Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Please help me understand child results

Hi,

My son (11) has issues with school, down to level that I suspect trauma. So, we started testing so we can advocate for him at school and figure out what’s going on.

The school wants to put him in special ed, even though he mainly gets average As and Bs without putting much effort into learning.

My kid took WISC-V. I didn’t get detailed results. I was told that he is cognitively “unique”. His overall results were around 116. However, I was also told that he did the most of the subtests on an adult level, but got 1-2 low, and that the difference is significant.

He also took tests at occupational therapist and they excluded any sign of learning disabilities, saying he seems years ahead in thinking and that school failed him.

We were also told to consult neurologist and we did, but she wants to do a scan as the examination results were a bit off but not conclusive for a diagnosis.

He also has vision issues, the ophthalmologist concluded that it shouldn’t pose problems with learning, but we still have to visit strabismus specialist.

Psychiatrist suspected adhd. The attention test showed he is way above average on both visual and verbal attention tests.

As a mom, living with his father that is in top 1% of population regarding IQ, all I see is a bright kid with occasional brain farts - just like his dad.

Can anyone help me understand what are we looking at, what are possible diagnosis with all this in mind?

I’m a parent of 2 gifted kids. One is 2e with auditory processing disorder and a leaning disability called written expression disorder.

Everything you wrote makes me think 2e.

Some parent to parent advice:

* typical schools don’t know what to do with a 2e kid. You need to find out what’s going on then go back to the school and tell them what those experts suggest. Communicate a lot, realize they may be very uninformed, make very specific requests based on data from experts.

* unique WISC sounds like gifted & disabled. I don’t like that you don’t have details, maybe b/c the school did it? Go somewhere where you can get the details and have it explained to you.

*OT can’t diagnose learning disabilities. Sometimes people overstep their skill base. I’ve had several professionals overstep their realm of knowledge trying to figure out what’s going on with my kid. If you want to find out if someone’s overstepping… bring up what one expert said to another. It makes them mad and then you get a better take on what’s data and what’s someone’s opinion.

* I feel like everyone suspects adhd. It’s my pet peeve with how people approach my son. I feel like it is too commonly used as a catch all for symptoms and behaviors that no one knows what to do with. (I’m not saying ADHD isn’t real. For people who really fit the profile, the diagnosis is helpful).

we took my son to a neuropsych that specializes in gifted/2e and that was super helpful. They confirmed gifted & learning disability. They gave us a report and recommendations for accommodations. That gave us really solid material to request a 504 at school. They also informed me a lot so I can then communicate to others. Def look for someone who specializes in gifted/2e, you won’t feel like such a unicorn/problem/unique to them.

There were a few things my son does/has done that weren’t explained by the neuropsych report. The neuropsych report was super complex. I started reading about each thing. My son has issues with working memory. When I read about that, I came across auditory working memory and auditory processing disorders. The symptom list was very familiar and explained some of the things I felt weren’t explained already. I scheduled auditory processing testing with an audiologist and he was diagnosed. Audiologist also provided accommodations list for 504 at school.

The neuropsych and the audiologist don’t work together and their diagnosis overlap a bit. The causes of certain things are different depending on who you ask. So, if your kid has a vision issue and a unique learning profile, you may not be able to get full agreement between the two.

I would start with a gifted/2e neuropsych comprehensive evaluation. To find a resource look at local gifted organization resources, ask the schools gifted coordinator, or just start looking up people who write books or speak about 2e diagnosis to see if they have an office nearby.

Be nice to the school and pediatrician, but know that they just don’t know enough to be helpful to you.

My son had terrible anxiety around school and writing. He previously was punished for things related to disability. Appropriate accommodations have made a big difference for him. He’s much happier at school and has a group of friends now. His and my relationship with school & teachers is dramatically different and better. His teacher this year is supportive and values his accommodations (doesn’t find them a nuisance or unnecessary).

I would agree that further consideration of twice exceptionality may be in order. Depending on where you are, qualifying him for an IEP may include gifted IEPs. Even if not, eligibility for an IEP in the face of A/B grades is actually a likely sign that the school is particularly responsive to the needs of twice exceptional students, as many districts would stop at the grades, and not look further for any unique learning qualities. IEPs are not necessarily about low grades, as the eligible disabilities include, for example, emotional (e.g., significant anxiety or depression), autism (which can quite easily co-exist with strong academic skills) and other health impairment (which is typically where ADHD resides). In each of those cases, the skills in need of remediation in order for the student to access their education are not essentially academic in nature. E.g., emotional IEPs might address emotional regulation or coping skills, autism IEPs might focus on social skills, and health (ADHD) IEPs typically are written to work on executive functions and study skills. Even if a student is posting strong grades, if it is simultaneously (for instance) causing them emotional distress or requiring excessive time or effort, an IEP team can legitimately find that there is a need for specialized skills remediation.

That they proposed an IEP strongly suggests that the school is seeing behavior in school that indicates some kind of lagging skill to them, even if it is not academic.

(I would echo the comment above that an OT is not qualified to diagnose/rule-out learning disabilities. Be very careful about providers that make pronouncements outside of their scope of practice. They may or may not know what they are talking about in terms of fine-motor and upper body skills, but speaking out of school makes me a little leery even of their OT assessments.)

On the ADHD-relevant measures: there are many dimensions of attention and working memory; it is unclear which aspects were assessed. In addition, ADHD comes in varieties that are notable for one or both of two aspects: attention/working memory and impulsivity. Most individuals with ADHD have the primarily inattentive type, with the second largest group combined (both inattentive and impulsive), and a smaller group in the primarily hyperactive (impulsive) type. (Some research finds a different distribution weighted toward the combined type in younger children.) A thorough assessment for ADHD should examine multiple dimensions of attention and inhibition skills.

If the school conducted the evaluation, then you have a right to written reports. If the reports do not include details, you can request an additional meeting with the evaluator to review those results. They may or may not want to give you a copy of details, for intellectual property reasons related to the publishers, but even in that case, you can request (with a signed release of information) that they share all of the test details with a qualified evaluator of your choice, which would give you additional options for interpretation of the testing by someone with deeper experience with twice exceptionality and giftedness.

If you had this evaluation done privately (not by the school), then you will have to go through this process with your private evaluator. Unfortunately, I have seen plenty of private evals that are unsatisfyingly short on specifics, so no guarantee that a neuropsych will be any better than what you have now. (Actually, after a couple of decades reading and writing evals, the worst neuro/psychological evaluation reports I have ever seen were from private clinic-based evaluators, not from schools. Not that there were a lot in this category, but those were the ones with no scores at all.) But at any rate, you are the client for the private evaluator, so one hopes they will be more communicative. Moving forward, do some rigorous research on prospective evaluators, including references and interviews, before you sign on with anyone. And make sure you provide future evaluators with all prior testing records, so they are not blindsided by invalid results from retesting too close in time.

Hi @millersb02 and @aeh,

Thank you so much for your replies. They are both informative and comforting. I failed to mention that we are in a third world country and a system is somewhat different (but the more I read here, the more similarities I find, especially with the education problems).

I likely mistranslated the term OT. I am still not sure what is the correct term, but - here at least- they are experts at diagnosing learning disabilities, so it’s fairly safe to state that we ruled out dysgraphia, dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. The facility also did check ups on hearing, gross motor skills, attention tests, neurological exam and a few more. We are currently down to vision issues, adhd and maybe something neurological - the doctor just said that something might be slightly off and we are waiting for MR exam (compared to US, they do keep patients in dark and there isn’t much I can do about that). This might all come down to a same issue, as visual issues can cause adhd symptoms, and are certain to affect our main problem area (handwriting).

However, it’s safe to say that handwriting is fair enough, both language expert and neurologist agree it’s not a concern. The improvement is highly noticeable as we took their advice to keep it chill, reassure him that he writes fine and encourage practice. Currently, his handwriting at home is such that teacher doubts that he does it, and at school it’s hit and miss, and we still can’t quite figure out what’s going on. But, again lazy eye and everything else vision related can cause this, and paired with unsupportive adults, it’s likely culprit.

We are about to talk with the school this week. They are the ones trying to impose IEP on us based on the handwriting (again, deemed ok by the experts), and the fact that as a bilingual kid his English is superior to his officially native language (by the way, he took WISC in non dominant, native language, and still scored around 115 on verbal when high and low subtests are averaged, and language experts noted that English is dominant, but vocabulary in native is ok, and there’s nothing pathological about that).

Personally, I wouldn’t mind IEP if I knew exactly what is going on and if I was sure that it fits my son’s needs. At this point, I don’t, the medical field doesn’t know yet and it all mostly comes down to the opinion of one teacher.

The other, huge part of the problem is that I suspect that he suffered educational trauma, as he still sometimes stops writing and says “The teacher used to say she would kill me if I keep writing V’s like this” and many more similar things. But, there is nothing much I can legally do about that here. And there is a concern that the real reason school is insisting on the IEP and shortcomings is to protect the school from any possible legal actions. There were tones of malpractices and the more I learn the more I find.

Also, last year all the conversations felt highly malicious - for example, school official would say that my son is asocial, I would state that as a gifted child his social needs are tad lower compared to average kids, and he has plenty of friends outside of school that are also gifted kids he connects with better, and there at school the older kids adore him. And she looks straight in my eyes and says “See, he’s asocial” and likely writes that down in his record. And a lot of similar examples, but this one is a perfect illustration (I think that you can imagine my frustration now).

Another issue is that they aren’t proposing anything in the gifted area and last time I mentioned it, they literally lied to my face that he needs better grades to qualify for gifted education. I checked, the law and the guidelines specifically state that the grades aren’t required and he fits the rest of the criteria. Since he started primary music school as of this grade, now he is “officially” gifted at least in that area, but I doubt it will have any impact on the treatment he receives in the school.

The good news is that he is taking school more seriously this year, homework is not much of a fuss anymore and he picked up on maths and started getting 100% scores and we are slowly starting to enrich at home, at least by entertaining his curiosity. The progress is great since we realized earlier this year that something is horribly off at school and figured out how actually unhappy he is there and we started working with him. And there are glimpses of independent work, even with native language that is apparently the issue.

I hope I’ll have more news soon - both in terms of diagnosis and advocacy. And I hope you won’t mind me sharing as this is likely the only place where I feel heard - and understood.

Sadly, we don’t have much of a support here. The only organization I found that used to help parents with this type of issues doesn’t work anymore.

At this point, we aren’t considering changing school as elsewhere it might be even worse or he might encounter bullying etc. For now, we also can’t afford English speaking school or moving out of this country.

Thank you so much for the support and excellent advice and insight.

Thanks for clarifying the background for us.

Even though the school situation is still a struggle, one factor that can make a big difference is that you have demonstrated to your child that you see and hear him, and are on his side. Just knowing that his parents believe him and care about his happiness in school is tremendously helpful.

Please do continue to post here--we are here for you!