Hello everyone.

I have posted a couple of posts on one of the other forums, so some of you may be familiar with my story, but I have a DS10 who has a very varied profile.

On the WISC-IV, he has a impressive gap of 62 points, ranging from 142 VCI to 80 for PSI. His GAI is 140. I know that this isn't DYS level, but he did have two 19's and two 18's and one of the scores would be even higher based on the new report no. 7 that came out. His WIAT scores were average, except for math problem solving which was high and spelling which was low. He also has ADHD, which is controlled by medication, but has a poor memory and is very disorganized.

His main area of giftedness is in verbal expression and in his understanding of adult issues. When he speaks, the other kids don't understand him, so now he rarely speaks up in class. He is not a good candidate for acceleration, but is a poor fit in a typical school program.

When I spoke to the psychologist, she was evasive when I asked her if he had a specific learning disability. She did say that he has visual-motor processing issues which are affecting his ability to get his thoughts down on paper and recommended an OT.

Does anyone have any advice for me? In particular, can someone explain what a visual-motor processing issue is and what I can do to help him?

And by the way, I have a flashing icon which says I have a private message, but there does not appear to be one. Also, when I tried to contact the administrator to ask about this my email was "blocked". Does anyone know what to do?

Thank you in advance.

Hi eema,

My flashing e-mail icon is also always flashing whether or not I have a private message.
I just ignore it and check from time to time to see if I really do have a message waiting.

I wish I had some good advice for you but I am not knowlegeable enough to have an informed opinion in this area.

A 62 point gap does seem pretty large. Could you get a second opinion from another psychologist?
Maybe one who specializes in gifted and/or learning disabilities, if the one you are communicating with now isn't.

Neato

Hi eema! I would have sent you a pm about this but since your mail seems to be blocked I will post here.

My DS10 also had a wide scatter on his testing but I didn't know what it meant. He also greatly excels in the verbal areas and understands adult issues (more than I want him to really!) He has had lots of trouble with handwriting/getting ideas down on paper/reading in a straight line/writing on the line/etc. We found out he has visual perception/tracking issues and has been receiving visual therapy for this which has really, really helped him. I don't know anything really about visual-motor processing issues but when I googled it, what turned up was the same type of stuff that I read about my son's problems. If you look at www.covd.org it has some information about visual problems and how to find a qualified therapist. You might look to see if it looks like something that might be helpful to you.

I'll be happy to answer any more questions if you have any. Either here or you can pm me if it starts working again.

My dd has ocular motor issues and has been helped by a combination of OT for SPD as well as vision therapy with an optometrist - long story. I don't think OT alone would have been sufficient, though the OT did make the vision therapy a lot easier. I'd definitely check out the website above for more info and finding the type of optometrist who deals with this.

Eema,
Can you get private OT, or is it just plain too expensive? Sometimes insurance will cover it. Once you are at the OT, she or he will be able to explain exactly what visual-motor issues your son is having.

I think having his testing reviewed by Dr. Jim Webb or Dr. Amend is a good idea if they will agree to do a 'chart review' for you, although it will cost some cash.

You say he isn't a good candidate for acceleration, do you feel comfortable saying why, exactly? Sometimes a kid is not well behaved or well liked in his current grade, and after a grade skip continues to not be well behaved or well liked, but learns how to work at learning, and enjoys school more. A lot depends on what grade he is in now, and if there is an upcoming transition year, say if he is in 5th now, and 6th is a new building, it isn't reccomended to skip midyear into Middle School (LOL!) but if he can skip a year, and still have a year before the building switch, then it's worth looking at carefully, unless of course, you can homeschool him, perhaps with some classes at the local community college, which can be great for the ADHD lack of executive function, no agemate friends kind of situation.

Before you start looking at how to help him at home, try to figure out all the skills he needs to function in his life, and access which ones are not working, then you can look into trying to help each one. He may have weak trunk muscles, which affects everything else so swimming maybe a place to start.

Of course - my favorite 'intervention' is to inspire a kid to learn to touchtype. My son learned when he was 9, and it magically turned a kid who would have never been able to keep up with a gradeskip into a kid that was ready and able for one.

You don't say if written expression is an issue for your son, but I would go so far as to say that it's almost hopless for a highly verbally gifted kid who hates to make written product to do so without the skill of touch typing, because their brain goes so much faster than their rubbery fingers. I call this the 'big giant head, scrawny little neck' syndrome.

If it helps, instead of calling your son's issue a disability, you can think of it as a bottleneck to his strengths. BTW, Frontal Lobe Development is typically normal for age in gifted kids, so the FLD creates a bottleneck for many many gifted boys, affecting executive function, which is thought to be the key deficeit in ADHD.

sorry about my spelling or lack thereoff,
Grinity

My almost ten year old had a visual motor percentile rank of 4 and a visual processing percentile rank of 65 on a recent test. He scored slightly below average on visual memory. He has never scored low on visual memory before though and on a test two years ago visual processing was at the 82 percentile with a visual motor percentile of 1. He had vision therapy for a short time after he was tested two years ago. It seemed to help with his tracking ability and he was able to read for longer periods without his eyes getting tired. The OT thinks he needs more vision therapy but we recently took him back to the optomotetrist he saw last time (the only one our insurance will pay for) and he said there wasn't anything more he could do for him. So I am still trying to understand this and figure out what I need to do.

I keep seeing articles about how visual motor integration difficulties can cause problems with performance in reading and spelling and this doesn't make sense to me since my son spells better than a lot of adults and recently competed in our state Pee Wee Spelling Bee. We usually practiced spelling orally while he played video games and he enjoyed doing this, but he also looked at the words with the tricky parts underlined. He was able to learn an average of ten new words a day this way. There was no way he would have learned at this rate if he had been forced to write the words. He was able to read without being taught at 2 1/2, although he couldn't read for very long without his eyes getting tired until he had vision therapy at age seven.

In one article I found, www.csusm.edu/Quiocho/relation.htm
it said that kids with learning disabilities in the areas of visual memory, visual discrimination and visual motor integration can demonstrate average to above average oral expressive language skills, including use of sophisticated grammar structures and vocabulary. This is very true of my son. It also says many from this population may be high achievers in the areas of math and science. My son picks of math concepts very quickly but his handwriting caused problems until I realized that I needed to let him use a calculator more just like I had to let him type for him to learn. He has always loved science and technology.

I have trouble thinking of my son's difficulties as a learning disability when he can learn faster than most kids his age and I really don't believe it is a learning disability, just a difference that we have to work around. My son would definitely be a poor fit in a typical classroom. Lots of people have told us that he talks more like an adult and I swear he understands some things better than his adult sister. He usually knows more about what is happening in the news than she does and he sometimes teases her when she doesn't know the definition of some of the words he uses. She says when she talks to him it is more like talking to one of her 20 something year old friends. But he has become quieter in the last year or so around kids his age. He could tell that some adults didn't like his questions, especially in Vacation Bible School last year, so now he usually just sits passively and listens when he is in a class with kids his age. He seems very wise for his age and I feel said about this sometimes.

Our school refused to provide an appropriate education so we have to homeschool, and educationally this works very well, but the isolation is hard to deal with. If we didn't have online friends, I don't know what we would do.

My son can only get his thoughts on paper when he types. When he is forced to write, his sentences are very short. When he types, he uses a lot more interesting vocabulary and his sense of humor comes out. He recently wrote (typed) his memories of our vacation and it was hilarious. He asked me to leave the room while he did this assignment and I could hear him giggling as he typed and it was obvious that he enjoyed it. When I read it I laughed so hard it brought tears to my eyes and my son felt really good about this. The public school "must color in the lines" teachers would not allow this kind of learning.

Even though I let my son type most of his assignments now, I still have him practice handwriting and I guess he is practicing enough because even with his low visual motor integration he was "low average" in the handwriting test the OT gave him. That is good enough for me. Our developmental pediatrician once told us that he would never be gifted in handwriting, so we needed to teach him to type.

Wow. What great information!!

Just to answer everyone:

Incogneato - I also wondered if I needed a second opinion, but my instinct says that the testing is accurate. I'm still thinking about it, though.

EandCMom and snowgirl: I never thought of it as a visual issue per se - but he is farsighted and has strabismus. Definitely something for me to explore.

Grinity: I am going to take him to a private OT. My insurance will cover some of it. He is seeing a school OT and she has been open about the limitations about what she can do in the school. As to the grade skip, he is entering middle school next year, which is already freaking him out, so as you suggested, I will leave it alone. The reason I don't consider him a good candidate is that he has trouble keeping up, and his acheivement scores are mostly quite average. I assume that this makes him a poor candidate. I agree completely on the typing, but he is so easily frustrated that I think he needs a typing class rather than a self study program.

Lori H.: Your son sounds so much like mine. I find it interesting that my son excells in math and science, because he is not gifted in those areas. I have read a lot about homeschooling on the board (apparently, this is a topic that inspires great passion!!), but we are not good candidates for it (long story). The article you sent me was dead on when it said that kids like this doubt themselves - my son asks me why he does not do well in school, and says that the kids think he is a genius and expect him to always do well.

Thank you all. I have had trouble figuring out where my son fits. I read the stories on the gifted boards and my son is nothing like a lot of the other kids. He was not an early reader, and did not do most of the stuff listed on the Ruf scale. He and I are very different - but we have such a strong bond, and I do want to help him.

I just wanted to add that it is really worth the time and money you pay for a GOOD behavioral optometrist. They can make wonders.

For the rest, you already got very good advice

My sixth grade girl has a similar profile -- 99%tile on auditory memory/reasoning; 6th %tile on visual memory and speed. I feel like she's the experiment where you have one hand in a bowl of hot water and the other in a bowl of cold...
Anyway, she's been doing ok academically this year. Her main problem in school is being self-conscious about being smart, and being teased for being smart, so she's learned to be very quiet and hide her interest in ideas.
We did do vision therapy with her between second and third grade which greatly helped her reading and copying from the board, and some OT in 5th grade which helped with her writing speed and fluency. We had to pay for it all out of pocket because the school district will only help students who are below grade level, so even though her learning discrepency is large, her compensatory skills are such that she stays above grade level. At this point she's also pretty close to touch typing, and is able to write her stories on the computer at a reasonable speed.
When I first got clarity on her learning differences I was very frightened, but at this point she seems to be doing ok. So far this year we haven't used her 504 plan, because there haven't been any timed tests, and typing is an option for the papers they turn in. The next challenge will be for her to get the time she needs to take the honors math exam. . .

Hi sym! My DS10 is in therapy right now and it has helped tremendously from where he used to be but I still worry about his writing speed and fluency. You said you got OT for this. How did you go about doing this? Did you get a referral or did you just do this on your own? His spelling is atrocious too and I don't really know how to help that. He makes straight A's so he is able to compensate also and we have to pay for all the therapy out of pocket too. We're not finished with therapy so I am hoping to see even more improvement but I'd like a plan in case he doesn't get as far as I'd like for him too. Any information would be appreciated! Thanks.

This sounds cheesy, but I think it may work. Do you have a few spare minutes to 'improve your typing speed?' If you buy a semi-recent version of Mavis Beacon and spend 5 minutes on your own typing skills while he's around, I give it a 40% chance that he will get interested enough to let you bribe him into trying it himself. I would suggest a payoff rate of 25 cents worth of prize for every 15 minute chunk of effort - do not reward achievment, only effort. I told my DS: I don't know how many hours it will take, 30 or 300, but I do know that if you keep at it, you will have a skill to love your whole life long! I also explained that he would see NO signs of improvement for the fist 2/3rd of the trip, and that if it feels frustrating, then that is a wonderful chance to 'beat the boss' of being afraid of 'low-payoff' work.

If you are lucky he will complain that your 'Adult' program is too boring, and then the 'prize' can be 'sponge bob' typing or whatever looks good to him!

My son also used to have the 'easily frustrated' issue - I call it the Goldilocks Dilemma - everything was 'too hard' or 'too easy' - it's tricky but progress can be made.

Good Luck!
Grinity