DD's end of the year papers came home from school and there was some sort of end of the year "how you feel about school" paper. One question was "How did you improve" and DD wrote that she is doing better at writing because she can now write more than 3 sentences in an hour. Not sure how true that even is, but I thought she summed up the problem nicely. On another sheet a question was "What would help you with writing?" and DD wrote "NOTHING would help me with writing." With her, she does not reverse any letters/numbers and doesn't seem to have any physical problems with writing so I don't know if "dysgraphia" is appropriate for her. The neuropsych said it's not and that he said her writing problems are directly related to poor EF. Typing or scribing helps a bit but doesn't solve the problem. Her notebooks are filled with drawings rather than "notes" and the LA teacher said obviously her fine motor ability is not a problem if she is drawing all over everything. In the end, I don't know that it matters "what" exactly it is...because the neuropsych said she should keyboard, use dictation, etc. anyway. I don't think it's a "language" issue, I think it's an EF issue (poor organization, planning, etc). When I looked at the Rey Complex Figure test she did that made it painfully obvious, she wasn't looking at the whole picture and planning an efficient way to copy it. It was done in little bits and pieces, for instance instead of drawing a rectangle with an X through the rectangle, she drew the rectangle in separate parts. So if she had to come up with a story, she would have no concept of how to plan a beginning, middle and end and have the story flow. She can try and probably do an acceptable job, but since she is gifted she knows when something is not a good story. In class she tends to just sit there and look passive aggressive, and pretty much refuses to do the work, she becomes unfocused and off-task doing something else, and it infuriates teachers who don't understand the problem. Teachers would reprimand her, tell her to "focus", get to work, make better choices, etc. and then an anxiety issue developed, because she really does want to please people. Now if anyone uses the word "focus" she freaks out. She will only do tests on the computer, probably because she isn't required to "show work" like you have to on paper (math teacher pretty much insisted on it). Showing work requires showing your steps, and DD doesn't do "steps". She can't organize the problem on the page, even. In her notebook she would have writing on a page, and then 10 pages would be blank and then there would be more writing, upside down.
