touch type are in order for the summer. We were already planning to do the typing thing, but I was not fully convinced about his writing issues until I saw how painfully long it took him to write a single sentence yesterday. He was clearly concentrating and trying very hard to do his best. It took him something like 6 minutes.

He also apparently has some gross motor issues that make his body want to open his hand when he turns his head (as in, toward a piece of paper he's about to write on). So his brain has to do extra work to even keep the pencil in his hand. It was pretty interesting to see extra parts of his body move when the examiner moved one part. Apparently those reflexes should have disappeared long ago, but they haven't. It's remediable, so that's good.

Polarbear, thank you so much for encouraging me to get to the bottom of this! The results of this testing ring much more true to me than just "processing speed issue." I would definitely characterize him as a deep, not fast, thinker--but his scores were SO low. The new viewpoint makes a lot more sense.

The other issues remain: (1) extracting information from his brain for writing tasks (even if the actual writing part is removed)--but it turns out he has not been taught standard tools like graphic organizers, so we will play around with that kind of thing this summer, and (2) remaining focused on what he's supposed to stay focused on when it doesn't particularly interest him. The examiner yesterday also said that DS does not fit an ADD profile and thought it was more a maturity issue. I am reading all kinds of books about how to help your kid strengthen executive functioning, but if anyone has ideas about practical things we can do over the summer to help him learn how to stay on task during his school day, I am all ears! I suspect that this will wind up being the long-term issue that needs lots of attention.

It feels really good to start getting some believable answers rather than blanket statements about a test that involves multiple skills!