Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Can't "produce"

Hi all,

Met with the psych who performed IQ/Ach testing for DS7. All areas of IQ/Achievement came back in the above-average to very superior ranges, with the exception of processing speed, which was at 50%. All-in-all, looks like he's in the "optimally-gifted" range with an FSIQ of 127/GAI 129, although it's noted his issues may have caused this to be an underestimation.

DS is having trouble on several fronts at school.

1) He says the language arts work is too easy, so he gets distracted and never finishes his language arts classwork. School is going to try letting him test out.

2) He has tremendous difficulty getting started on and completing written work (including artwork which he's quite talented in), with the exception of memorized work like Spelling and Spanish. It's the original thought stuff he seems to have trouble with. He has no difficulty starting or completing his math work, but again, that's not "orginal" type thought at this stage.

4) He can be more impulsive in action and words (blurting out answers or crawling under the desks) than his agemates

5) When called on in class to answer a question, he frequently says he can't remember or takes a very long time to come up with an answer.

He also has some fairly significant issues with perfectionism, anxiety and self-esteem.

The pscyhologist noted the delay in his oral responses, and the increased time to produce written work, and said it might have to do with his weakness in processing speed relative to his IQ. She seemed to believe the discrepancy was significant although the actual PSI was average. She also noted that gifted people frequently have multiple thoughts simultaneously, which may contribute to the delays in responses. She said that his above average to very superior divided attention is inconsistent with working memory deficits wich usually accompany ADHD. Also, we see less of the ADD-like issues at home than they do at school. She also said that it's difficult to tease out differences at this age between anxiety, ADHD, anxiety, asynchronous development and lack of engagement.

Anyway, long story short (too late for that!!), I'm wondering if anyone has had any similar experiences and what ultimately helped their DC.

You can say that again!
So try your best to get the academic fit to work, and work with the rest.

I will say that my son's WM has always been a strength, with well below average processing speed. So - at our house - we haven't experienced that WM at 120 or higher rules out ADD inattentive. DS's teacher in 4th grade also said that he was quite able to split his attention into several tracks, and described it as though he was watching 12 TVs at the same time, and wished that she could get him to tune 3 or 12 to her station.

We didn't see the ADD inattentive until the academic fit problem was ironed out, and we had to overcome the underachievement habits first to be sure it wasn't that.

Smiles,
grinity

Does your family play any 'Cranium' type games at the house? It seems to me that if the school can differentiate language arts and you can 'hothouse' the brainstorming then things will be ok for a while. What goes on between the '2gs' - both boys, right?
Are they playmates? hatemates? much teasing? is #2 in awe of #1? Do they choose different interests and keep their distance? Do they compete?

Tell me his interests and see I can come up with some fun ways to hothouse brainstorming/idea generation.
Love and More Love,
Grinity

We don't play any 'Cranium" type games. Your previous suggestion of "That's So Wrong..." went over really well with both DC, although DH didn't exactly see it as time well-spent.

Hadn't really thought about being able to hothouse brainstorming.... Interesting.....

Both boys -- 2 years apart.

They definitely are playmates.

DS7 definitely believes he's intellectually and athletically and artistically and.... inferior to DS9.

They have very similar interests. In fact, for the longest time, I couldn't come up with b'day/Xmas gift ideas for DS7, because he just went along with whatever DS9 was doing and had no particular passions of his own. To some extent, that's still true. DS9 definitely rules the fraternal roost.

They are quite competitive with each other, and it's difficult for DS7 to keep up with his HG+ brother who's also got 2 years on him.


He likes animals, baseball, Harry Potter, flowers, plants, fact books, video games (if we had any)....

It's odd with him, because it's not just original ideas he has trouble with. If I ask him what he did in Science today, he'll tell me he can't remember. If I tell him to just think about it for a while so we can talk about it later. It takes him somewhere between 3-20 minutes to remember and then can tell me in detail....

Feel free to PM me a bill, Dr. Grinity!

Ohh Ooooh, call on me, call on me!

1)Can you two work on a Flower and plant based version of Yu-gi-oh? He could decide what qualities the various pants and flowers have and work out some game mechanics where 2 players could battle by dealing out homemade cards that have pictures of the species and their powers. Think Rock/Paper/Scissors squared.

2)Create his own fact books on his favorite animals or baseball teams

3) Write fantasy interviews with characters for HP. Maybe for the HP newspaper, but maybe for Sports Illustrated, or the local school newspaper, or some other offbeat venue. First brainstorm which questions would be good for various characters, then brainstorm what the answers might be.

4) Create 'apples to apples' style cards for the Hogwarth's characters and adjectives that stretch his vocabulary.

I don't know of a single boy-boy sibling pair that are that close in age that don't face the issue of the younger thinking that he is inferior. Remember that there are advantages as well - you don't have to worry about younger feeling like an alien because he's too smart, for one. Most of those 'youngers' do try harder - and that's awesome!

Love and More Love,
Grinity