Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment At what age is a LD likely to be found?

DS 6 (just turned 6) tested as gifted last year. We pursued testing because of his struggles in school due to reading and writing. No LD were found but it was advised because of his youth we retest in a year if things had not improved.

After intense remediation over the summer and all last school year, he is performing on target (not advanced) in reading, and writing is still below expected for his age despite working on handwriting all summer.

It was advised after two weeks of the gifted reading pull out to stop because of the writing stress on DS, and not to try the math pull out because it wasn't recommended for him by his K teacher last year. I still think there is a LD. The ed. psych recommended testing in one year if there were still struggles.

I don't think I can wait! It's only been about 6-7 months so far, but already 1st grade writing is such a struggle for DS. And reading is a lot of work too. I asked the school for testing but who knows what will happen? Is it too soon to start the retesting process? If there's a diagnosis and we can get some accommodations for DS I think it would help him and the teacher. But if we test soon, is he still too young to find anything concrete and we'll have to retest again in another few months? So frustrated. Sorry if this should have been in the 2e section.

Can you share the specifics from the test last year?

There is no absolute reason that an LD could not be found at this age. From your description, he appears to demonstrate significant underperformance already. The usual reason we wait until later is because of the antiquated "wait to fail" structure/philosophy of public schools (RTI is an attempt to circumvent that, by remediating first, and diagnosing later).

OTOH, re-testing at this point would create some challenges mainly with cognitive instruments, depending on what is available to the school system. If he was tested on a preschool instrument, then the school-age instruments are still available. (Or the WISC-V, if they've bought one. Mine arrived over a week ago, so I know they're shipping pre-orders now.) Achievement can be re-assessed with the same instrument after six months.

A second issue (probably more important) is that in the absence of data suggesting that the previous testing is invalid, best practice would advise against re-testing, most certainly the cognitive, and probably the academic achievement as well.

I understand your concerns as a parent, but from the perspective of the school, he has only had about 4 months of schooling (and a month of it was rather sketchy end-of-year/beginning-of-year school) since his previous assessment. It is difficult to predict that enough development will have happened to make his learning profile clear enough for effective accommodations to be developed. Was your testing private, or did the school participate in that? Did any concrete recommendations come out of it?

I think that if you ask what age lds are "likely" to be found, many people will have found them around 2nd-3rd grade, when things like underachievement/struggles with learning to read/behavior issues/letter reversals/etc start to stand out, whereas in K-1 there is such a wide range of "typical" child development that outliers don't necessarily stand out.

This is what happened with my kids (2 are 2e, one couldn't see and no one had a clue!):

DS/dyspraxia/dysgraphia - everyone thought he was the smartest kid who'd ever walked the planet (ok, slight exaggeration, but when he talked adults who didn't know him were typically very surprised, because he sounded like an adult - a very smart adult lol)…. until he went to kindergarten. He didn't really stand out in any big way in kindergarten, but he also started throwing fits when he had to do worksheets etc for homework - things that should have been very easy for him. He refused to talk to his teachers (at least it *looked* like he was refusing). When his class was giving written work, he would just sit there until the teacher gave the 2 minute morning and then he'd scrawl an answer out quickly. He reversed letters, his writing was sloppy, and he didn't write much at all in his journal. His teacher thought all of this was normal, and we (parents) didn't have any reason to think otherwise. Except for *one* thing that I'll tell you about in a minute - I'm going to make you wait, sorry

When ds was still having the same issues in the classroom in 2nd grade we were still being told by the teacher it was "developmentally normal" - it wasn't until he started having anxiety so severe that he had panic attacks at school *and* at home that we took him to see a neuropsychologist and he was diagnosed (end of 2nd grade, almost 8.5 years old). Looking back, I can't tell you how many signs I suddenly realized were there all along but I'd been too clueless (because I was uninformed *and* didn't expect it). I will *ALWAYS* always wish I'd known about dysgraphia and dyspraxia way back when ds was an infant. He is doing really really well, but his elementary school years would have been soooo so much easier if we'd known that he was struggling.

My dd with the vision issues: She struggled learning to read. Everyone assumed she was simply meant to struggle to learn to read. I could kick myself over this too - she'd had an IQ test when she was 5 and struggling with anxiety when going into new places, and we knew her IQ. I don't know *why* I never questioned why she was having so much difficulty with reading given her IQ, but I just accepted what the teachers said and we tried to remediate with summer school etc. Then at the beginning of 2nd grade she complained about not being able to read the board in class, we took her to our regular eye dr, her vision checked out a-ok, and I decided it was time to take her to the neuropsych because her reading struggles didn't make sense in light of her IQ. The neuropsych veal is where we found out she had vision issues. So she doesn't have an LD, but she was struggling with reading and we didn't find out why until she was in 2nd grade (7.5 years old).

My 2e dd has a reading LD. Not exactly dyslexia, but an issue with sight-sound associative memory. She has *really* struggled to read, but she looked like she was advanced in reading until she hit kindergarten (she looked advanced because she started trying to read when she was around 4 - I know that doesn't sound advanced around these parts, but in my family, even my EG ds didn't start reading until he was almost 6, so I though 4 was early.) It seemed pretty obvious from her ability to reason and the questions she talked about that she was also intellectually gifted. In kindergarten, she continued to progress in reading but not at any astronomical speed. She did well in school and was at the top of her class. The next year, with the same teacher, she suddenly wasn't such a start student anymore and her reading didn't seem to be progressing anymore. Her teacher still didn't think there was an issue because she was reading at grade level. The next year she fell behind grade level in reading, and that teacher was concerned so she was evaluated by the school reading specialist - who didn't see an issue. So the teacher then believed there wasn't an issue. Midway through 2nd grade it was beyond obvious to me that something had to be up, so we took her to see an ed testing specialist (retired SPED teacher) who found the glitch in her associative memory and made recommendations re how to accommodate and remediate. We tried the recommendations, but by the time 3rd grade happened dd was really far behind in reading level, and her struggles with reading were also starting to impact her other academics because she wasn't reading directions and questions correctly. Her teacher wasn't helpful, the school wouldn't do any further evals, the ed specialist who'd tested her didn't believe she was behind "enough" to be considered truly LD, so we decided to take her to see a reading specialist - that testing was incredibly comprehensive, fell in line with the previous testing, and gave us a great starting point for reading remediation. What it didn't help us with though was understanding how her memory issues impacted her in other academics, and it was clear she was being impacted… so we decided we should take her to a neuropsych… and that round of testing was a disaster. We chose to go to a neuropsych we'd never seen before, who came highly recommended, but he was used to evaluating kids who are apparently much lower on the ability spectrum than our dd. The first thing he did when he reviewed the reading specialist's extensive report was to proclaim it a bunch of mumble-jumble that really didn't mean much of anything. The testing he ran didn't include anything aimed at memory specifically other than the routine ability/achievement - and those results didn't even begin to make sense - her achievement scores were sky-high compared to her ability. The psych claimed she had no issues with reading, and if she seemed to, it was just her pulling our parental leg. My youngest dd is now 10 years old, in her 2nd year of reading remediation, still struggling, and although she has a diagnosis of dyslexia my understanding (from her reading specialist) is that it's not traditional dyslexia, so in some sense, I'm not sure she really even has a diagnosis yet. She's a complicated kid, and I think with complicated kids, highly capable kids, and reading challenges in particular, getting to that place where you understand what's really going on can be a long, twisted, difficult journey.

FWIW, I also have a niece who is either dyslexic or has a vision challenge, but was never given a diagnosis (she was in SPED in her early elementary years to learn how to read). As an adult, she reads very slowly, and finds it extremely tiring as she has to try extra hard to focus. All the standard tests she's had over the years point to a huge discrepancy in verbal/reading vs other types of tasks/academics. But she's an adult, can't afford to pay for an eval, and she's learned how to cope so I don't know that she'll *ever* have an official diagnosis.

Soooo… sorry for that long ramble! The last thing I'll add is - out of the kids I know who have diagnosed LDs…. the ones that were diagnosed before 2nd/3rd grade are kids who come from families where there was already a family member with a diagnosed LD, so the parents and other family members were aware of symptoms plus somewhat watching for it. I went back through and re-read your previous posts, and I think you mentioned family members who are dyslexic. For that reason, I'd pursue testing *now*. Private testing if you need to.

It may not give you all the answers you're looking for, but it will give you another data point, and I don't think you'll regret it.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Polar bear... Maybe I missed it. What was the one thing you were making us wait to read?

Testing last year was done by an ed psych. There was a RIAS IQ and a bunch of other tests as my bigger concern before was dyslexia, so a ton of phonological tests. Sorry I'm not sure what would be helpful?

RIAS verbal 143
Non verbal 118 (officially the number, but ed psych thinks it may be higher because he started not paying much attention and answered the ones wrong to stop the test officially. She continued informally testing after that and he still got a lot right but put the official number as above)
Composite 135
Composite memory 115

Also tested were WJ-III COG cluster, ACH cluster, CTOPP-2, PAT2, Beery VMI.

I'm not sure what would be helpful? The achievement scores are all mostly average or high average. At the time I asked if there's a possibility of just high verbal knowledge and a false + with giftedness. She said she didn't think so but IDK, a lot of the scores report as average or high average for achievement results.

I mean, I feel he's smart and we have good conversations, he talks and understands and communicate what I feel are pretty big things for his age (but DH and I discuss adult topics with the kids too).

We used Vanderbilt for ADHD screen and teacher's was negative. I asked regarding dysgraphia but honestly IDK if she could test for it or not.

This is a good point. Our testing was done privately. We were strongly advised by a teacher that the school would likely not test because as of last year he wasn't "far enough behind". He has had a (an?) RTI since being in his school. The new teacher is starting one for his writing currently. I sent in a school request for testing based on his writing and my concerns with reading. IDK what testing, if any, they will do.

The prior ed psych recommended retesting in one year if there were not improvements in achievement (as judged by academic achievement). We work HARD most days on reading and writing. It's definitely a big struggle and he dislikes it. Reading concerns may be just d/t his age and the funny phonological rules vs what they put in easy readers nowadays.

Writing and spelling are a different story. Physically writing is difficult. But there are still tons of letter and number reversals, mirror word writing (you spelled uoy, chin spelled hcin, etc). I had to argue with him that "ch" sound is spelled c-h because we read and write only left to right. I still couldn't convince him that was how it was supposed to go.

Yes, I'm reading a lot about dyslexia still though the dyslexia testing was negative. I'm wondering if he can/will just grow out of it. The writing, however, is clearly way behind now when it's independent. If I or PT is instructing him, writing is somewhat legible though not great. And only with single letters, not words or sentences.


Thank you for your personal story. This is just like our scenario!



I'm sorry he had to go through all this.


I had DS see an optometrist, we're getting an ophthalmologist exam next month, and pending those results I may still consider a developmental optometrist (seeing last if at all because of cost). I've been questioning DS on vision things and I don't think there is anything there but I guess anything's possible.


Yes, DS's grandfather has dyslexia. I'm wondering if he has dysgraphia as well after reading more about it and it's manifestations. You have an excellent memory! Your posts are always so helpful and well thought and I'm so grateful for your time

We will see about neuropsych testing. I'm not sure if/when school will test, so I'm going to start the process of private testing again but with a new person. She's an academic so I think it should be good, and is listed as a pediatric neuropsych among a whole group of them. The insurance may/may not cover it, so we're going to start with setting up appts, talking to insurance, etc.

I figured it was just hidden in all the other useful information

I thought it was the age the LD is discovered depends on whether you are looking for one.