Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ADHD inattentive type?

I don't remember, so can you remind us again - was the focus on testing initially due to obvious signs of needing more advanced work, or due to concerns about behaviors or other issues and learning she was gifted was an unexpected surprise?


I wouldn't put too much weight into this one behavior - all three of my kids do this, all three have wildly divergent personalities, none are genetically related, and none of them have ADHD diagnoses, and all of them remember every detail of what is read to them.


I don't have direct experience with ADHD, but my ds who has Developmental Coordination Disorder was *incredibly* disorganized when he was your dd's age (and beyond). His completed homework was constantly disappearing into the ether at school in spite of me verifying it was in his backpack when he hopped out of the car at school and in spite of his teachers having very easy-to-follow systems for returning homework and having reminders in place. What helped our ds with organizational skills was providing him with a lot of structure, daily oversight, and repeating repeating repeating until he was ready to do it on his own. It took about two years, but it really did work. You can provide the structure and oversight in different ways (school can help, you can help as a parent, you can hire help)... but the key is to just keep in mind that being organized is a skill and not all children develop the ability easily and at the same time that it is expected in school. School supports that helped our ds were teachers who were very repetitive in the types of assignments that they asked for - for example, a math teacher who assigned homework every night, and expected it to be returned in exactly the same place at the start of class each day. Social studies was more difficult because the assignments were more randomly assigned with varying due dates - but starting with little successes such as the math work helped ds realize that he was capable of being organized, which helped him stick with it until the rest came more "naturally". Our ds' school didn't give him enough intense support to help with this type of EF, but I'd read about another parent who hired a college student to pick her child up at school at the end of each day and go through his daily homework assignments for each class to make sure he had them written down, make sure he had the books he needed to complete them etc. I didn't hire a tutor but did this same thing for my ds essentially - I met him after school, reviewed what happened that day in each class and what his homework assignments were, made sure he had his books, did a locker check with him etc. He didn't like it, but I told him that it wasn't a choice - we were going to do this until he was successfully turning in all his homework, and then we could negotiate the daily checks. After a few weeks of that type of oversight, ds saw that it was actually really helpful. We kept at it for all of 6th grade and the beginning of 7th, when ds felt like he was ready to take on the responsibility himself and I pulled back to once-a-week checks and after a few more months was able to stop the checks completely (although we still review what happened in class each day and what his homework assignments are each day - but now it's more the type of "what's up" discussion and "how do I need to plan to be sure I don't infringe on the time you need for homework tonight" rather than me helping him figure out how to stay organized.

This may all sound a bit simple, but I think it's important to just realize - my other kids didn't need this type of support. The organizational skills they needed developed naturally as they were expected of them in school each year. For ds, it was a huge gap and it required a *lot* of repeating and structure - but it also was the type of skill that can be learned with repetition and structure.


I am not questioning her ADHD diagnosis, but also wouldn't necessarily use this as a data point *for* diagnosing ADHD. I paid a lot of attention to handwriting when my ds was younger because he was dysgraphic, and I also spent a lot of time in class as a volunteer during writing workshop. I saw a *lot* of kids in elementary school who would rush through writing assignments and their handwriting looked horrid when they rushed, but looked great when they took the time to focus on it - which they usually did during the type of class assignment where they were supposed to be producing neat handwriting, but not during group projects or during writing workshops where they were focused on creating stories etc. That was one of the most difficult things we had to advocate through as the parent of a dysgraphic child - teachers would point out constantly that the "messy" handwriting my ds had was not all that different looking from most of the other kids' in class when they didn't focus on neatness.


This makes me wonder if it's all about ADHD. Was the psych that you saw recently a neuropsych or educational psychologist, or a psych who specifically diagnoses ADHD? The reason I ask is there are different types of memory, and if the primary diagnostic tool that you've had to assess memory is the WISC, it's jmo but the WISC seems (to me, just a parent, not a professional) - to have limited diagnostic value re some types of memory challenges. One of my dds has a relatively severe challenge with associative memory and it doesn't show up at all on her WISC profile, but instead shows clearly on the WJ-III Test of Cognitive Abilities and on other types of testing. Please note - I'm *not* recommending you seek other types of testing, just curious if the eval your dd had was a comprehensive neuropsych type eval, or a psych looking at "does she or doesn't she" have ADHD. The reason for the curiosity is that symptoms overlap between ADHD and various other challenges. My dd who has the associative memory challenge doesn't do exactly what you've mentioned above, but has similar types of odd can't remember things that seem obvious behaviors.


I wouldn't put too much weight on one anomalous test score - unless she repeatedly scored lower on the state testing year after year. Anything might have happened on any one day that would make one test invalid. Instead I'd look at all the repeated scores she has through the years and take those as meaningful.


I wouldn't panic over this - for two reasons. You have forewarning that there may be a challenge for your dd re this, so you can start putting supports in place now and start helping her develop the skills now. The second reason - this may not be the same in your schools, but we found in our schools that most 5th/6th grade classes had a lot of built-in organizational supports simply because the teachers were teaching *all* the students how to be organized as they prepped for middle and high school organizational demands. It wasn't enough for a child with an organizational challenge in and of itself, but it was also much more structured re organization than you might expect and it was helpful.


One thing that has helped my 2e children is to talk about how we all have *different* strengths and different challenges. Also give her details about the nitty-gritty of specific types of skills - I'm guessing the "fast brain" the tester referred to is Processing Speed? If that's it, explain what Processing Speed really measures, and what brain skills are needed for remembering to take socks of when you step into the shower - they are basically two entirely different things. Humor also helps - leaving socks on when getting into the shower is the type of thing my ds with DCD does a lot of, and for him it's related to his DCD. It can be frustrating, but these are also the types of things we can choose to laugh at. The world isn't going to fall apart if a pair of socks gets wet. The world might *feel* likes it's falling apart when our kids feel different among peers due to their challenges - and that's something that isn't funny - but having a bit of a sense of humor about these things where it doesn't mock or cause harm does seem to help develop a sense of resiliency and "it's not all about (whatever)" in our kids which in turn helps with self-confidence and helps with taking their focus off what they can't do as well as others.



Do you have a sense of what specifically she is angry about or angry at? Is it the actual challenges she has or is it the attention being paid to them at the moment? Is it school, is it home, is it academic challenges, is it just being different - is it being different than peers, than siblings, etc?


I think that sounds fairly typical for an ADHD WISC profile - but my question would be how much lower? Greater than 1.5 SD or less? Our ds has a gap in WM on his first WISC also (given at 8 years old), and his neuropsych had no concerns about it - she explained WM as something that is more "on/off" than the other types of abilities measured on the WISC, and also that it is the one area of the WISC that she sees scores increase on as some children mature. When ds was re-tested on the WISC three years later, his WM score had gone up considerably without any specific interventions.


While it might be ADHD, this type of gap between WISC and WJ-III can also indicate LDs or other types of challenges. Was there any type of testing given by the second psych other than ADHD-specific tests/surveys? Was there any pattern to the type of differences in scores on the WJ-III - were some high and some low, or were all the subtest scores lower than expected? How much lower than her ability scores?


ITA with DeeDee on this - don't wait for fall, make a written request now.


I found with my kids that the more I learned about their specific learning challenges, the more it helped me have patience. I'm not a patient person! But understanding them better absolutely helped with it Re feeding the fish, make it as simple and as one-step as possible. Or make that chore someone else's responsibility and give her a different responsibility that is simple, one-step and that she can handle with reminders. Don't expect her to do things without some type of reminder - just add that "reminder" or support in as part of the task (from your perspective). When she's got the one-step task down and is taking care of it independently, add in a second step etc. Stepping stones essentially

Hang in there,

polarbear