Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Test Results - gifted or not?

Thanks Grinity, the Frankel book looks like a lot of what we've already tried (and failed at) but I'll pick up a copy anyway. I'm going to talk with her regular pediatrician too.

I really appreciate all the great suggestions. It's so isolating to be in this situation with nobody that understands to talk to.

I have ADD and did not have poor school performance in grade school, it wasn't until junior high that I started struggling due to organization issues, and it wasn't until college that all hell broke loose,and I ended up failing out my junior year. I did however end up going back to school a few years later and graduating. I would still look into a possible ADD diagnosis.

I had my own doctor tell me virtually the same thing about 6 weeks ago, that I can't have ADHD because I'm a calm, functioning adult who isn't bouncing off the walls. I think the over-diagnosis for whatever reason is doing a real disservice to those who may truly have it.

'm wondering about the social question....
1) Do you ever see her act in ways that would scare off the other kids?
2) if so is does it look like a poor fit or like poor skills
3) Does your dd wish people liked her more?
4) Has your dd been able to positively modify her behavior even a little?
5) Does your daughter have a view of what friendship is that age appropriate to the people who are availible to her?
6) Does your child actually like the other kids?

We love to hear you think.
Grinity

1- yes
2- hard to say - she shares interests with some of the kids in her class, but doesn't understand that they dont always want to talk about them, and she doesn't have good listening or conversation skills
3- absolutely
4- if she is drilled beforehand she can modify a little, but as soon as she becomes engrossed in her activity it all goes out of the window
5- I'm not sure. There are kids in her class that have been friends since preschool, and a lot of SAHMs in our small town so there are lots of playdates and extracurriculars that they take together. But I don't know if she sees the differences between how they interact and how she interacts with other kids.
6- she really wants to be friends with a few of them.

There was one girl she became close with at summer day camp last year, we really tried to help grow the friendship by having play dates and letting them take tumbling class together, but at the playdates my daughter would just do her own thing and get upset when her friend didn't want to do what she wanted to do. At tumbling her friend turned out to be really good at it, whereas mine put virtually no effort in and stood around trying to chat to the other kids the whole time (about stuff they weren't interested in).

We haven't had a playdate in a while as the mom seems to be avoiding me and the tumbling teacher kind of made it clear that she wasn't welcome for the second session of classes. I think that as the other girl is growing up and realizing my daughter's behavior is kind of immature and annoying she is less interested in being friends with her. I think the other parents also thought she was pretty rude in their home and didn't appreciate it.

I, too, have a girl with inattentive type ADD who I was told by many could not have ADD. She, too, performs well above average in school and has some areas even on group tests where her performance is outstanding (got 800s -- as high as the test goes -- on a few parts of the CSAPs [Colorado NCLB test] such as vocab, algebra, etc.). We even had one of the psychs who saw her say that it wasn't ADD and she was someone w/ experience in LDs. The one who recognized it was a psych with experience in giftedness and higher levels of giftedness.

I have two thoughts based on what you've posted thus far. Was comprehension a low outlier on the Verbal index of the WISC? It definitely was for my dd. I've been told that a low comprehension score is more common in ADD as well as ASD. My dd is very, very socially aware -- to the point that she trims herself to fit in so well that almost no one knows the true kiddo -- and I am pretty confident that she is not on the autism spectrum. However, your last post in which you mention that your dd's behavior appeared young and that she does things that scare off other kids had me wondering if you'd considered aspergers.

I found Dr. Webb's book, Misdiagnosis & Dual diagnoses of gifted children & adults, to be really helpful in seeing whether my dd was 2e or just underperforming due to poor fit. She was the opposite of every single thing he listed for a gifted child who didn't have ADD. I believe that book also has a chapter on ASD if that is something to rule out as well.

I was coming to post something very much like this. (Actually, I was coming to see what the answers were, because thought I had posted questions about it last night, but apparently not...my post must have vanished into the ether.)

Did the evaluator administer the GADS or ADOS?

This isn't the same as liking her friends, sadly. Wanting to be friends is, to my mind, like wanting the the coolest cell phone. Humans enjoy social status. Then there is wanting the be included, again a normal drive. Actually enjoying the company of a potential friend, though, that's a different story, yes?

If you told me that she get's frustrated with agemates but plays very interactivly and loves spending time with older kids, I'd think, 'oh typical gifted kid'

But telling me that she parallel plays, expects the other kids to join her particular style of play, sort of makes me think of other sorts of social difficulties. MisDiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis is a good book to help you sort out your thoughts.

Diangosing any social difficulty in girls is so much more challenging. Girls tend to be less noisy about their deficiencies than boys. ((shrug)) And there is that reality that 100 doctors might have 100 individual opinions.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Verbal comprehension on the WISC was 126/96%. In the report they described her as very articulate, and having complex and mature vocabulary skills. But this was when she was talking to them, rather than to other kids. She is very happy with older children and adults, or with younger kids, but not kids of her own age. I think it's because older children and adults make allowances for her, and younger kids don't know better.

I saw Dr Webb at a lecture in the fall and he talked about 2E and misdiagnosis. I'm definitely going to have someone look into this further I think. We also discussed autism with the dr because I have a brother with it, but his is from FragX and I am not a carrier. Perhaps I will have the pedi take a look at this too.

We're not looking for the "Verbal Comprehension Index" score, but the score on the particular subtest called "Comprehension".

The WISC-IV subtests are:

Similarities
Vocabulary
Comprehension
(Word Reasoning)
(Information)

Similarities, Vocabulary, and Comprehension together make up the Verbal Comprehension Index.


Block Design
Picture Concepts
Matrix Reasoning
(Picture Completion)

Block Design, Matrix Reasoning, and Picture Concepts together make up the Perceptual Reasoning Index.


(Arithmetic)
Digit Span
Letter-Number Sequencing

Digit Span and Letter-Number Sequencing make up the Working Memory Index

Coding
Symbol Search
(Cancellation)

Coding and Symbol Search make up the Processing Speed Index.

()= optional or substitute subtest

We were asking about the breakdown of these individual subtest scores.