"Gifted", motor delays and testing (wisc-iii)??? H

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

My 9 yr old was identified with significant fine and gross motor delays when he was 4 and he received services for 2 yrs. He stills struggles with motor problems, but he’s done well academically in school. He did very well on the Terra Novas this year (ability tests) and was recommended for the “gifted” program testing. His IQ wasn’t high enough, so they retested him with the WISC-III. We received the results and he did very well in the verbal portion (99%) which includes gen’l knowledge, vocabulary, math, etc., but scored quite low in the Performance portion (31%). That’s the portion that involves puzzles, assembling things, etc….all the stuff he struggles with. He doens’t qualify for the “gifted” classroom, which is ok. But, know I wonder if he should be receiving services again for the motor problems. He’s doing well in school now, but I wonder if it’ll catch up with him?? Anyone else had such a wide variation in test scores??

Thanks!
Corina

Submitted by Helen on Sun, 07/18/2004 - 6:55 PM

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Your son has at PIQ/VIQ split between the standard score of his performance IQ and his verbal IQ. From the % you gave is seems the split is 60 or more points. A 60 point split would be 4 standard deviation difference between the the two score. I tried to find a statistic on this much split but couldn’t but I’m sure the less then .5% of the population has this much of a split. I think you should request in writing that he be tested by an OT. It sounds like he has dyspraxia (motor planning problems). I would be a good idea if one of the tests they gave was a motor free visual perception test to determine if visual perception is also an issue.

It is great that your son is doing fine in school but as more writing is required as he moves through the grades he may become frustrated and need accommodations such as a keyboard to so his work.

Dysgraphia is another name for visual motor problems. Take a look at the following article I lhave inked which tells what tests to give to determine if a child is dysgraphic.

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/writing/dysgraphia_evaluation.html

Submitted by Janis on Sun, 07/18/2004 - 8:59 PM

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I would also say that he is gifted and you probably could challenge the class placement based on the fact that the full-scale WISC score should not be used when the discrepancy is that huge.

You might try looking for some gifted LD sites and get some advice about that.

Janis

Submitted by Sue on Tue, 07/20/2004 - 5:34 PM

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Is he being challenged at all in school?

Often “gifted” programs are geared towards students with strong verbal abilities so it would be a real disservice not to include your son. Do you know what kinds of things the students do? (It basically depends on who’s in charge of it; if they’re into “right-brain” kinds of things, then it might not be a good match at all; on the otehr hand, the “traditional” gifted program is often rife with “read all about some sophisticated topic you’re interested in and do a project on it” — which sounds like would be lots of fun and challenge and good learning for him.)

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