Has anyone had a child who they believed was gifted and dyslexic (had many of the characteristics of both) not do well on an IQ test or do less well on multiple IQ tests over time?
I ask because I have often thought that DS12, who was very ahead during his first 5 years of life, may have dyslexia. He had a hard time learning the alphabet, rhyming, and blending letter sounds together when learning to read and now (he did learn to read at 5.5-6) often substitutes words for those that have a similar meaning or makes the text say what he predicts it will say. He misreads small words like a, an, that, what, not, here, there, where, etc. even though he regularly reads much bigger words, He guesses at big words he doesn't know and has to make multiple attempts to sound things out phonetically. He's a terrible speller (although does well on spelling tests) and not a great writer. His reading fluency is poor, although his comprehension is above grade level (sometimes testing quite a bit above grade level). We brought this to the attention of his school in 2nd grade, they gave him IQ and achievement tests, and just said he was "high normal." They did start him in speech therapy for awhile for speech fluency, but we stopped that after a year of no improvement. (BTW: he had done speech therapy for a year when he was two because he didn't talk a ton -- although he did talk at 12 months and immediately used multiple word sentences -- and when he did speak he left off consonants, but this improved to normal when I introduced him to phonics.) After seeing an optomotrist and then a developmental optomotrist, he did VT for a year with some results (text stopping moving on the page, no more headaches when reading). Last winter we had him ability tested again after concerns from his teacher that he might have attention issues because it was taking him so long to finish his work. This time, the IQ results had dropped 20 points. The psych thought this might be due to undiagnosed ADHD-inattentive type so we started him on meds that have helped a little.
But still, I wonder about dyslexia since he has so many characteristics. In addition, it makes no sense to us why a child who was always "performing" several years above age when he was young, and who has a sister who is HG+ and a brother who is MG+ and two parents who are gifted, is having to work so hard to learn. Can undiagnosed dyslexia cause a drop in IQ? I'm prepared to accept he's "just" ND, but he's always just seemed dyslexic to me.
