I need some advice on my oldest son (10). He is an extremely quirky child that we cannot figure out. He has been diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive) with some autism spectrum characteristics, but none that warrant an actual autism diagnosis. His WISC-V FSIQ, when tested two years ago, was barely above 100. He does not participate much in school and rarely finishes assignments. However, his teachers have all told us he is brilliant and on the SBAC he did get perfect scores in math and language; but otherwise, none of his work during the year would indicate really anything advanced and his general reading ability seems about average; yet there is that perfect SBAC language score. He hates to write and for the most part will refuse to do so. He also did score 160 on the math WIAT-III section, but around average in everything else. He is a very curious and intuitive self-learner, that does not need instruction. Unfortunately, he is very difficult to motivate, extraordinarily emotionally sensitive (cannot be emphasized enough), will only do things on his own terms and seems to feel the need to negotiate everything. He does not have much in the way of friends, yet seems perfectly content in school doing pretty much nothing. He is always creating hypotheticals, that, for the most part, are ridiculous scenarios. I cannot express how utterly willful and stubborn he can be. Despite test scores that would not qualify him for it, the school did put him in the �highly gifted� class for a year, but he was miserable and we put him back in the regular class for 4th grade where he is much happier.

It is very frustrating because when we�ve talked to psychologists, they just think he is a kid with average intelligence, ADHD, and some social skills problems. I can�t believe that is all there is to it but it is hard to argue the opposite as most hard-evidence would support their conclusion (aside from the exceptions I already gave). His younger brother, who has his own issues but overall is much easier to deal with, scored in the high 140s on the CogAT and is a smart kid, but in my opinion, nowhere near as smart as my eldest. We have a third child that the jury is still out on that has her own problems as well (barely said a word until she was 3), but is very eager to please and is catching up rapidly to where she should be.

So, we don�t know what to do with our eldest. We are constantly doubting ourselves in our impressions of his abilities because most of the time, the work he produces, seems below average to barely average. Do we try and have him tested again (which he hated)? Is he a case where IQ tests might not be telling the whole story? Do we just let him coast through school on his own terms which is pretty much what we have been doing? We are concerned that if we push him too hard that he will rebel and completely shut down.

Was he evaluated by an autism specialist, or by a general practitioner? We have found that many "general" neuropsychs aren't really the best at identifying autism.

He was evaluated first by a psychologist that supposedly specializes in psychological evaluations for children, but, not necessarily autism from what I can tell. Shortly after, we took him to the local university clinic (PHD candidates) which agreed with her assessment.

Given the wide-ranging achievement scores, I would wonder if his WISC-V was similarly divergent, at both the index and subtest levels. If the psychologists you've spoken to are working with all of the information you've given us, I'm slightly surprised at their conclusions. (But not entirely so.) Max'ing out the WIAT-III math composite is completely incompatible with being average in intelligence, the WISC-V FSIQ notwithstanding.

I should point out that the SBAC language measures are not fully equivalent to producing organized or lengthy written language in class, especially on topics of no personal relevance. Being able to recognize correct/incorrect grammar/usage/mechanics is not the same as being able to produce it in open responses, while composing original language. Also, the open responses on the SBAC are typed, which may accommodate certain kinds of writing disabilities sufficiently to allow fuller expression of one's underlying expressive language ability. Finally, some learners find test-taking to be a fun and motivating challenge, more so than daily work.

The university gave the WIAT-III, so the first psychologist did not have that information; only the university. The SBAC scores were not available to both the first psychologist and the university as he had not taken the test until the following year. The university did only a couple parts of the WISC-V that weren't covered well by the first psychologist. They redid visual puzzles and added a couple of subtests that I denoted with an "*".

Here are the results which the university gave me which are a mix from both administrations.

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Does the SBAC measure reading comprehension well? Because on the WIAT-III he had a composite score of 94 for total reading.

A university autism clinic, or a psychology clinic? They are not the same at all. I'm not saying that he has autism, just that I haven't heard anything yet that would make we confident that it has really been accurately ruled out.

echoing. Have you got his subtest scores? It may be that his scores are divergent and averaging out. They shouldn't have given you a fsiq in that case but they may have. It sounds lime 2e.

Sorry, I thought I posted these yesterday, but the post doesn't seem to have gone through.

The university gave the WIAT-III, so the first psychologist did not have that information; only the university. The SBAC scores were not available to both the first psychologist and the university as he had not taken the test until the following year. The university did only a couple parts of the WISC-V that weren't covered well by the first psychologist. They redid visual puzzles and added a couple of subtests that I denoted with an "*".

Here are the results which the university gave me were are a mix from both administrations.




Does the SBAC language section test reading comprehension well? On the WIAT-III, his total reading score was 94.

Thank you for taking the time for your responses.

Sorry, just a regular psychology clinic.

Hm. Clearly your DC is not an easy test-taker! That is quite a dramatic difference between the first and second administrations of VP. So right up front, we can pretty comfortably say that there is reason to view these cognitive results as possible low estimates.

That being said, he does have some patterns:
Verbal cognition is lower than nonverbal cognitions, which parallels reading achievement being lower than mathematics achievement on the WIAT-III. Of course, this is not fully consistent with his strong SBAC language scores (which is a mixture of reading comprehension and written expression measures). One factor is that the SBAC has a fair contribution from multiple choice item types, while the WIAT-III reading comprehension is entirely open-response and oral. This would be a commonality that connects to the WISC-V VCI tasks, which do require oral expressive language, and is also distinct from the SBAC, which does not.

Too bad the uni clinic didn't also give him the Arithmetic subtest. You could have derived an EFI (expanded FR), and a QRI (measure predictive of mathematical reasoning ability), which might (assuming he was sufficiently testable) have aligned better with his mathematics achievement data.

Another significant factor is that he may simply have become a whole lot more testable between the individual assessments and the SBAC, whether from the passage of time and increasing maturity, experience with practice SBACs in the school setting, or other causes. If he was having difficulty with testing, it would be more likely for someone suspected of being ASD (whether or not they technically meet criteria) to struggle with optimal performance on the cognitive than on the achievement, due to the relative familiarity of the tasks.

I just wanted to say thank you for the advice. It helped motivate me give it another shot and take him to a developmental-behavioral pediatrics group affiliated with the children's hospital here. They diagnosed him with ASD (high-functioning), ADHD, and anxiety.

They did not give him any intelligence tests, but said the WISC results were not representative of his abilities.

I'm glad to hear you were able to get some useful information on your child.