Bemused by DD’s assessment result

[Cuppatea14]

We took our DD for an educational assessment to try to figure out why she’s struggling with her spelling. The school were at a loss because she reads well ahead of her age, so she doesn’t present as dyslexic.

Anyway, we got the report today and it confirms that she’s definitely not dyslexic, but does identify her as on the ‘extremely high range of ability’ (with a score of 150 on the Wechsler scale, if that means anything to anyone?)

Very nice to have someone confirm our kid is bright but we are still none the wiser about why she cannot spell? She also struggles with things like remembering months of the year in the correct order, and is generally what in the 90’s we would have called ‘a bit of a ditz’. So we are amused by her results and clueless as to what to do next. Anyone any insights?

We will have a follow up with the psychologist in a few weeks time, curious to hear if anyone has pointers on what we should ask.

i am too old for a dyslexia diagnosis (68) but want to say that my reading age was really high compared to my actual age and I couldn’t spell. Dyslexia is also linked to poor organisational skills, another problem of mine.

I know of a child who has a high reading age but is dyslexic. Struggles massively with spellings and ordering his writing

Yes another one to say reading ability doesnt mean she is not dyslexic.

https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/children/is-my-child-dyslexic/signs-of-dyslexia-primary-age have a look at the dyslexia association website.

Did are score 150 in all areas of the WISC or was that her overall score? Did the psychologist do any attainment assessments - reading/ spelling etc?

I suggest you get her assessed by a speech and language therapist and also an occupational therapist. She may have problems with processing information for example. My daughter had a relatively uninteresting ed psych report but the OT and SALT reports were unbelievable.

I don’t know what I have but I had a very IQ ( radiotherapy has it paid to that), reader etc, but I’m a hopeless speller, disorganised too, my bedroom was so messy. My mother used to say “for someone who’s supposed to be intelligent you’ve got very little common sense. I’m 66 now but I think it could be AdHD.

Thanks all, the assessment tested for dyslexia and it’s definitely ruled out. There was a suggestion of dysgraphia, so that might be something to follow up on. Would an OT be the right path to investigate that?

@GoldPoster I also wondered about ADD, if she’s smart maybe she is masking/falling under the radar…

@hedgerunner She’s >99th centile in all the various indices, other than Processing Speed where she got a composite score of 116 (86th centile). The report does call out that that’s a fairly large discrepancy vs everything else.

My big concern is when she gets to secondary school and starts handing in essay assignments etc, it won’t matter how good the content is - they won’t be able to read it! Her spelling is really that bad.

My spelling was awful and my reading ok. I got assessed as uni, and was dyslexic, I was feeling tired that day so felt my weaknesses in processing and short term memory were amplified. However, compared to my score the discrepancy between 86-99 isn't much I had something like 7-91, therefore was diagnosed dyslexic.

Sorry not much help, but possibly her spellings could improve if the has high abilities, and practices more?

I struggled with order like your DD, and also telling the time (got there in the end) and times tables (never fluent)

But higher level logic based maths I was good at and enjoyed

Bit of a ditz sounds a bit more like executive functioning or adhd. I’m definitely a bit ditzy - diagnosed with adhd at 56!

Sounds massively like dyslexia. Can you get a second opinion or ask them to redo? Or speak to dyslexic specialist? Things like spelling and getting orders muddled of days of the week, monthsetc, telling time all common to dyslexia. As well as slower processing speed.

I’m reading the report again this morning, it is such an odd outcome. They also assessed her using the WIAT test, for literacy and numeracy. It’s a total mash up - low average in spelling and oral reading accuracy, and average/ high average everything else. Seems to jar with the results on the WISC index, the more I think about the more I think she’s just learnt a load of masking strategies to cope, just don’t know what exactly she’s masking!

I think the issue is that she doesn’t meet diagnostic criteria for anything in particular, because she’s scraping by as ‘low average’ for this stuff.

Hiya,
Dyslexia specialist here -
I know you’ve said dyslexia has been ruled out but just wondering if there were measures of phonological processing in the assessment?

In the dyslexia world we often find that ed psychs are not as knowledgeable about dyslexia as one might expect them to be as they have such a broad base of expertise whereas dyslexia assessors’ is much more narrow but deeper.

With lower spelling and oral reading accuracy scores it still is possible - without seeing the report and her other scores - that she could be dyslexic even if she can read in context and has good reading comprehension.

What was her phonics acquisition like in the early years?

It could be an issue with working memory - that’s our ability to remember things essentially. Also working memory can decrease when stressed or under pressure.

DS is diagnosed with dysgraphia, he reads well but his organisational skills, handwriting and spelling are far, far behind his comprehension. He's an adult now and I often wonder if he would be diagnosed as dyslexic if he was tested today as he reads by memory rather than by decoding if that makes sense, he has zero idea how to breakdown new words to read them but once he's been told what a word says he never forgets. At school his exam work was transcribed as his writing skills were so poor.

A ‘spiky’ profile does suggest some kind of difficulties. I was diagnosed with ‘dyslexic tendencies’ at 21. I’d found some things difficult all my life. A love of reading helped me to reinforce spellings.
I had a very spiky profile, nothing in the normal of around 12, I either got 8 or 14 😆 later I was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD. I do find with ADHD my meds help with processing and my dyslexic tendencies are better managed. I would suggest exploring neurodivergent conditions like ADHD.

My first thought too!

Are you sure they have correctly measured the threshold for dyslexia given her IQ? I knew someone who was tested at about 10 for dyslexia and parents were told no then retested at 16 with the same struggles, discovered he had a high IQ and re adjusted threshold accordingly. He was then diagnosed as dyslexic.

This sounds exactly like my daughter. Very good reader, good comprehension, but her spelling I'd atrocious, has really had a hard time with times tables and finds things like months of the year, alphabet etc difficult. We've also wondered about dyslexia.

I'm a long way from being an expert in such things, but could it be that her brain is going so fast her handwriting finds it impossible to keep up, so she's writing any old how, just to get the thoughts down before her brain races off somewhere else.

Have you checked her eyesight? My daughter seemed to have a big discrepancy between her spelling and her intelligence levels (don’t know quite how to explain that properly).

She had an astigmatism which was making her brain work hard to keep things focused. Worse when tired. Glasses cured the spelling issues pretty much overnight.

I found out my son also had an astigmatism in A&E when they were checking his eyesight after a head bump. He had never seemed to have a big problem with spelling or complained about his eyesight, but was reading the eye chart confidently without hesitation and getting quite a few letters wrong. Apparently his brain was accommodating the astigmatism and filling bits in randomly.

interestingly, 5 years later, my daughter has just been diagnosed with ‘Visual Stress’. I’m not sure whether it’s linked to the astigmatism. I understand that there’s a bit of disagreement as to whether this is a separate thing to dyslexia but it’s to do with not coping with contrasts and therefore letters dance on the page and lines move around. She says things like doing sudoku make her stressed as there are too many numbers in one place that all jump over each other. It can be helped by a coloured overlay to make the contrast less, and different people find different colours helpful. My daughter now uses a yellow tinted overlay in school for reading.

There seems to be a link between visual stress and adhd, and although we haven’t had her tested, my daughter is certainly messy, fidgety and quite random in the way she thinks (in a beautiful way!) so I think it’s all wrapped up together.

I am not convinced you can get a score of >150 on the Weschler test. Can you quote the scores?

I have been administering that test for many years and never known a score that high.

Get her an Orton Gillingham program like All About Spelling

Thanks for all the feedback, there's some great suggestions here. We have our follow up with the educational psychologist tonight and I'm armed with lots of good questions.

@PaddingtonBunny we got her eyesight checked last year as I had the same thought, no astigmatism found, all looked fine.

@DrRuthGalloway and @WLDC full scores below for both WISC & WIAT, I'm not familiar with how these are scored and how the composite WISC is calculated, I was surprised by the 150 though. The WIAT did include a phonics evaluation, she scored 'average' (pseudoword decoding). She didn't particularly struggle with phonics as a child, or not that the school or myself noticed.

It may/may not be relevant, she goes to a bilingual school, where Irish is the primary language and English is also taught. English is mostly spoken at home, she reads and speaks both confidently.