Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Finally getting tested, have some questions

Maybe not too helpful, but both of my children (very early with letter recognition; DD read as a young 5, DS as a young 4) reversed letters and numbers here and there until about 6.5. Not frequent and they didn't do the other stuff you describe. But even with early literate kids, I think it can happen.

Thank you ultramarina, that is very good to know. Did they reverse any of the letters in their names? My son reverses the first letter of his name (S), and they have them tracing it daily at preschool. We don't really do any writing practice at all at home, which probably doesn't help, but I figure he will need something to do at school and I'm not too into academics until at least 5 (which he's only been for a week).

The IU has no issue with the reversals, but they do bother me to practice writing with him because he starts at the bottom when he writes. I countered that the other 4 year old weren't even writing and his letters were quite legible (this was the week he turned 4, I couldn't believe they were giving us handwriting homework?!?). They said it will affect his fluency of writing later.

He wrote a summery of a movie plot the other day and sure, it lacked spaces and proper punctuation and the spelling was rigidly phonetic, but I thought it was great and there was no way I was going to mark it up for errors. I always just tell him his work is great. Maybe I'm part of the problem?

As a preschool teacher, I would not worry about reversals or writing form.

The development of physical act of actual writing (small muscle control) and the process of writing (sound-letter identification and visual spacial cues) are different.

Many early readers/writers reverse and it is developmentally OK and not unusual to age 7.

Students, especially earlier or independent learners, often will write completely backwards, mixed formats, and reversals. The asynchronous development is not uncommon. I would keep an eye on it, but not go running for an eval in that area. Keep an eye on his eye development. Sometimes eyes dont work well together and that results in writing concerns and/or difficulty. Or fine motor control. Most specific assessments for 'writing' will not identify anything at age 4/5 because writing at all in letters, words would place him out of a 'delay' range.

As for correcting him, I wouldn't. It will come in time and phonetic spelling, unusual spacing/capitalization are part of the writing process developmentally. If he is writing and spelling-- that is ahead of the developmental range for a 4 yr old but follows the developmental curve for writing development.

If you correct him, he may develop a hesitation to write for fear of mistakes and/or correction rather than freely writing (as it sounds like he is doing now).

Does he have a dominant hand? Many kiddos with mixed dominance will write upside down, reverse for a bit longer due to the way the brain processes information.

One of my girls wrote in preschool all sorts of ways backwards, reverse, etc. She did not pick a hand until 1st grade. She even reversed numbers/letters to 2nd grade. Now in 4th she does not. Slowly she self corrected, she is very visual spacial and excels in puzzles and visual processing. She , too, still prefers to do math in her head since the act of 'organizing' in writing is much harder than just figuring it out.

I second what KCMI said about the writing - DD is an early writer, and she occasionally writes in all sorts of strange ways. I've quizzed her about it a few times and she says that it's fine and not to worry about it, she knows it's not right and it's ok. I trust her.

I agree with all of this but with one caveat that applies here - if you've seen *other* signs of atypical development, the continuing reversals and refusal to write out math problems etc *might* be an indication of a challenge - and if there's a chance that there is a challenge, the earlier you are aware of it, the better.

The OP here has noted difficulties with upper body coordination, a very low score on one component of the BOT-2, as well as concerns voiced by his preschool teacher. Each of those, combined with the observations of starting letters at the bottom and writing reversals in spite of handwriting instruction combine to suggest something more than typical handwriting development is going on. I'd look at a few other things re handwriting - do the reversals happen only when he's writing words, or do they also happen if he's writing individual letters or the alphabet? Also did he go through pre-writing stages where he made scribbles that looksd like lines etc? (Sorry I don't know how to describe this - it's something I saw from one of my dd's teachers once - showing what typically happen as children develop writing skills - I just remember being very surprised by seeing it because it described *exactly* the way my nt dd's handwriting developed, and we saw absolutely none of these stages for my dysgraphic ds).

Best wishes,

polarbear

The reversals happen when writing individual letters and numbers and when writing words and sentences. They are usually certain ones, but it's somewhat random. The ones I often see wrong are s, k, j, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. He will even write down a math problem such as 10+14=24 with one four right and one four wrong. He doesn't seem to notice this even when reading it back. He also gets his numbers out of order 41 for 14, even though he has a strong understanding of place value and can tell me, oops, I wrote 4 tens and 1 one instead of 1 ten and 4 ones.

I'm not too sure about the pre-writing stuff. He didn't "write" at all until well past the normal age when other kids show interest in scribbling/marking (I think around 12 months?). When he did start he was well ahead in that he didn't want to just scribble, he actually tried to make things. I think his first ever drawing was around 18 months, which was just a scribble. He didn't try again until sometime after 20 months and that time he made water with fish in it (broad strokes with a blue crayon and orange blobs added on top). He made a few drawings like that and quit again for a long time until he started drawing vehicles maybe a year later, using squares and circles. For some reason the vehicles were made out of lots of squares with circles for wheels and a steering wheel. If asked he would draw a person, but he wasn't too into it.

He still doesn't draw much, but when he does I think it's pretty decent for his age. When he paints, he likes to make snakes. Because they are easy! Mostly he likes to make mazes and write number patterns. He loves to do color by number, mazes, connect the dots, word searches, and other puzzle type written work. He does not like to write out sentences or stories too much, but he loves to write up a schedule for the day or he might suddenly sit down and write down the lyrics to a favorite song.

So, back to pre-writing, he never did that stuff I read about where he pretended to write notes to me or anything. I just figured that was part of his social delay. I guess I'd say he went straight to just trying to make stuff, letters, fish, trucks, etc. He didn't really ever show interest in just picking up a crayon and marking up a paper just for the fun of it.

I remember a friend who is very bright and very near to my sons age coming over around when they had both recently turned 4. My son drew a complex maze with a picture at the start and the words start and finish on it. His friend just scribbled. His mom said that was all he ever did and she was worried he was behind. I assured her that my son is just unusual and that she had nothing to worry about, her son is both smart and very social. For his part, my DS looked at his friends work and said "Why did he just scribble all over the paper? He's wasting paper, I don't think we should give him another piece." Luckily his friend wasn't really paying close attention.

I'm not sure if it's important, but as well as my son reads and as much as he loves books, he never wants to read them himself. I have to make deals to get him to read, I'll read to you, then you read to me, and then I'll read to you again. He won't choose anything difficult and actually tends to choose his level 1 readers, just to get it done quickly! He absolutely can read very well when he decides to do it and I try not to push him at all, but I want him to feel confident and learn to enjoy sitting down with a book. He told me a few weeks ago that he used to love reading books, but his interests have changed and he will want to read books again when he is 10. That's really not acceptable!

Thinking back to my own childhood, I was excellent at drawing, but I had terrible handwriting. I actually relearned how to write on my own in middle school because none of my work would be accepted by the teachers. I trained myself to draw the letters the same way I draw pictures. It seemed to work for me and my printing is now very neat. I have no idea if that is relevant or not. My son isn't really taking after me completely because his writing is actually very neat for his age. It remains to be seen if he eventually falls behind though, I know that early skill does not always mean later mastery.

Panzer, I think you're on the right track to continue to observe and to seek further evals. Much of what you say about your ds' early writing development sounds like my dysgraphic ds, some sounds different. The one main difference between your situation and my ds' is that you're looking at signs earlier, which could mean you're overthinking it and what you are seeing is just normal development, or it could mean that you've caught on to an issue early. My ds isn't ASD, but he does have challenges with expressive language, and that tangled together with dysgraphia/dyspraxia made it difficult to tease out the impact of some of the challenges early on because you'd see signs of one challenge but not have the full picture yet because of the other not-recognized challenge. I hope that makes sense lol!

It may feel like others think you're overanalyzing when they say things like "it's normal to reverse letters up through 2nd grade" etc... and yet you'll wonder until you do have more info. Seeking out that type of info, whenever there's any hint of a red flag of something going on - is a *good* thing. If the answer you finally get back from an eval is "everything's ok, you were overthinking it" - that's A-OK, actually a really good thing! OTOH, if your concerns are confirmed, then you're ready to take the next steps of getting a plan together and getting help and support for your ds - and the earlier in his life he has appropriate remediation and support, the better things will be for both of you

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - dysgraphia, like dyslexia, does seem to appear in family clusters. There are several dysgraphic/dyslexic individuals in my dh's family, and ds has at least one dysgraphic cousin and one dyslexic cousin. I think it's telling that you describe re-learning how to write in middle school the *way* you describe it. It's not all that atypical for a middle school student to change the appearance of their handwriting - I remember doing that to be "cool" when I was in middle school, doing things like purposely making the dots above my "i"s huge and changing the amount of slant, making curly-q shapes on long letters etc. Writing neatly also becomes important at this stage for all students due to increased length of writing assessments and increased demands from teachers. However, your description of actually relearning how to make the letters and doing it the way you'd draw a picture sounds *very* much like my dysgraphic ds.

When I was in school poor handwriting was just called lack of effort I remember in 6th grade getting assignments handed back to me with a big 0 on them and a note stating that the name was illegible and therefore the work could not be graded. I always felt that was so unfair, because how could the teacher claim she couldn't read my name/identify whose paper it was to hand it back to me if the paper claimed right on it the 0 was because she didn't know it was mine. lol

I see a lot of people advocating for typing here, but it took me many years to learn how to type. In college I was still a very poor typist. I failed typing in high school. Now I am good at it, but it just took forever for me to really master it (and multiple games and teaching programs, going back to dos!). I'm always wondering how all the kids learn how to type so easily and so young!

I have a very bad pencil grip too, but my son's pencil grip is perfect. No one ever understood how I could draw and have such poor handwriting. My cursive is still awful, so I don't use it anymore. I was also abysmal at spelling and I still am. Spell check is a wonderful invention and if my son has the same problems with spelling that I had I am all ready to insist that spelling is not longer even important. There are those times when even spell check can't figure out what I'm trying to write... but I tweak as needed.

Nothing would make me happier than hearing everything is good with my son. He's finally catching up on so much social stuff. He still can't hop on one foot or catch a ball and I'll leave it to the experts to decide what to do with all of that sort of information. I just want to get the whole picture so that we know what we are dealing with and can treat correctly. So many people say, oh, this is typical for a kid on the spectrum and leave it at that. Yet his ASD diagnosis has always been borderline and I hate to see everything attributed to it, anxiety, clumsiness, hyperactivity, impulsivity, even medical complaints like digestive concerns and allergies. I'm sick of hearing it's probably just part of the autism, especially when the ASD is so mild that it might not even be ASD.

So, very frustrating just never really knowing or understanding what is going on. The more tests we try, the more we learn, so after reading all of this I feel confident in pushing for all of the tests we can get in any areas of weakness. You never know what they will show. Thank you everyone for your input, it was very helpful. We still have that test in just over a week. I'm nervous, but trying to keep it well hidden. I coached my son a bit on the idea of tests and answering the questions to the best of his ability. I let him know that some questions will be too hard and that is OK, but to try his best on all of them. Hopefully he has a good day that day and goes in there and does his best. I figure I'll tell him he can have ice cream or a cookie or something after just to try to keep it all positive. I'll let you all know how we make out with the test!

It sounds like you have both family history and spider senses run amuk - two really good reasons not to wait and see. If there actually are LDs going on, waiting is not benign.

Dyslexia in particular is so much easier to remediate the earlier you catch it. The Shaywitz book (dyslexia.yale.edu/book_Overcoming.html) includes detailed markers of dyslexia at even very young ages, and may be useful to help you try to figure out if there is an underlying phonological deficit going on.

Be forewarned, though, that a verbally gifted kid won't show many of the usual markers, or in the usual ways; the signs may be there, but much more subtle. My DD, for example, always loved to rhyme (usually a big challenge for dyslexics) - but the hint was that even as she got older sometimes seemed to not notice the difference between rhyming and alliteration. As it turned out, when tested, her "phonological awareness" was 88th percentile - she could have passed an overly-simple screen with flying colors. But her ability to manipulate those phonemes plummeted as the task got more complex, down to 10th percentile for the harder tasks.

Dysgraphia I will leave to the many deeply experience folk on the board, with the question: if he were supported and accommodated for dysgraphia now and his challenges ended up reducing over time, is there any way those accommodations could cause harm, or just help him work through a difficult period?

Panzer,

In reading your own story, I hear two big takeaways:

1. Yes, you would do well to closely monitor his development, as family history is a risk factor. Your own profile is strongly suggestive of an LD.
2. Your success in life gives good long-term perspective on your child's prospects.

On the potential LD front, the combination of soft early markers for dyslexia/dysgraphia and a squishy ASD Dx make me think of NVLD. It is not uncommon for individuals with nonverbal learning disabilities to have delayed social development, and even to receive early Dx of ASD, especially on the mild, PDD-NOS end of the spectrum. Physical restlessness and visual inattentiveness often get them a Dx of ADHD. They'll have good oral language skills, but often have the physical awkwardness of DCD. Sometime they have a slow start learning to read (hence early dyslexia Dx), but take-off, once they attain fluency.

I have to run now, so I'll have to save more detail for later, but just a thought.