Crazy long post with lots of test results!!!

I’ll take a stab at some of this, though I am not familiar with all the tests.

Now, average standard scores for most tests are 100. The school is looking to learn whether any processing areas are significantly discrepant from about 100. Your son basically tested with an average IQ. There is some subtest scatter. I am curious about the low “information” subtest (7, below average) and the high vocaulary score (12, high average). I would expect the acquisition of vocabulary to be somewhat related to the acquisition of information. Information is derived from living, however children who are read to regularly, spoken to about things (as opposed to just being given orders and hearing only daily, functional language), also taking a child places and talking as you go also contributes to the pool of information the child draws upon. So, this score is related to the ability to learn, but it is also very much environmentally influenced. Unless there was some odd reason for this score (probe the psych. about what happened), I would commence an at home program designed to get him up to speed on his general knowledge.

Similarities is like analogies, wow, I don’t know what happened here!

According to the data (Test of Phonological Awareness) appears to be on target at this stage. He does not appear to have a phonological processing disorder.

Now, I am wondering about his language and his memory. He did poorly on recalling sentences in context (I presume this is a test where the child has to either repeat a sentence), this is a real weakness and may explain some of the problems with the general information weakness. I don’t know what “Word Structure” assesses.

There are some weaknesses in his receptive language, according to the CLEF (if his “basic concepts” are low, how did he score high average on “Vocabulary” on the WPPSI?

OK, at this point I am wondering about short term memory. I think more testing to assess auditory and visual short term memory is called for. There are tests that I know your school has. The Woodcock Johnson III Test of Cognitive Abilities has numerous subtests that are supposed to assess specific processing issues. This is something that could be administered (if he is old enough for the norms, certainly by 6 he will be). Why not ask for more assessment on this for working memory/auditory/visual memory.

How is his attention to tasks?

He may need a very multi-modal approach to learning letters and sounds. ZooPhonics is very good for this purpose. He may have to see, hear, feel, etc to get these into his memory.

If the auditory piece tested out intact then I would go after the attention piece. You are like a detective, unearthing all these clues that are holding your son back from learning. He also may have a visual/motor issue….but here are some things to look for in regards to attention…does he appear to be inattentive or is he the daydreamy type? Kids who are good, quiet kids also have problems sustaining attention in tasks, his may explain his inconsistency with the recall of sentences. Did the Audiologist do an Auditory continuous performance test? There is a visual continuous performance test as well and these two tests can show if he has some problems with sustaining attention. Also, if he had a slow processing speed on his IQ test this could be indicative of an attentional issue.

Sometimes children with ADD-Inattentive issues are able to sustain their attention in novel situations, without distractions and with one on one tutoring, this can even happen during an IQ test. One of my students is ADD-Inattentive, he was prescribed meds from his pediatrician and he was doing well. The parent had him go for IQ testing when he was off meds and he scored well during his IQ testing because of the novelty of the situation, it was one on one and not in a classroom with distractions, however, he definitely has a slow processing speed. The Psyche told the mom to take him off his meds and she did. But what the Psyche didn’t realize was that this child is very easily distractible and inattentive and his performance in class, testing, homework this last few months off of meds was disasterous. The Mother consulted with the psyche again…guess what he is going back on meds that the MD. pediatrician had prescribed. Sometimes even psyches make mistakes…

The Speech/Lang Pathologist said the similarities was asking him to tell her what things were the same in two objects. For example, what things are the same about water and milk. He needed to say they are liquid or you drink them. She said he had trouble coming up with the similarities.

The information subtests low score (7) I don’t understand either. He gets more info than any kid I know. He goes everywhere with me or with his Dad. He started nursery school at age 3. We read every day and play learning games and projects. The speech/lang pathologist said he had incredible vocab for such a young boy. She said she could tell that he was with adult and much older kids alot.

I spoke to the Audiologist on recalling sentences and she said that it should have been recalling words. She said at his age recalling sentences is not the right way to administer the test and she wasn’t sure why it was done that way.
I asked about the Woodcock Johnson and was told that don’t use it this young even though the test can be.

His teacher said his attention to tasks is fantastic. She said he is one of the few children in the class that she never has to keep on task. She said is always stays focused even when he starts to have trouble. She said when that happens she spends a few minutes with him and he is right back on. There are only 13 kids in the class, so it is easy for her to be with him. Yesterday when I was picking him up, we were in the art room with his reg ed teacher and the art teacher came in. While he was getting art supplies his art teacher pulled me aside and said he was the most focused art student in kindergarten and he was doing so well in art. I am not surprised since art is one of his favorite things. So anyway, focus and attention don’t seem to be an issue.

The audiologist said she doesn’t want to see him right now but will see him in September. I don’t know if I should wait or call the children’s hospital in Boston??

We also live in a school district where test results are not always what they seem. The speech/lang path said that on his scan there was a significant difference between right and left brain score but didn’t put that in the report?? I live in the sneakiest district around!!

I also forgot to mention that he attends private school. So the people who tested him really didn’t know him that well because they just met him. His regular classroom teacher did fill out some paper work for them so they got a chance to better understand what she was seeing.

Start by asking yourself what it is you want out of the testing; do you want services from the public school system? Will your child attend public school in the fall? What is the first grade like at your child’s present school? What would the private school like to have happen? You may get more for your money by paying a psychologist in private practice to JUST review your child’s current test results, and give you an opinion.

I wonder about word retrieval issues - is this a kiddo who has trouble with something new the first time around, but once he gets it, is fine?
Is he a kid who thinks in straight lines so he can tell you what words mean, but maybe found that the similarities test was not like anything he’d been asked before… so he was clueless? He’s young though, so once you start him *thinking* like that, he could take to it like a fish to pizza (or was that water?).

It’s got to be easier for younger kiddos to have gaps and holes (little ones are a total mystery to me — my experience is with the taller ones) and ways of thinking they haven’t developed yet. Keeping in mind my lack of knowledge of the littler minds, this kiddo looks like one who is very bright, but his “native” language is not language, but visual comprehension. Those low CELF scores but high performa nce IQ scores might mean that he understands things better (in comparison to the “standard” population) than words, where he’s lagging behind the “standard” peers — but that he *has* learned lots of good individual words to connect to the real world that he understands so well. So given that, I would work on showing him the magic of using words to explain ideas and connections. I’d guess this would be a kiddo who would want to be *shown* what to do, not told what to do? ARe there fun kid games to play for listening for directions? Probably just playing 20 questions (but keeping it fun and easy if it’s hard for him) would be a starting point for connecting words and ideas.

Did you child have any language delays? How does he talk now? Does he speak in complete sentences with correct grammar? Can he explain to you his needs without hesitation? When he speaks to you, does he sometimes forget what he wants to say?

I’m only asking because his expressive language scores on the CELF-P were low (composite score of 88). He is almost one deviation from the mean which would be a score of 85. He got some 6’s & 7’s on the subtests which is a red flag. His Basic Concepts was low also (a 7). The Peabody Vocab test is pretty easy. It is a single word test so it is not hard to do well on it but still have a problem that is not showing up. Looks like your child has trouble with Word Structure, Sentence Structure, Recalling sentences. See if you can get the SPELT II (Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test). It is more difficult than the CELF. It will uncover the problem in more detail. If he is having trouble with letters and sounds, try the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing). See if you can get the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts III or Boehm-R if the III isn’t available. On the CELF-P - Maybe your child should have been given the CELF III instead? If he is in kindergarten, then he would be just on the edge age wise for the CELF-P and the CELF III would raise the bar higher for things he should know in kindergarten compared to his peers.

If you are meeting with a neuropyschologist, then it is money well spent. They are much more qualified to give tests and evaluate tests results than a regular school pyschologist.

Certainly if the public school was not able to interpret these results in a way that worked for you, go to an outside evaluation clinic. For many years I worked at a med. center based clinic that saw lots of kids for dev. evals.(it is now out of business because insurance reimbursement was so poor). The public school does evals. for classification for special ed. placement; if your child is not in the system and you seek an eval. for diagnosis, then a private eval. should work better. You need to know that a your child’s age, most evals. are not cast in stone; there is a lot of dev. change that goes on in K, and 1st grade and it is hard to predict(except for a few types of kids), what the outcome will be. Private speech and language therapists are very helpful at this age, and often consult to parents about lang. based issues. The WPPSI was not the test we used…we used the Kaufman Assessment Battery, far more reliable than the WPPSI; a psychologist in private practice can also spend more time speaking with you about your concerns…it sounds like the referral to the public school was the private school’s idea. Your concerns about your child’s overall development are very important.

Patti, does medication make a difference for him? Our psych. believes that meds do NOT work for ADHD-inattentive. She says they work for a short duration, then gradually fade out. I have read contradictory opinions from specialists: Barkley seems to feel that they don’t work for this subgroup, Amen says them do.

I think the real issue is one of executive function. A child may be inattentive for reasons other than ADHD. An ADHD child will have real difficulty with self-control type issues.

My older son has add/inattentive and has taken some form of ritalin since first grade, he is now in 7th taking concerta. Ritalin most definitely makes a huge difference in his ability to pay attention, stay on task, follow through or perseverance on a tough assignment. This is only my experience with my son.

He has never been a behavior problem in class, he is very quiet. Occasionally in the past his teachers even forgot he was in the classroom when it came to candy reward time. He wouldn’t speak up. Of course that hurts when he needs help because he won’t speak up then either. Having sp.ed support helps because the teachers have to go to him. He isn’t slipping through the cracks because there are too many people being held accountable.

I haven’t read that much of Barkley in a few years, our library here in Germany rather stinks, I loved the library in VA. There isn’t much here on adhd and most of my books got put in storage accidently. I spend most of my time on the net these days.

From personal experience meds work…The difference in my daughter alone has been incredible. Yes, people can be inattentive when they are sick and under the weather, if they are hyperfocusing and also if they don’t hear things but again…I keep stressing this…when you have eliminated one thing in the puzzle then look for another piece of the puzzle than may explain the deficits or problems…

What do you think ADD is? A person who is ADD has big problems with executive functioning.

He does really well getting his point accross, he does however like to tell me or ask me the same things over and over. For example, he kept asking me what my favorite color was, I kept telling him red. Finally I said to him what do you think it is or do you remember what I said last time, he always knows it is red.

The speech/lang pathologist noticed he did that as well. She said it just wants to be sure that he knows what it going on. The similarities tests and some of the other tests he had trouble with because he had different names for the pictures he was looking at. So some of the low scoring is because I taught him different names for things. For example, I taught him what sprinkles are but some people call them jimmies!! Now when I am talking to him about something new I try to give him more than one name for it.

K.

My 7 year old has just been diagnosed with LD and I found the most fabulous book that has been a godsend…Parenting a Struggling Reader by Susan Hall. You will find your child and yourself in this wonderful book. Good luck.

Thank you!!