Hi all
New here and feel this is a 'safe' place for me to share and seek advice as an immigrant in NZ and finding it hard to discuss any of this with anyone and have no family on hand.
Welcome Jedsmum,
I'm so pleased that you found us, and proud to stand in for your safe place!
My son (now 14) has a similar discrepancy in Verbal - Processing speed. For him it was a combination of poor fine motor control and slow thinking in the department of 'thinking about things that other people want me to think about' (He is lightening fast at following his own thoughts, but other people are often a bit 'unintuitive' to him.) For my son, this amounted to ADD, in that part of the weakness of ADD is 'guiding the brain to do what other people want, and keeping it there even if it isn't personally satisfying' and around age 12 insisted to try the stimulant medications and has really felt better about himself and 'more himself' since then. I don't jump to the conclusion that your son is 'the same in every way' - I more wanted to introduce myself and lay out one path.
Written expression was very difficult for my son in the elementary school years. Here are some of the things that I tried that seemed to help:
1) Occupational Therapy - they called it dyspraxia and sensory integration
2) Swim team - apparently there is something magic about activities that encourage both hands to cross the midline
3) There were visual tracking problems identified by the developmental optometrist, but not found by the 'regular doctor' we didn't pursue it, but luckily over time there seemed to be some developmental catch up.
4) Learning to type - around age 9 I did a bit of hothousing the typing, and then my son started playing an online game (Runescape) where there was a chat feature, and he got very very fast.
To me, typing is huge, I wouldn't even worry about the content of what is written- except to demonstrate a 'brainstorming picture' and teach the 'first we generate ideas, then we speed write for content, then we edit - until the typewriting is in place, because there is such a bottleneck for any kid like this with getting the ideas out through the handwriting. You could try having him speak into a voice recorder, camcorder or draw a cartoon while he's learning to type, but typing is essential.
5) Every once in a while I'd pull out the printing resources from 'Handwriting without Tears' or even evaluate him on their 'The Print Tool.' - around age 11 that came together nicely.
6) Looked up fun activities that also improved hand-strengthening and tried those from time to time. For a while he was allowed to saw down scrub vegetation near our driveway and found that pretty fascinating. As a female I had to constantly remind myself 'it's normal for males to really enjoy taking things apart and destroying things, even though I don't personally see the attraction.' Even if you don't participate in 'boy scouts' type groups ( and it might be interesting to let him do some of that if it's around with his age mates just to see how the social dynamic works out) they have 'handbooks' chock full of interesting activities.
On the social side - I love the book 'Good Friends are Hard to Find' - read it and follow the advice.
I think if you son is younger, and not already savvy in social interactions, and there is a bunch of 'bright boys' who are particularly competitive, then yes, he could be less popular than he would have been without the gradeskip. On the other hand, he might well be banging this head against the desk if he hadn't had the grade skip. It would be ideal for gifted kids to have classrooms full of other kids of similar level of giftedness (LOG) and similar age - but, if I had to choose, I'd let school be about academics and look for afterschool activities with boys his own age for 'fun.'
Also Read 'Smart Boys' - I don't agree with all of it, but it gives a flavor of how very 'rank order' social life can be for boys. I think it's also possible that the teacher in their classroom has set the tone for this. Worth checking out. When my son was in 2nd grade, his 'deep' questions so exasperated the teacher that she model this dismissive attitude, and the kids sure enough 'learned' it. This was reported to me by one of the school personnel who went to observe the classroom - but not in so many words...obviously.
How to know if the work is to his level?
1) Backpacks don't lie - look at the work that comes home? Is it at all interesting/appropriate to his readiness level to him? Ask around how much time his peers are spending on homework?
2) Do a short bit of afterschooling to see what his readiness level might be
3) Go and observe the classroom and see what it's like in there.
That is about the only way you are going to know if the current classroom is a good fit for his LOG.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
