Any suggestions for follow ups with the psychologist?
What type of psychologist is this? My suggestion is that if this is not a psych who specializes in either neuropsychology or educational psych evaluations, seek out another psychologist or request follow-up testing through school. You have IQ scores, which show the gap in processing speed, reading achievement tests (Gates-MacGinitie) which show reading comprehension in the range of his ability, and you have achievement testing showing a large discrepancy between ability and achievement, which most likely correlates to the dip in processing speed on the WISC. What you don't have is additional testing to determine what is causing that dip in processing speed.
I haven't heard the term "relative dysgraphia" before, but can tell you that neuropsychs typically use additional tests and data to confirm that a child has dysgraphia and to determine what the cause is (same for other types of LDs, dysgraphia is simply the easiest for me to explain lol!). For dysgraphia, a neuropsychologist will look at handwriting samples and observe the child while he is writing, plus administer tests that assess visual motor integration as well as tests such as the NEPSY which measure various neurocognitive skills. A neuropsych eval will also include recommendations for remediation and accommodations if a challenge is uncovered, and often will include specific recommendations re where to seek different types of help (private vs school).
I also noted in previous posts that you mentioned your ds has good fine motor skills - dysgraphia isn't directly a measure of fine motor skills. Many children with dysgraphia are able to draw incredibly well or complete fine motor skills tasks easily - my fine-motor dysgraphic ds was drawing amazingly detailed pictures at an early age and creating life-like tiny clay figures even when he was in pre-school. Dysgraphia is a glitch in the ability to develop automaticity of handwriting.
I don't look at tests such as WJ Achievement tests as measures of actual achievement, I see them as measures of independent skill sets compared to typically developing children. It's quite possible to appear to be achieving at an average or above average level in the classroom yet be extremely challenged in one specific area of functioning, especially in early elementary. My dd who has a reading challenge went undiagnosed for years because her strong abilities allowed her to compensate for the one very specific area in which she was challenged.
You've noted that your ds has anxiety - I wouldn't be surprised if the anxiety is secondary to any challenges he may have that are reflected in his relatively low achievement scores (relatively low compared to his ability scores). My ds had extreme anxiety prior to his dysgraphia diagnosis and receiving appropriate accommodations at school - but once those accommodations were in place and we were able to explain to him the reason he was struggling, the anxiety went away. Same thing (sorta) happened with my dyslexic dd. Neither have needed meds to control anxiety - they needed testing to determine what was going on re the challenges that impacted them in school, and advocacy to get appropriate accommodations and remediation in place.
Best wishes as you sort through this -
polarbear
