Wow, thanks for the replies. So much food for thought...
@Grinity: looks like I do qualify for my own comfy chair. I tested as gifted as a child, ending up with two grade skips, and underachieving happily ever after. Thanks!
What was the processing speed on the WISC IV?
Apparently nobody thought it worthwhile to test. What information would it bring? Not that I plan to reassess anytime soon but knowing the potential issues is always useful.
This is a very unusual set of scores...it looks like he's still in the expected 'verbal delay' part of multilingualism, and that area may rebound very strongly with your home education plan.
Well... We worked on reading, mostly (since school does reading in Spanish but he isn't fluent enough yet to have age appropriate vocabulary and grammar), and he is back to grade level, or slightly above. But despite my best effort English was always his primary language. So I have no idea how cramming on phonics (and doing "word a day" worksheets) could have brought a jump from 50th to 99.9th percentile in comprehension -- that difference is plainly insane. The jump from 25th to 88th in vocabulary, OK, maybe.
Although he is a perfectionist and gets extremely stressed out on timed tasks where he is not already perfectly proficient. The private psychologist might have been better at drawing him out of his shell?
His working memory really concerns me. Was anyone able to explain what WM really means? [...]
I just started a thread about 'Living with Low Working Memory'
so peak over there for 'general brainstorming' and we'll post specific ideas to help your child here.
Been there, posted a bit. The private evaluator (with whom he got the very worst results on visual memory) brushed it away as an artifact of testing. She said if she had been showing him pictures of reptiles he probably would have aced the test. She also ruled out LDs.
Also go into your relationship with the Asperger's diagnosis, ok? It's painful, but you have to get it out.
Yes. Painful is the word. The most confusing has been the looking in the mirror, I guess. He is a lot like I used to be, except more intense and more socially clueless. I heard this... diagnosis hypocondria (?) is a classic in fathers of recently diagnosed kids but then I am usually classified as one of the guys, despite my fully functional uterus
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If you child was depressed or clinically anxious or ADHD or ASpergers untreated while taking the IQ test, I would encourage you not to expect the IQ results to say the same. Kids in these situations test with much higher scores after the issues are resolved in some way. If people notice that he is bright - then he is bright, at least.
Well, bright, or little professor syndrome? It is kind of painful watching him attempt to lecture completely uninterested mothers of toddlers on obscure points of animal care at the local mini-zoo. The adult level of conversation/abnormal interest in narrow subjects is a symptom of AS, after all.
All the questions about the school/what next.
The school.
Bad: behavior issues (not listening to the teacher, not following instructions, many conflicts with peers a few of which got physical, complete social isolation). K was a nightmare, and while he wasn't formally assessed he was probably clinically depressed ("Mom, why don't I have any friends? It makes me very sad."). Was sent home from school for safety/behavior issues at least once a week the first month of 1st.
Good: his 1st grade teacher implemented a behavior plan of his own (completely unassisted by the school, mind you) and had the right combination of firmness and flexibility needed to handle him. His 2nd grade teacher looks like she will be the same.
Academics... I have ignored those. My husband (type A overachiever) is engaging into some cramming. He has gone from a bunch of "proficient" (aka. at grade level) to mostly "advanced", especially in math.
This didn't show that well on his second round of achievement testing, results mostly in the 100-110 range, with one or two odd spikes above 140 and low point at 70 (sentence repetition -- maybe that WM thing is not just a testing artifact after all).
Next.
Go redo the IEP dance with the school to get help from a behaviorist. Last year's evaluation led to denial of service (all scores average smack at the 50th percentile, yipee!). The school lost all motivation to intervene when his teacher (who went above and beyond throughout the school year) finally figured him out. Once the behavior issues were under control (about 2 weeks before the initial IEP meeting) all the urgency that had pushed a fast and extensive assessment process just disappeared. The school psychologist, who had been the first to raise the possibility of AS, didn't even do the ADOS, although it was on the assessment list. That's what the private assessment was for. I am exhausted just thinking about it, and have been procrastinating on this far too long, actually.
And we are (finally!) getting into a social skills group geared toward Asperger kids. Reading about DeeDee's experience has been a boost to morale, thanks for sharing.
Looks to my non-expert eyes as though it may apply - gifted with learning disabilities as well, leading to a very complicated picture. You say you're digesting an Asperger's diagnosis?
Well, if he is gifted -- still up in the air, and I read an article that was posted in the 2e forum on gifted vs. Asperger's vs. 2e that left me even more confused than I was -- it will be 2e, since it is hard to deny the Asperger's diagnosis. Social skills deficits and narrow/deep interests, check.
I don't know how much of what you see here is typical of that and how much is independent of it, but there are quite a few people here with gifted/ASD children.
Wasn't there a recent Korean study that found a much higher than expected incidence of ASD (over 2%) and that 12% (!) of kids on the spectrum are gifted? ASD seems to push the middle of the bell curve outward on both ends.
Thanks for letting me ramble, this has gotten very, very long.
