Originally Posted by polarbear
Originally Posted by blackcat
She also resists copying anything, doesn't like to show work for math, doesn't like to take notes. I think all of this is also related to EF and slow processing. Her copy speed/fluency is somewhat delayed for her age (the number of words she can copy per minute). You can find copy speed tests online and try giving them to her (if you can't find it let me know, I can find it). You can also google CBM written expression problems/writing fluency where you give her a starter sentence/phrase and then time her and see how she falls in terms of norms. DD tends to sit there blankly, says she has no idea what to write, and comes out a couple grade levels delayed despite having solidly average writing scores on tests like the WIAT/WJ-ACH and TOWL-4 contrived writing. She completely bombed spontanteous writing on the TOWL where she had to look at a picture and write a "story". She didn't even write 40 words in 15 min. which is similar to what I saw on the CBM probes I gave her at home. Of course, the school never cared about any of my writing samples. The one classroom writing sample they found, she wrote 2 sentences, but those two sentences, I guess, were sophisticated sentences (probably because her VCI is 99th percentile). It's a case of giftedness masking a disability. She is also able to "cover up" her ADHD symptoms pretty well when she wants to, making me look crazy. She did great on the CCPT (computerized test for ADHD) so it's hard to tell how much of her issue is ADHD and how much of it is processing issues. I know that stimulant medication helps her though.

Blackcat has most likely already heard this from me 900 times, but I'll repost it once again here for people who are new to the forum - the descriptions of blackcat's dd's challenges above are very very very similar to the challenges my ds experienced (still experiences in to a certain degree). These were, for my ds, related to expressive language, and the very very very *best* therapy/help we found to address these challenges was speech therapy for expressive language.

polarbear

I'll add to this as well as I have also DS with dyspraxia and accompanying dysgraphia (Polarbear was a huge help for me with my son!) My son has/had same problems until the actual act of physical writing was/is removed - i.e. when he can dictate or type his work. His processing on WISC was in single digits but his verbal IQ was sky high. He had terrible anxiety until he was diagnosed and receives accommodations for writing (i.e., scribe and technology). School kept saying he had adhd and his writing would probably get better if I were to medicate him. He never did get an ADHD diagnosis (although I didn't really pursue one) and I have never medicated him. He ended up with a dyspraxia and dysgraphia Dx. He is doing extraordinarily well with accommodations for writing and poor processing at school. He's very much like Polarbear's son except he does not seem to have the expressive language aspect/issue - that is, he has the processing and actual/physical writing issues (as in can not write letters going the proper way/direction, reverses letters and numbers, takes way too long in forming numbers and letters (or any symbols) by hand, etc. He looked a bit autistic when his anxiety was so bad (although he scored quite well on the social reasoning WISC subtest). He was rigid, inflexible (becoming increasingly so in ways that didn't make sense to writing like insisting on certain colors, certain things, etc., became phobic, etc.) He was really acting out ... Now that the anxiety is gone because his true problem has been identified and accommodated for, he's great. All of that is gone. Well, he is still pretty intense but I think that is a gifted thing smile

Last edited by Irena; 06/09/15 10:27 AM.