What does this sound like, suspected neuro divergence of some sort

[DiscoBoots]

Hi, hoping someone with similar experience can help shed a light on DS 6.

We've suspected DS has some neuro divergence for a while and the areas if focus are beginning to crystalline now.

He's a pretty (very?) bright 6 year old but his writing is incredibly slow and pretty messy. His spelling is decent though snd he doesn't do mirror writing or odd capitals etc.

The other main thing is his speech is a bit caricature / spiky and exaggerated, he likes to get his words right snd sometimes it's quite slow to get his full sentence out.

He's got a great vocab, and us advanced in maths and reading. He's socially fairly normal but loves creative animal rescue games more than football or wrestling type things so it's sometimes happiest playing solo, but he does join in with a couple of close friends, or sometimes in a bigger group too.

He had a pretty easy going manner and doesn't have tantrums much. He's not obsessive.

Anyone know a child like this?

I’d either self refer or seek a referral to OT about his handwriting in the meantime.

Has he ever seen a speech and language therapist?

I second OT and SALT assessments. Those would give you further insight into DS’s difficulties and potential reasons for them. Has DS had an ed psych assessment?

Is the school providing support?

This is helpful, thanks.

The school teacher shared that he had similar challenges himself when young and I know he's looking out for DS, he said he was trying different things with him to see what might be helpful. My concern is he's one diligent teacher, next year might be someone less interested in this and he might get overlooked. Plus further down the line if he's going to need extra time in exams etc good to get something formalised.

He speaks really well, great vocab, engaging if a little quirky/odd with his intonation and sentence structure. But SALT sounds worth contacting, thanks

Oh and what is OT??
Thanks again!

OT is occupational therapy.

Have you spoken to the SENCO?

We haven't yet Blue, I asked the class teacher if we should but didn't get an answer, he was more focussed on reassuring us that our boy is a happy and bright child who's doing really well in all other areas and just needs to find his 'trick' to get round his difficulty writing.

I asked if he'd advise us to get medical involvement outside of school and he said in his opinion there wasn't a need right now, he's so young and they're trying things out

I think I'm torn between taking this at face value and chilling out vs a keenness to do something coupled with an awareness that diagnosis for eg autism can take 3+ years so we migjt as well get in the queue ASAP as it'll be too late to do anything timely if we need to in the future

Speak to the SENCO.

It isn’t too early to be looking at further assessments and support.

Has DS tried typing, speech to text software, or a scribe? The former is likely to be more successful given DS’s speech difficulties, but it is worth trying all 3.

What are DS’s other fine motor and gross motor skills like?

This is the ironic thing Blue, DS was called out as having exceptional fine motor at 12 and 24 month check ups, he's great at lego and other small fiddly bits. Hence why I'm a bit baffled.

He can draw happily, no Picasso but he has the energy and enthusiasm. It's something mental about getting his ideas through his hand and onto the paper.

He's also fine writing numbers etc, doesn't exhaust him in the same way. Though admittedly a few sums requires fewer strokes than a paragraph.

I will push for some time with the Senco, thanks for the prompt

It's something mental about getting his ideas through his hand and onto the paper.

Writing puts a heavy load on cognitive processing! DS has to understand the question, process the information, come up with his response, hold it in working memory while he formulates the words, grammar and puts them in the right order in the sentence, then plan the spelling of each word and finally work out the movements to write down each letter.

Playing with Lego can be a matter of trial and error in non verbal intelligence, without any reliance on language.

That isn’t actually that uncommon. The physical act of writing for drawing/writing numbers is very different to writing sentences. Far more skills are used in the latter. It isn’t all about motor skills. An ed psych assessment would be helpful in unpicking the difficulties.

This is all great to hear, when he was younger it was less obvious this is an area he is properly struggling in without an obvious path to improve, so good to get some outside perspective

Does this sound like 'a named condition'? I wondered about maybe Dysgraphia? ASD has been mentioned by friends but it's not obvious to me as he has so few of the traits. I am not sure how much it matters whether it has a name or not, if we want a medical piece of paper to get support it feels important for this to be a recognised condition?

Further assessment is a good idea. It could be part of many different conditions. For example, for some it can be part of dyspraxia or dyslexia or autism… However, you don’t need a diagnosis for the school to provide more support. Support in schools is based on needs, not diagnosis.