So I got the final report from DS' excellent tester today. I finally found a gifted/LD specialist in my area from the DYS elists who REALLY gets 2e kids. This report is 18 single spaced pages and exceptionally thorough. The tester administered several tests for dyslexia and compiled all of his prior psychoeducational testing and school achievement tests as well as the new audiology/SLP testing and developmental optometrist report.
DS is dyslexic as well as dysgraphic, as I suspected, but has fairly pronounced dyslexia masked less and less successfully by his cognitive abilities. He has severe audio processing issues (the tester noted many instances where he misheard words or sounds in the one-on-one testing environment), had ongoing attentional struggle during testing (she asked that he come without his ADHD med administered) as well as recently diagnosed severe visual convergence and tracking problems.
This solves quite a bit of the procrastination and deceptiveness mystery for me. DS is cognitively filling visual and auditory holes all day long as well as struggling mightily with reading, writing and attention. The real question is, how has he learned anything at all? We have just started speech language therapy for the CAPD and vision therapy but he also needs extensive remedial reading work.
I need to set an appointment with the tester to ask many questions but, wow, I am sort of overwhelmed. With all the remedial work, how will he have time to do school also? He already doesn't have time to do school with JUST school. I am going to have to seriously recalibrate plans for the summer-and maybe his education in the near term? I don't know but now I understand why he hates school so much anyway. My poor guy.
