Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Just came back from meeting with the nero-psyc

I'm a bit overwhelmed, just had a conversion with psychologist about my DS15's testing results. The psychologist doesn't have a written report for me yet. Partly because she has another test she wants to do, but DS is at camp so I can't get him back to her for a few weeks. Her overall take is that he clearly is a 2-E kid, and that he has severe anxiety problems that get in the way of schooling and testing.

One thing I was surprised by is how low his overall WISC-IV results came out. I don't have all the numbers at this time, he had what she called very superior scores for the math/visual part. (137) And very superior scores of most of the english/language part. But Average scores in social comprehension, working memory and processing speed. These are 2 standard deviations lower than everything else enough she thinks we should qualify for an IEP based on this. He also did very well on the achievement tests doing a 98% in math, and above 90% in reading comprehension. But as expected fell apart completely when asked to write an essay. And surprisingly when she did more tests on his memory skill, did very well on all the sub-tests.

The testing still left the written language disorder still a possibility. But because of his high anxiety around writing she wasn't able to tease that detail out. Along with the anxiety it's clear that interest makes a HUGE difference and clearly significantly affected the testing. His Executive Skills were surprisingly very high, but she suggest this is only when the task is for very well defined tasks. But his did have problems with Pragmatic Judgement. The other big issue was his social skills and emotional stability. After looking at all the tests she considers him borderline ASD, and want to do another test to see if she can get more information. It's not clear if certain symptoms were a result of his anxiety or symptoms of ASD. He meets just enough that she could write such a diagnosis if it's what we really want.

One suggestion is we look at talking with a psychiatrist and look into the idea of medication for his anxiety/depression. I need to talk with his psychologist before we go that route. (I have someone else doing this testing.) Last week while on vacation, I talked with a friend who has a kid with severe school anxiety and medications have really helped them. I'm going to have to look at this further I must admit it makes me a bit uncomfortable.

She also had a LONG list of what would be helpful for him, working with his psychologist, working with the education therapist, more social skills class, cognitive behavior therapy. Honestly there isn't time to do all this, and classes and homework, and his fun/social activities like band and robotics, and Aikido. At some point we are going to have to pick and choose.

A few questions that I can maybe figure out by googling. Can anyone explain more what working memory is? And more detail about what Executive Skills are?

A significantly lower score in working memory is one indication for calculating General Ability Index (GAI) as a supplement to Full Scale IQ (FSIQ). Find each occurrence of "working memory" in the 49-page PDF for info.

National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) is one of several websites with information about Executive Function.

EF: Peg Dawson's website and books:

http://www.smartbutscatteredkids.com/

In short, mental regulation and organization skills.

Working memory can be compared to your mental scratch paper--how much data a person can hold in his/her head, manipulate, and then either send to long-term storage or use to produce an external product.

Thanks I've seen the book before but not read it, I will put it on my list. There is just so much to read. The odd thing is the testing showed his executive skills as excellent, despite the anecdotal evidence. This is why the tester thought that he was good at things that were limited in scope.

I am posting as a fly-by at the moment, so quick without time for detail - and I hate to suggest something that remotely seems to add anything else to what probably already seems like an overwhelmingly long list of to-dos… but… you might want to consider adding in some further testing to help understand the root of the writing issues. An SLP evaluation (for expressive language) and the TOWL (Test of Written Language). You can probably ask the school to provide both of these.


Just out of curiosity - how was the tester able to clearly determine it was interest? I find with my ds that many times when he appears to not be interested it is actually rooted in his learning challenges and resulting anxiety. Unless it's something as totally clear-cut as he's passionate about subject A and totally doesn't care about ever learning about subject B. On testing like this, though, I think it's a real possibility that something that looks like disinterest or disengagement might actually mean there's a hidden struggle there and detaching is the way the student has learned to cope.



Prioritizing will also help - and you can ask for input on this from the person who did the testing. I think it's really important to leave room for fun and also for academics that *aren't* challenging in an LD-way but are interesting and challenging intellectually. It's also possible that the school may be able to provide some of what is recommended (maybe some overlap with what the educational therapist would provide, for instance).

Last thing I'd suggest - be sure the tester provides a GAI in the report (this is the number that leaves WM and PSI out of the calculation, and is an important # to have when you're advocating for advanced classes/gifted services etc.

I'm glad you have the testing (so far) completed, and that you have information and data now - I hope you'll find it helpful as you move forward and advocate!

Best wishes,

polarbear

polarbear you quotes in your above post is missing an end ] making it hard to read.

The one case she gave that was clearly disinterest was a test where she read a passage out loud, and then asked him questions about it. She did this with two different passages, the first one he was clearly uninterested in and got a very low score. When she did the test with another passage (I think this was normal) and it was subject he was interested it, he did extremely well.

I don't really have the report yet, so I'm going by my notes and memory and I'm not sure what subtest this was.

Sorry I missed that! I edited it - hopefully it's clearer now

pb

That makes sense - I'd just be careful not to extrapolate that to other subtests where you don't have a clear comparison.

pb

That would be a classic aspergian move.

I hope you have good answers soon!

DeeDee