Hi DeHe

I think I have a carbon copy of your DS living at my house. My DS 4 was tested a couple of months back on the WPPSI at almost 4.5 becasue we were having some behavioural issues and wanted to pinpoint if his smarts were causing the problems. His scores were very similar to your DS - super high on verbal and performance and resoundingly average on processing speed mainly due to fine motor. We were blown away by his scores but in hindsight it made so much sense of the 4 years of exhaustion we had trying to keep up with him.

The psych commented that the gap is probably causing him a lot of frustration - we had the exact same comment on writing his amazing stories down. She didn't recommend OT yet because as Dottie says pencil issues are very typical for 4 year old boys. I've also read that something like 70% of highly gifted kids test as average in processing speed - there's a lot of debate about whether it is a true measure of giftedness.

The psych did give us some suggestions (and there are lots of excellent ones on this board) such as getting him to type up his stories on the computer, spending 10 minutes a day doing pencil practice (he holds the pencil in a peculiar way and is so stubborn about changing it). Not necessarily practising letters if he doesn't want to - drawing maps is a favourite. I think it still comes down a bit to his perfectionism - he can put together lego kits designed for 10 year olds without a problem and that requires pretty good fine motor skills. So we've also been taking him to the art gallery and talking about how not everything is perfect, how people represent things differently and he's certainly far more comfortable with how he draws now. It has also fed into that thirst for knowledge - he's becoming quite the expert on art genres.

On pre-K we had similar worries so we shared his testing with his teacher. We agreed that school would focus on his fine motor skills and some social skills - he was struggling with other kids 'ruining' his creations. He's really loved it but it's only 2 days a week and play based learning. I'm really worried about K though.

Last edited by freya; 08/10/10 06:24 PM. Reason: lots of typos