Dear Craig, Your son is twice-exceptional-- both gifted with learning difficulty. The discrepancy between his highest and lowest scores is more than two standard deviations. Likely, he has not been diagnosed with a LD because his giftedness compensates for his weakness. This is the case with my son. Please google 2e and look it up on Hoagies gifted page. You need to confer with an educational psychologist or neuropsych as well. Your son may not qualify for an IEP, but he might qualify for an accommodation that will make school more engaging and meaningful (fewer papers due for instance). 2e kids often experience depression because they know they aren't accomplishing what they feel capable of. Does he have trouble getting written work completed on time? Your son scored in the gifted range on verbal comprehension (the 134), but in the average range (just below the norm of 100) on processing speed (which is a measure of pencil and paper eye-hand processing rather than thinking speed) and on working memory (which is how much auditory/verbal data he can manipulate mentally at one time). It is not uncommon for gifted kids to score lower on these two tests, but the scores could reflect a verbal LD or AD/HD. Giftedness is best determined by the first two tests -- Verbal Comprehension and Perceptional Reasoning, especially VC. Your son scored low on PR, which suggests he has difficulty with visual processing-- this is not a big weakness in school, which emphasizes verbal/auditory learning, but might affect performance in higher math, such as geometry and calculus. It is unusual to have such a large difference between verbal and perceptual scores. You need expert advice! But the good news is your son is very bright and will do well as soon as he understands and learns to compensate for his relative weaknesses.
