Mom2MrQ - you mentioned that your ds fits many of the symptoms on the dyscaculia list you linked - but did you mention which specific items you're seeing? I'm sorry if I missed that in the replies, and don't mean to cause you extra work in all of this, but the reason I ask is two-fold: first, there are many symptoms that overlap between different types of diagnoses that are associated with impacts on academics (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia in particular have many shared symptoms). My ds is dysgraphic and does not have dyscalculia, but I can check off quite a few symptoms from that list which I understand to be due to his dysgraphia (for instance, difficulty telling direction). Second - I tend to doubt your ds has dyscalculia based on his WJ-III math achievement scores. The only "low" score (and it's very relative) is the math fluency test - and that's a timed test, which you often see lower scores on for children who have low coding scores on the WISC (also timed). The issue causing both of these scores might be nothing more than slow handwriting speed.
The other thing I'll throw out there to totally confuse the issue with auditory attention - my dd who has vision challenges first *looked* like a child who had auditory challenges - she couldn't stand to be in a room with loud noises (not really all that loud - the tv at regular volume used to cause her to scream and we couldn't even *think* about turning on the vacuum cleaner while she was in the house), she freaked out in places where there were a lot of people and it was *loud*, and when she started in early elementary school she couldn't hear the teacher talk because the background noise in the room sounded so loud to her. She went through an auditory listening therapy program when she was in kindergarten, and that helped her learn how to filter out background noise and also helped her focus on her schoolwork. She continued to seem to have difficulty hearing though because she seemed to be unable to follow multi-step directions and didn't remember things we'd gone over with her etc and was still somewhat sensitive to noises none of the rest of us could hear. All of that went away when.... she had vision therapy... so I suspect at least a small part of what we were attributing to a hearing challenge was actually somehow related to her vision challenge.
Re the auditory attention score on the WJ-III - if the 97 score and the 3rd percentile is what's written on the report you have, I'd check back with the person who scored the test to be sure you have the right number for the 97 - I suspect that #s correct and that the 3rd percentile is the error, but you'll want to know for sure. If the 97 is correct, that's 3 points below 100, which is the mean for the WJ-III - so the score is just right about at the 50th percentile - which is still relatively low compared to the other scores. The other thing I'd do is to google a specific definition (or ask the tester) re what that subtest measures and how it's administered. That should give you a clue to what may be a relative weakness.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - the visual matching subtest on the WJ-III is very similar to coding on the WISC, so the relatively low scores there make sense... and both of those could definitely be vision-related.
pps - this may be tmi and hopefully won't sound disgusting and rude or whatever... but... my dd who had the listening therapy also has incredibly hard ear wax... it slowly builds up in way that we really can't see it and she's had to have it cleaned out at her ped's twice... cleaned out in a big way... and her hearing has improved dramatically both times
Definitely not the full issue she was dealing with, but if you haven't had that checked and you're worried about hearing issues, it might be worth having your ped look at. I may come back and erase this so that my dd never knows I wrote it lol! But fwiw, her ear wax is different than my other kids' wax. Can't really figure out how to explain it, and I'm definitely *NOT* posting a picture.. but.. a picture would help to explain. YUCK... that's the last you'll hear on that subject from me
