Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help understanding recent testing results

They did not give me a GAI, but maybe it will be in the written report?

As far as the ASD thing goes, DS was diagnosed at age 2.5 and we have been working for years to have him properly reevaluated and get rid of ASD if he in fact does not have it. But it's just on everything and causes everyone to look at him through ASD lenses and, IMO, you see what you are expecting to see. No test has ever definitively shown ASD. Even at 2.5 he was borderline on 2 of the 4 tests they gave and came up as not on the spectrum on the other 2. He was mostly diagnosed based on observation and parent interview. I will freely admit he was one weird 2 year old!

The lower verbal scores are very much what I am most worried about. I know that most gifted programs are so focused on high verbal kids and writing and that is likely to be a problem for DS going forward as he needs gifted services to be happy and those same services focus primarily on his weakest area. I'm thinking these results explain why DS is such a math beast though. I'm thinking you couldn't get a much mathier profile!

I have been considering auditory testing for a while, just don't have the money right now to pay for anything insurance won't cover. Maybe over the summer when we don't have the school payments each month I will be able to swing it. DS does often seem to have a hard time understanding what we are saying. I get a lot of "what?" when I talk to him, but that could also be an attention things with the ADHD. He does often say new words incorrectly when they are introduced to him. I can figure out which word he is trying to use, but only because he has a lot of the sounds right and using the context of the sentence. I'm not sure if this is a memory issue or if he's hearing us wrong to begin with.

I had always considered verbal skills to be an area of strength for DS. He started talking early, around 5 months, phrases around 1, complex sentences by 2 (I want to take a walk in the forest just like Harold and the Purple Crayon ((22 months)), over 400 words by 18 months (yes, I kept a list :P), knew letters around 18 months and started reading and spelling cvc words by 2, reading very early readers at 3, chapter books (MTH) late 4/early 5, seems to have great fact retention from text that he reads, follows written instructions well, has an extensive vocabulary, etc. I didn't expect a 155 on verbal for sure, but I thought high 120's to low 130's would be pretty accurate. At 118 he is going to have a really hard time in gifted language arts as it's honestly a whole standard deviation below gifted range!