Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment 1st grade + chaos + eval = twice exceptional dx

Well, I found this forum when DD7 was an atypical baby, and all my searches kept bringing me back to this community, peppered with people who raised similarly challenging babies.

But today was the day we got the formal evaluation and the confirmation that our DD is gifted. (She has an ADHD hyperactive type diagnosis, and some sensory processing disorder issues.)

So the quick look at results after today's WISC-IV:

VCI 146 (topped out the test I think he said)
PRI 141
GAI 154-157 >99.9% (he said he needed to look at this further because of the VCI)
Result: gifted, ADHD, dysgraphia

DD is struggling to read in first grade, and she works her math problems slowly and carefully. We/teacher suspect some LD, the psychologist suggested dysgraphia. The psychologist said she should/could be performing in the 5th-6th grade level for reading and math. Did I hear that right? No wonder she is going bonkers with first grade homework.

She'd much rather have an IQ test every day, she said lol

We are so relieved to know for a fact that this tornado-brained kid may meet the criteria for extra support from the district. It's not my imagination: she's festering there!

- Happy for you that you now have some results to go with! Doesn't it feel good to know you weren't just imagining how different your DD is?!?

- Hopeful that you have less struggle getting school to accommodate than we (and many others) have had!

Good Luck!!!

Thanks, 1frugalmom! Yes, I'm so relieved because ever since she was born I've felt somebody slipped us a tiger kitten when we thought we were getting a house cat.

Do you have any advice? What were your struggles? What should I look out for? I am in need of advice because we have literally zero help right now. None. The only accommodation she has so far is Ritalin. :-(

The psychologist told me if the school and district doesn't accommodate her with an IEP to come back to him and he'd know what to do to get them to, legally.

Our homework situation is certifiably insane. I think 1st grade homework is the devil.

Are the "more tests to follow" with the same psych or with other types of providers that you've been referred to? What type of follow-up testing has been recommended? Is it testing for reading or dysgraphia-related issues or other? Did the psych perform any executive functioning tests? (these are all just curiosity questions from another 2e parent.. no need to answer if you don't feel comfortable doing so!).

Re your dd's 504 - what does she actually have in it now? Did your psych give you a list of recommended accommodations? Or a game plan for accommodating the dysgraphia looking forward? Did your psych mention why he recommended an IEP rather than a 504? (there are good reasons to seek an IEP, I'm just asking relative to what the psych felt your dd's specific needs were).

I am also curious if anything was mentioned about vision - relatively low processing speed scores combined with difficulty reading (and dysgraphia) might indicate that the challenges are due to vision issues (there can be other reasons too).

Good luck as you advocate! And keep us posted!

polarbear

My DD (age 8) has similar scores (higher in perceptual reasoning and lower in verbal but a similar FSIQ and similar GAI around 150). Ask about extended norms...DD's GAI with extended norms is 155 because she scored two 18's and a 19 in terms of scaled scores. Same lowish processing speed but good working memory. She also has ADHD. The psych didn't calculate extended norms for her and it's not in any written report on DD, but I found the technical report for computing extended norms online and did it myself.
I'm curious why the psych thinks dysgraphia? I suspect this with DD but the only "symptom" she really displays is that she writes slowly. There aren't any reversals, her spelling is Ok, her handwriting is decent, etc. She's just slow. Psych blames ADHD but I can't figure out if it's more than that. My DD's reading is fine and her reading fluency (in terms of correct words read per minute) has always been 98th-99th percentile. It makes no sense to me how she can have low processing speed and slow writing but reads so fast and fluently. You might want to ask the psych about dyslexia since that often goes with dysgraphia and it sounds like she's having a problem with reading.
So far my DD doesn't have a 504, it's probably something I will pursue in the fall, though, when she is in a better school. I'm not sure what accommodations we will ask for other than a reduced written workload if she can't keep up, and more time for tests.

The processing speed subtests are calling on an entirely different combined set of skills than reading comprehension and fluency require. Depending on the subtest, processing speed is measuring how quickly a child can copy (coding requires fine motor and visual motor coordination, symbol search is more dependent on visual but also requires fine motor, both subtests are timed). Reading doesn't require any fine motor skill, and it's possible (especially when children are young) that acute vision isn't absolutely necessary either - some children read from context rather than word-for-word, so if they miss a word here or there they can still get the meaning of the passage from context.

blackcat, just my gut suspicion, but fwiw I'd suspect that your dd's slow handwriting is the issue that lowers her processing speed score. Slow handwriting doesn't necessarily have to be because of dysgraphia - there can be other causes, ranging from a desire to be neat to fine motor challenges. Has your dd ever had an OT eval for handwriting? It's possible that might give some insight into why it's slow for your dd.

polarbear

Please feel free to look back at my previous posts to get an idea of what we have been through.

Our oldest DD had MANY signs of ADD/ADHD when she was in 1st grade and school personnel went so far as to tell us she could have ODD or conduct disorder. We agreed she was "active" but if she was interested in something, she could work on it for hours with no issues. We weren't ready to accept their "diagnosis" so we had her tested. We found out she does NOT have ADD/ADHD, ODD, or conduct disorder - she is very bright, creative, and she was bored in school and doing her best to entertain herself (I guess this is frowned upon...lol). She now has none of the signs of ADD/ADHD that she had in class as a 1st grader, so I'm happy to say that we were right about that and school was WRONG!!! We are still not in the best place academically for her and now her younger sister has gone through testing and is in the same academic situation. (FWIW - I'm by no means saying your DD doesn't have ADHD! Only that in our experience a bored, gifted child can look very much like a child with ADHD)

We will continue to advocate for them, but we keep getting the run-around from school. Here are some of the things we've been told - 1. The class schedules don't match up, so they can't go to a higher grade for certain subjects. 2. If they do 6th grade math now then what will they do in 6th grade? 3. The "maturity level" just isn't there to grade skip and since we are a small, rural school it will be hard on them socially. 4. They seem fine placed where they are since they are getting good grades and getting along with their grade-level peers. 5. They get gifted pull-out time to do more advanced work, what more do they need?

My best advice for you would be to read/research everything you can - read your school's policies, read your state's laws, read about the gifted, read about advocacy, etc. While you are reading - take notes - jot down the things that stand out to you or the things that you would like to see the school do for your DD. By taking notes you can start to see some of the things you want to change and when the next 504 meeting comes up you can address these things. In the event the school does determine an IEP is warranted then you can offer your suggestions to the IEP team. Be specific, but flexible in what you want!

Like polarbear mentioned - you should have received some recommendations from your tester. If you choose, you should share those recommendations with your school.

Our testers (with both girls) listed gifted services as a recommendation. In order to receive those services in our school district, a student has to have an IEP. Not all schools/districts do it this way. This is why it is important to find out how things work in your school. Even with our test results in hand it is still up to the school to determine if there "is a need" for an IEP. We started with a 504 for DD10 based on her behaviors in 1st grade, then (long story to this, but keeping it short) after we presented our test results, it was determined there was a need for an IEP in order to appropriately serve her education needs. With DD8, she has such a high IQ that I don't think they could have possibly said there wasn't a need for an IEP.

Just PM me if you have any specific questions!

Yes, and her fine motor coordination when I took her for the OT assessment was something around 20th-30th percentile. She didn't do well on any of the tests that were timed, but was fine on the untimed ones. So the end result of her writing or copying patterns is fine, she just is slow. Her writing fluency on the WJ achievement was her lowest score, I think about the same (around 25th percentile). So her writing speed is slow but not really slow enough to diagnose a disability, unless one considers the enormous gap between that and all of her other scores, like reading and math and the WISC GAI. I tried taking her to a private psych for an eval and he said she appears to over-process information. For instance, when given a page of math problems she doesn't just start in on it, she examines the whole thing first. He thinks this tendency is why she has such a high PRI score on the WISC. She's one of the slowest kids in her class in terms of output and even the 20-30th percentile doesn't really explain that unless it's more like 5th percentile based on her grade (since she's the youngest and was accelerated).
I guess I'll have to just accept that it's a combination of ADHD, over-processing info, being a visual-spatial thinker, somewhat perfectionistic, and the somewhat poor fine motor skills (she is average or advanced with gross motor). But it's hard to write a 504 unless we have a real diagnosis.

polarbear, her 504 was put in place at the beginning of the school year for sensory processing disorder (sensory seeking). She got that dx at age 4 before going to kindergarten, in anticipation of kindergarten, but that was in another city and it was just a dx, no interventions.

Then we moved to LA and DD happened to have an excellent, old school, full-bodied, playful and interesting kindergarten experience. We didn't need a 504.

First grade... sure enough, DD was put in "time out" for the first two full days of school, in front of the class, due to her not following directions (wiggly and impulsive), thus the 504. And then the official ADHD hyperactive type diagnosis from UCLA. "Ritalin will fix everything," has been the hope from the school. Never any OT evaluation or interventions, no suggestions for us at home, etc.

Thankfully, after that rocky start, DD's teacher has come around to be a strong advocate and understands DD's ADHD dx after all. Recently DD's teacher verbally suggested a reading disability (then hesitated to request testing - I'll do that!), and wants us to have her eyesight tested.

So it's time to reconvene the 504 group officially. I'll request an IEP and additional testing in writing, based on the new dx of ADHD and the 50 point spread between processing speed/performance and cognitive ability, as well as low DIEBELS reading scores done by the school.

We are DESPERATE for help. Homework has been tearing our home life apart. Seriously, it's been hell. It's taken h.o.u.r.s. to have her even get started.

Anyway, sorry for the vent.

The test was done yesterday, Sunday, and the full report with recommendations have not come back. We're not entirely sure why he thinks dysgraphia instead of dyslexia (I think dyslexia but I am not, in fact, an expert ;-)), only because he didn't have time to verbally explain that to us. He is a fantastic and well respected psychologist.

There are no gifted services at the school she is in right now, but we can move to a neighborhood with a school that does offer gifted services. This week, we find out if DD was selected by lottery for the "gifted" magnet (gifted lite = more art and more field trips, but hey, that's great for us, because we are not requesting a grade skip at this point, we just don't want her to end up in jail in 3rd grade because she's bored).

Thanks for the additional info seablue!


This is wonderful - having a teacher who cares and wants to help will make a big difference when you are advocating. Even though she will only be your dd's teacher for this one school year, having a teacher who is paying close attention now and in a caring way will be so helpful in setting up a strong 504 or IEP that will carry through for next year and on.


Same thing happened here with my two 2e kids in early elementary pre-diagnosis and before we had tutoring/accommodations/etc in place to help them. It's a really tough time and something that most teachers and parents don't understand either - I just wanted you to know that I understand, as well as (I suspect) the other 2e parents here.


I imagine the report will answer a lot of the questions I asked - and that you have. I didn't realize when I posted that the testing was *so* recent and that you didn't have the report yet. Does the psych invite you back for a post-testing parent meeting where he reviews the report with you? If he doesn't do this routinely, I'd suggest asking to do this - just set up an hour or 1.5 hour meeting with him where you can ask all the questions you can think of, as well as listen to him talk you through his interpretation of the test results. I've found this really really helpful in understanding the neurospych test results.


Always bums me out to think of parents of gifted students having to apply for a gifted school through a lottery system - I so wish that there were enough slots for every child who meets the admissions requirements!

Let us know how your meeting goes, and what you find out from the psych.

Best wishes,

polarbear