Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hard time following directions

Aeh, I think you are on to something. It seems to me like since he is very visual he needs to create a clear picture of a task or situation in his mind before being satisfied. Yesterday I told him about a week long summer camp at his school this notsummer. He proceeded to ask 15 questions about it. Where in his school was it taking place? Was he eating lunch there? How many kids were going to be there? Who were the kids we're going to be there? Was I going to be at the school while he was at camp? Where would I pick him up from? And on and on. At the end of it all he decided it was not a good idea for him to do the camp. For whatever reason.

Somehow my intuition tells me that the disconnect in following directions in doing a simple task is due to disinterest. He told his grandfather when I asked the other day that school is way too easy and boring. He said he wants harder stuff to do. He sounded very frustrated and almost angry when saying this. I think next year he will probably be more verbal about his needs academically. At least that is when my older boy started really showing us his frustrations.

I am still not ruling out other issues. Especially auditory processing. I also suspect that when we do the WISC his processing speed might not be that high. Although, when he does a speed math program, which he loves, on the computer, he thinks extremely quickly. Not sure this would be considered processing though? Another question is, how does reflecting on things affect processing speed on the WISC ? It might just be that, not that's his actual processing is slow.

DS10 is a slow processor (in WISC and real life), but also super visual. I find that anything he can see as a picture in his head and doesn't have to turn into words, he can do frighteningly fast, including the kinds of math where he can "see" the problem/ solution. Other things, not so much.

So he maxed out the visual-spatial Block Design, even though that's the timed test that usually gets the slow processors. But he needs about an hour to produce a written sentence.... I suspect there are many, many complicating factors of memory and processing that affect both the testing and what we experience in everyday life.

A couple of interesting things that happened yesterday and that is puzzling to me. We were reading a book, he was reading to me. Even though he started reading before he was 3, and he has obviously improved a lot, it has seemed as though the fluency has been lacking. Like it is choppy. yesterday he was reading to me and after a little while he took his hand and put it over the picture on the page. I asked him why he did that and he said he kept looking at the picture and that it was distracting to him. After that he's reading fluency was incredible! Huge difference! I am wondering if a lot of the work in school has pictures next to it, and since he is so visual eyes are drawn to the picture and he gets distracted.

Another thing he shared with me is that when in school, he keeps listening to the air conditioning/heating system running. He says it sounds like he is at a racetrack and cars are driving, and that he makes a movie about it in his head.

Having added those two components, I am wondering if anybody has any experience with what this could be caused by? Is there some kind of disorder where the kid can react like this? Or is it just because of the overexcitabilitlies that come along with giftedness?

The illustration thing has an easy fix....give him a few index cards (small and larger). He can place them over pictures on worksheets and texts and use them as book marks.

The air conditioning thing is harder...if he was homeschooling I would say noise canceling white noise machine that the psychology department that tested my son was the coolest thing ever!!! But I don't see how that could work in a classroom. Noise canceling headphones like used on a flight deck? But then that is so isolating.

I did have a student when I was teaching high school ESE self contained class who complained about the fluorescent light buzzing (we all did, but it bothered him more). We put in a work order but you know they get to it when they get to it. One day as he walked down the hall with the offending buzzing light in a drop ceiling he reached up and smashed the light to pieces. From that day on, all our work orders rose to the top of the pile.

Warning, totally inexpert opinion here. But I would say yes, and yes. Likely explainable by over-excitabilitites, but if it is severe enough to get in the way of everyday learning or living, there are various possible disorders which may be relevant.

I've seen quite a few posts on this forum describing extreme noise sensitivities, and my DD has a few of her own. Those turbo hand dryers in public washrooms seem to be an especially common trigger, as do buzzing classroom lights. So for lots of people, I think noise is just one of those gifted sensitivities, like shirt tags, that we become better able to control as we become older and can choose our environments a little more. The fact that your DS is incorporating the noise into a movie in his head, rather than complaining it causes him pain or misery, would make me suspect a possible boredom issue, though...

For extreme sensitivities, I've read a lot of people describing a struggle to find the line between over-excitabilities and Sensory Processing Disorder; it seems more about how much impact it is having on the person's daily functioning, I think? Noise sensitivity can be also found with auditory processing disorders (APD), and background noise can make it really hard for someone with APD to understand what people are saying to them. In my DDs case, her noise sensitivity is probably exacerbated by (or perhaps causality runs the other way - or both?) with her ADHD-Inattentive: staying focused is hard, and any distraction unhelpful. And while while she came up OK for APD, she does have some marginal scores that make extra noise extra difficult, so the two issues feed each other.

Similarly - though here I am on even shakier ground - I can readily imagine how a very bright, busy brain could easily be distracted by visual overload, especially if the text content is not extremely demanding, so there is lots of brainpower left to wander on to everything else around.

In our case, DD was found to have visual processing issues, and we can (now!) see her eyes jumping around when she tries to move them in a straight line. She also can't hold hold her eyes still, i.e. stay focused on an object after she has looked towards it. Snippets of research also suggest dyslexics as a group may have more trouble keeping the eyes moving consistently and evenly across rows of text and then onto the start of the next row (they may jump around, miss and/ or repeat words and lines, etc.). We're totally new to the visual processing issue, but I would speculate that between the ADHD, dyslexia and visual issues, DD has huge difficulty keeping her eyes where they belong in a smooth, consistent flow through the text, and anything luring them away can't be helpful.

But from another perspective, this made me think of anxiety again.

I am noise sensitive but I am OK if I am in a good place mentally, emotionally and physically. Tiredness or stress seem to amplify everything. And it makes me so grumpy.

I was considering sensory processing disorder a couple of years ago. But the pediatrician was not concerned and didn't see it necessary to evaluate. She actually said to have him checked for giftedness since she suspected it had something to do with overexcitebiilities. This is the same pediatrician who when my older son was about a year old told me that he was probably profoundly gifted. She ended up being right.

I told my older son about the fact that his brother listens to the air conditioner in the classroom. He is in the exact same classroom my older was when he was in kindergarten. His response was; "yes I know all about that, I did it too, I'm sure it is because he's bored. That's what it was for me." Interesting information to say the least. :-)

Noise does bother him to a certain extent. So does bright lights. But he can handle it pretty well now. Sometimes, when he is already emotional or doing something important, the noise level seems to bother him more. I think it is overwhelming when there are a lot of different aspects hitting him all at once..