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Clarification: Was he tested by a PT or an OT? PTs generally don't deal with fine motor or visual integration. Gross motor is their area.

If he has dyslexia/dysgraphia, it is very likely that it is being masked at this point in his development, because of the shallowness of grade-level expectations, and his high cognitive capacity for compensation. If I recall, you also said you worked with him using a structured phonics-based program (TBT, All About Reading?) on reading, which would be the beginning stages of a dyslexia remediation/intervention, which might also mask an LD as far as scores go. If something like a CTOPP or PAL-II has not been administered, I would suggest that that should figure into the next round of testing, as they are more sensitive to the specific processing deficits of dyslexia/dysgraphia than standard cognitive and achievement batteries are. And if they were done, some more subtest analysis may be in order,to look for compensated dyslexic profiles.

I like this and think I will try it. The groaning really escalates when I ask him to redo a letter. He will now self correct before bringing to me, so pointing out the good ones (and why) may be a better approach.

This is why we got testing when his teacher started bringing up retention, as I know if there is a LD present, retention isn't going to do anything to resolve that. But since I haven't really been working with his writing and I don't have confidence the school did that either, shouldn't I try this first? As in, I'm not sure anyone ever really taught him to write or ever looked at him while he was writing to instruct him how to form his letters in the first place

ETA -- after asking him, DS claims that I am the first person to actually go over each letter and tell him how to write them properly. He says they didn't do it in K, and not in his preschool either. I think there might have been some at his preschool but I'm not certain.

He was tested by PT, not OT. She suggested dyspraxia as a diagnosis consideration which was rejected by ed psych (who stated she was comfortable/familiar with diagnosis).

He did have a CTOPP administered for dyslexia. We used to use AAR but have now abandoned it for explode the code as AAR tended to be too tedious with the reading lists. I also teach phonics on the go (as we come across words that have a new phonics rule I teach them (-ight, -ice, etc), instead of a certain order. I try to let him read books to me that he knows the rules of decoding with, but don't always find easy readers easily. The school has an "integrated method", which allows reading based on pictures and guessing words after decoding the first and last letters, context clues, etc. But DS tends to just randomly guess words if there are too many picture clues and not enough phonics rules.

Any recs on looking into task-avoidant (sp?) perfectionism? I think this would be something to look into in general for us.

In a nutshell, procrastination may stem from fear of failure (where failure is defined as anything short of perfection). There are scholarly articles on task-avoidant perfectionism which may be found by internet search.

For recommendations, a book which seems to understand perfectionism very well and which many find supportive is "What To Do When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough". Another book you might like is "Perfectionism: What's Bad About Being Too Good". These books show readers how to free themselves from thought patterns which may not be serving them well. While insightful, these books are written gently for kids, in a style that is fun and engaging. Parents may wish to read with their child, and/or pre-read and decide if a resource may be a helpful tool for their child.

Here is an article from the Davidson Database, Interview with Thomas Greenspon on Perfectionsim: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10790.aspx

Wishing you, your family, and your son all the best with this.