What are the parameters to classify a child as 2E?
I have always known my son was bright but when he started 1st grade he started showing signs of an attention disorder according to his teacher. In second grade the complaints about his attention continued and he was slow finishing math tests. She requested that we retain him in 2nd grade so that he would "mature" and be "able to finish work in a timely manner" and I refused because I didn't feel retaining him when he was otherwise on grade level (other than a low fluency score) would only exacerbate his "focus" issues.
In his elementary school they use worksheets for most subjects and he is slow to finish them and even slower if he knows there will be 9 or 10 of them that day.
In 3rd grade the complaints about his focus became more frequent and again he was slow to finish math tests and worksheets. Finally I requested testing. The school brought in an outside psychologist who specializes in LD diagnosis and who does evaluations often.
His WISC IV scores were:
Full Scale IQ: 119 (90%)
Verbal Comprehension Index: 132 (98%)
Perceptual Reasoning Index: 121 (92%)
Working Memory Index: 110 (75%)
Processing Speed Index: 85 (16%)
She also diagnosed him with ADHD. She said that his attenion difficulties are from external influences (what is going on around him) and from internal influences (his own thoughts). He gets distracted with some tasks because they make his brain take it to higher levels. For instance: when the psychologist tested him she had him read a list of words as part of the test. Halfway through he stopped and said to her: How do you think we got language? I mean who created this symbol (pointing to a letter) and called it an "a" (or whatever it was) and then this symbol (pointing to a different letter) and called it a "b". And then how did they put these symbols together to form the word that represents something we know. And then there are different symbols in Spanish and Chinese that mean the same things as us but in different ways. How did this all begin and how did they pass it on? Meanwhile the psychologist is saying: please just read the words. haha
Speaking with special education teacher friends they have never seen such a huge discrepancy between the Verbal Comprehension/Perceptual Reasoning and the Processing Speed as my son's WISC showed.
So would he be considered 2E?
This years teacher (4th grade) took some time to get onboard with his diagnosis and to stop calling him defiant and to stop saying that he is making a choice not to finish his work in a timely manner. We do have a 504 plan that allows for extra time on tests and assignments and to have large assigments broken up into sections/allow him to do less problems as long as he gets it (which he does...the psychologist said it takes my son maybe only 5 problems to master something when it takes the rest of the class 20 problems). Things have been better in the last 2 months he has actually been finishing work and focusing better in class since the teacher started to use the strategies listed in the 504 plan but I dread starting over in 5th grade with a new teacher. New teacher = teacher who doesn't understand why someone so obviously smart can struggle so much in school so they try to fit his square peg into a round hole.
