Hi there! I was hoping I could find some guidance in your amazing community. I realize this is very loooooong but I am new to all of this and just can't seem to figure out what, if anything, I should be doing for my son. He just turned 9 and is already one year ahead in public school. He has always had what I believe is a gifted way of learning. He began to read very early, almost overnight and on his own, has always read over his grade level (at the beginning of this year in 4th grade he was assessed at school to be 7.5 grade level reading). We have always noticed that he often absorbs information from his surroundings and remembers it. At a very young age it was dinosaurs, he could remember scientific names and attributes and regularly just blew us away. Last year it was football, stats and players and scores. He can still rattle off who won what college game last year etc. Now it is history, facts, famous figures, battles etc. and space. The last couple of years since he entered public school, his teachers have mentioned that he often spaces out and needs to be redirected and his writing skills are lacking. The school administered a small-group Cogat test when he was 7 and he scored a 94 for age and 91 for grade in the verbal section and was above age but at grade level on Quantitative and Nonverbal. Due to the "distraction" type behavior we also were noticing at home, we had him psychologically tested. He was given a WISC IV last year at age 8 and his full scale IQ was 121 with low scatter. He was also diagnosed with ADHD (which confuses me with the low scatter) at that time and has also since been diagnosed with Convergence Insufficiency, an eye disorder that causes him to see double when reading or doing near work like writing. He compensates for the CI by using an enormous amount of mental energy to dissect the overlapping images, or mentally shuts off the vision in one eye. I personally think he is more ADD because he is a mostly quiet, calm, shy kid. I think he may be misdiagnosed. When they tested him at the Vision Therapist office at age 8, and he showed a logic and form reasoning ability of a 14 year old. We will be doing vision therapy soon but have chosen not to medicate for ADHD at this time. He constantly complains about being bored at school for 6 hours every day and is scoring near 100% on all of his tests. He mostly falls down when it comes to expressing himself in written form. Which makes it extremely difficult to have work samples for gifted program consideration along with his low IQ score. I tried to advocate with what information I have for differentiation and his teacher says if he needs additional levels of work, of course they will challenge him but his teacher doesn't indicate that he does and also keeps saying "he isn't even in my top reading group". At our last meeting she even said to me "why don't you just let him be a kid" when I asked if they thought it would be appropriate to supplement at home because I wouldn't be referring him for the gifted program. The administrators at his school feel that with his executive functioning issues, he would have a hard time keeping up in an accelerated program. I'm not sure I agree, I think with the same accommodations they make for his ADHD in the regular classroom he could succeed but I would prefer to supplement him at home than fight that fight based on the tentative position I feel I have. I know he has to be very near the top for reading, math, and social studies. Once he is taught something, or hears something, that is it. It is there for him, it mostly only takes once. Supplementation at home is an issue because after being in school all day he views it as additional work. The one piece that seems to be missing in regards to giftedness is that unquenchable thirst for knowledge that drives the child into self learning. Although he does take initiative to learn on his own when he is interested, he has a short attention span. We are now considering home schooling but that is a huge decision for us. As of now our son is sitting back in school, not being challenged, and not putting any effort into achieving. The school, of course, thinks he is doing well and his needs are met. His suite of variables doesn't seem to add up to identifiable giftedness on paper but the more reading I do about giftedness, the more a-ha! moments I have that lead me to truly believe there is something there. Is it possible that the disabilities could skew results of the WISC IV? Is there such a thing as mildly gifted? Does anyone have any comments on what they would do with my kid if they were me? Suggestions about retesting or homeschooling? I am new at all of this. Thank you!!
