Polarbear, thank you SO much for your thoughtful responses! I really appreciate it.
Can you tell us what made you suspect ADHD?
He gets distracted very easily--for example, I have to tell him repeatedly to do something at home if there is anything else going on that he can see or hear. He has an extremely hard time focusing on things he's not interested in. It takes him much longer to complete homework than it should--even things he's good at like math. When we're at a doctors appointment or something, when the doctor and I have to talk, he has a hard time just reading and not trying to engage with us or saying he's bored. He interrupts constantly, even with repeated instruction to wait to start talking if someone already is.
I know ADHD is misdiagnosed sometimes, and I went back and forth repeatedly in my mind wondering if I should mention it to the doctor. He has taken outside classes of interest to him and not had one bit of trouble.
What did the psych who did the testing at 7 years old say about the NEPSY results? What did he/she have to say about the ADHD diagnosis - what testing/behavior surveys/etc was taken into consideration to come up with it?
The only thing the psych (she actually just tested him at almost 9 years old) mentioned was working memory score. She didn't talk about the NEPSY results at all. She used SB5, NEPSY II, BASC-2 (teacher, parent, and self-report), and VABS II.
That's a really large discrepancy in scores - did the psych have an explanation for it? You see discrepancies like this in kids with dysgraphia - have you seen any potential dysgraphic symptoms? Did your ds' NEPSY tests (or other psych tests) include anything called "finger tapping"?
The psych had that report from the OT, but never mentioned it. In the report, the OT noted that the discrepancy could be causing his trouble with writing, but she never said that to me or offered any deeper thoughts on it (I only received this report when I requested it to give to the psych). None of the evaluations he's had done have included finger tapping. I actually have asked the OT and developmental pediatrician about dysgraphia, but they have dismissed it because his handwriting is pretty age-appropriate and he can copy writing just fine. He had a natural pencil grip as a toddler (starting at around 14 months), but around age 6 or 7 started holding it in his fist. I don't know if this is significant at all.
Your ds also had a low score (not just relatively low) on "word generation semantic" on the NEPSY - this is the type of skill my ds had a lot of difficulty with when he was first diagnosed with an expressive language disorder.
He actually had an evaluation with a SLP also when he was 7, but she didn't use any formal tests. She diagnosed him with some kind of expressive language disorder based on informal observation, but never gave me any details about this (Again, I actually didn't even know he was technically diagnosed until I got the report to give to the psych recently).
He received speech therapy to work on a dysfluency issue that appeared a few years ago where he started adding lots of "mm" and "uh" between his words, as well as conversation skills. She discharged him from that after a few months, saying the disfluency is probably just his brain working faster than his mouth. He still has it, and other doctors and therapists have disagreed with that explanation but can't offer one of their own.
