My sons father and his family are also a nest of LD's, tic disorders, ADHD, and probable asperger's. Dad himself was in the gifted program. He doesn't really have much of any memory for anything, but he thinks he didn't meet the cutoff for total IQ and they allowed him in anyway for certain extremely high splinter skills in mathy stuff. I personally feel very strongly he is either asperger's or maybe an oddly severe ADD. He is a programmer and loves his job and enjoys programming in his spare time as well.
Luckily, so far my son seems to have my amazing memory skills. He also seems to have both of our strengths, my verbal and his dads math. He is definitely smarter than I was at the same age. He's not just a bright kid, he's an often amazing kid. He is honestly better than many adults at logic games and puzzles and we buy him adult level maze books with 3D and multi-level mazes that confuse even his therapists.
Anyway, everyone has helped me to feel much better. It's only a few days until the test, but I have moved onto a calmer place. Playing lots of games with my son in hopes that it gets his brain warmed up for testing. I feel confident this test will show something helpful.
Today we tried out Cart Before the Horse that he had gotten for Christmas but not yet played. He sat and worked at it for over an hour and had a great time. I was happy to see this as that should be about the length of time he will need to concentrate for the test.
On the other hand, it was obvious when he was done. He started standing on his chair and staring in the distance for more time than he spent working at the task. He needs a lot of help moving on though, even if his behavior shows he is clearly done. Hopefully the tester will pick up on that sort of thing and stop the test for the day even if he insists he wants to keep going. His lack of focus is not an indication that the work is too hard, it is just what happens when he runs out of attention.
