Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Writers block, could there be more going on?

And that's one of the bigger tragedies of gifted folks only just surviving the school system: we learn a tremendous amount of skepticism towards presumed or asserted authority sometimes to our detriment.

I hope the course works out for him.

WOW, things are moving faster than I expected. I wrote the teacher to ask her option and suggested that there might be a language processing problem. She got back to me this afternoon and agreed with my description of the problem. But admitted that she wasn't qualified to diagnose. She forwarded my message to the school psychologist and they are recommending support meeting to discuss the issues. I am very impressed the school is willing to move this fast.

My daughter had an IEP all through 11th grade but I got nothing but resistance from this H.S. even when they did their own testing. In their mind she was doing very well and didn't need much support.

School called this AM.. and set up a meeting for two weeks.

I am still so frustrated with how to help the kid. He has had his computer taken away until he completes the assignment even if the teacher won't take it late. He spent 3 hours mostly not writing the assignment. I am not sure why, but he is insisting it must be handwritten and since he doesn't want to copy it over after he is done fixing it. He wants every word precise. It's a 3 paragraph essay about a poem, this should not have taken him more than a hour.

Funny, I thought my kid was still around, but apparently he's migrated to your house!

My daughter had to read this book for her first university writing course. I don't remember her liking it all that much but she has very different strengths than my son. So perhaps while she didn't find it useful my son would. I am going to talk with her this afternoon and I'll see if she still has the book.

There were also some good links in that article and on that site in general on creativity/perfectionism, etc.

bluemagic, I think that the teacher agreeing that their might be an issue is one of the most compelling reasons to seek more info before assuming perfectionism etc - it's been my experience that teachers have a tough time recognizing expressive language problems, especially in older students, partially because there are so many other plausible explanations such as perfectionism, lack of engagement, lack of focus etc.

It's a good sign that the school is going to set up a team meeting - I would specifically request an SLP eval as part of an assessment if they agree to any testing for IEP eligibility etc. If they don't, I'd suggest considering a private eval.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - deacongirl - thanks for the link to the Bird by Bird book - it looks great, and I've ordered a copy for myself and my ds to look at. The one thing I'd caution bluemagic is - my ds will most likely benefit from reading the book now, but that's after years of speech therapy. I don't know if your ds has an expressive language challenge or not, but for kids who do (like my ds) it's really key to understand what piece of expressive language skills is the roadblock before putting a big chunk of "how to attack _(fill in the blank)_" in front of them and expecting anything to come of it. The root of my ds' issue was actually generating thoughts - perhaps it's an organizational thing, it's not easy to explain, but the very first step in the writing process was a total road-block for him... and that was rooted in an actual LD, not in perfectionism. Had we tried tips aimed at getting past perfectionism at the beginning of remediation, it wouldn't have helped and would most likely have frustrated him to beyond the edge of any nearby cliff. This is somewhat what happened to him in school - his teachers made assumptions about the reasons that he wasn't producing writing. They also made very reasonable attempts to help him through his writing blocks based on their assumptions, but the assumptions weren't correct so they not only didn't result in any improvements in writing, they just led to extreme anxiety in my ds. Getting the SLP eval and seeing where the root of the problem was, then spending time working on that, was what led to actual improvement.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I have gone through getting a diagnosis for my daughter so I do agree it's probably best to see how eval turns out. It's just frustrating right now. Part of it's he doesn't care for poetry, particularly the selection of poems that he is being required to read. Most of them are about being a teenager from an adults perspective and feel to him like they are trying to tell him what to feel.

We have 7 more weeks of the school year, so I don't think this will help much for this years classes. But I am hoping we can talk about teacher selection for next year. Teacher selection makes a huge difference with DS.

It's hard because many teachers and adults who don't know him well see it as defiance. That I'm not being hard enough on him and if he was just motivated enough, or didn't spend as much time on computer games he would buckle down and get it done. But if you know him and work with it's obvious he isn't trying to be defiant.