Possible learning problem

[Puremince]

Not sure where to put this.

DS has always been very articulate, loves words, rhymes, puns, loves books. He took ages learning to write, and then his spelling was poor. The school referred him to be checked for dyslexia when he was 7. The report said that he wasn't dyslexic, and that such an able child shouldn't have been referred!

School referred him again at age 9. That report said that he wasn't dyslexic, that he had a high IQ, and that there was a discrepancy between his "reading age" of 13+ and his "spelling age" of 8, which suggested that something wasn't quite right, but they didn't know what. He was given remedial spelling lessons which helped a bit.

He's now making very heavy weather of secondary. His teachers say he's great in class, can answer questions verbally which show he has a good grasp of the subjects, but it all falls apart in written tests/exams. He makes endless silly mistakes (e.g. in maths writing down a figure and then misreading his own writing) and his exam technique is non-existent (e.g. spending as long on a 2 mark question as a 6 mark question, running out of time and leaving questions unanswered etc.) We have gone over and over exam technique with him, as have his teachers, but he cannot seem to "get" it.

Should we just keep plugging away at him, or should we try to have him re-assessed (would have to go private, as he is too bright to qualify for council help) and find out if there is a reason for his difficulties?

My DS1 sound pretty similar to your DS now in yr 10. He has a processing disorder labelled "dyslexia" although the ed. psych said that that diagnosis could be questions by some ed. psychs, He also has a high IQ top 2% but a low processing ability bottom 5% so a massive discrepancy and apparently very rare. He was up until 13 in the indie sector but is now in a state comp so we paid for the the initial report but the school have just redone it for his exams and they paid for it.
This is a terrible problem because his reading and comprehension are excellent and he's very articulate with virtually a photographic memory so is able to remember millions of facts. The teachers who realise that he's very clever have it would appear have limited experience of his problem and think he's not writing because he's lazy rather than because he is struggling too. He uses a lap top it helps a bit at least you can read his writing and he has extra time. His confidence has been very low in the past not helped that at various times in his education he has been labelled as different/difficult/stupid because he cant write but it is improving and we are delighted that he has been entered into the higher level English paper because his talent is finally being recognised.

Thanks, happygardening. DS has always been state educated, but we're rural and the state comp is great (no non-state school for miles around, so it really is "comprehensive".) His IQ is top 3%. He does get extra time, because of the report when he was 9. His teachers are generally sympathetic but frustrated, as are we. He uses a computer for homework, but not in exams.

What's your DS like, otherwise? Mine has poor timekeeping, and his bedroom is very messy. He'd mess up the whole house single-handedly if we didn't nag.

I am a psychologist.
I would have him assessed again with a Wechsler IQ and the other standard tests.
Do you know what the IQ test was? Do you have any numbers, ie, from the different parts of the test.

We too are rural and my DS attends the county's top performing comp. He's as a general principle very happy there. He too is untidy (although that may be partly because we too are hopelessly untidy) disorganised and forgetful of day to day things. Letters from school never arrive and the homework book is illegible. His time keeping is mixed (mine is hopeless) but we often leave the house before 7 am and he has to get himself up cook breakfast and get to school on time and he has only failed to do this once in two years but at other times he gets engrossed in something and looses track of time. He likes a rigid structure and has joined the ATC (air training corps) and loves it its terribly structured and rigid but he knows where he stands and what is expected of him; he wants to join the RAF when he leaves school. He struggles to follow too many instructions at once particularly if they're explained in a rather discrete fashion. He is rather eccentric and has been bullied in the past but is now popular at school he also has all the makings of a stand up comedian because he is very observant of people and their individual characteristics and he's very good at reading faces (too good as he recognises insincerity very quickly). He's a worrier and this causes him to behave like a prat at times but again this is slowly improving. His Achilles heal was maths but with private tuition this has improved and he's now predicted a C or even a B if he works a bit harder, we also provide him with private help for English, help in organising his thoughts on paper using punctuation etc. We are trying to improve his typing so that he can use a laptop in exams as his hand writing is completely illegible.
We found given the responsibility of for for example getting himself off to school without us rather than failing to do it he rose to the challenge and surpassed all our expectations.
A few years ago we despaired but now lessons have become more interesting his concentration has improved enormously we can see him achieving primarily A's and B's at GCSE and going onto do to A levels (this improvement as he got older was also predicted by the ed. psych who saw him). I'm less keen about uni for him I suspect he will join the band of clever boys who spend three years pissing it up the wall and emerge with a third; maybe I'm doing him a disservice.
The ed pysch at the time of the assessment was concerned about his mental health he said that he could be depressed because he must struggle all the time due to the huge discrepancy between actual intelligence and processing but in his case he seemed unconcerned but this is something that maybe you should watch put for.
The best analogy we were once given was Porche engine lawn mower gear box!
Do PM if you want a sympathetic ear there have been times when I could cheerfully murder him!

Sorry if I missed it, how old is he?

Sounds very much like my DS 16. DS never had a formal diagnosis but now gets extra time for exams. He got a lot of extra help with his spelling in primary as well. He spells the same word 3 different ways on the paper and can't remember numbers from looking at the board down to the paper. HIs writing does hold him back a bit, he should be getting A* but is probably borderline A/B where lots of writing is involved at the moment.

He is always losing things, can never remember where he just put something.
For exams he has found having a watch is very helpful and has only recently really remembered to concentrate more on the questions with the higher points etc.

happygardening, they sound very similar! DS is regarded as a bit eccentric at school - no bullying issues, to the school's surprise - they've specifically kept an eye out for him. I think he plays it up a bit. He's had a tick-box check for depression within the last six months, but it said everything was ok (neither he, nor we, thought he was depressed, just fed up with things just somehow not working out for him.) He seems to create chaos out of order very easily, not just untidy, but chaotically so.
He's not good at reading faces, but spots things out of sequence, which no-one else would notice. But he doesn't notice things like time.

It must be so frustrating a bit like being asked to write with your hands tied behind your back then being criticised if you fail to produce a hand written essay in copper plate handwriting of 500 words.
500 words: in my dreams!

P.S. For the super articulate the dragon dictation programme is I believe the way to go but few will take it on giving you a whole variety of spurious reasons.

Exactly happygardening.

When I am trying to educate adults about specific learning disabilities I often give them a little exercise. I read out a little story and then ask them to summarise the story - in writing. After they are all pretty satisfied (sometimes slightly smug) about their abilities, I then ask them to put the pen into their other hand and do it again. Cue...frustration.

Sadly you seem to have missed out the vast majority of the teaching profession. My head aches from repeatedly hitting it against that wall and have now virtually given up. It doesn't seem to me to be that difficult a concept to grasp. But then Im not a teacher!

esperance, I don't have any figures, other than that he's in the top 3%. If you spoke to him, you would easily accept that he could be top 3%. He's articulate, well-informed, interested and witty. All his problems appear to be organisational. For ages he didn't seem to "get" that the point of exams is to pass them. If he knew a lot about one topic he would write about it to the exclusion of other questions. He would end up with 96% for Question A, 0 for Question B, 90% for Question C, 6% for Question D- overall mark 48% fail. Trying to convince him this was bad was like banging your head off a brick wall. But now he can see others benefitting from "getting" that exams are for passing, and he can see that he's missing out, and will continue to miss out. And neither we, nor his teachers, can see where he can go after school if he doesn't have the grades for University, nor the common sense for an apprenticeship. And, given that 50% of young people go to Uni, it seems monumentally unfair that someone with a top 3% IQ may not manage it.

Could it be more of a dyspraxic problem?

I'm pretty sure it's not dyspraxia. It's more of a junior "absent minded professor" thing, though clearly genuine absent minded professors couldn't have been like this in their teens,or they'd never have become professors.