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He knows too much
Oct. 12th, 2007 10:01 am(semi-translated from an e-mail to my dad)
Took Daniel to a psychologist to see if he had ADHD and after $1,300 of testing he told us No: he's got a Non-Verbal Learning Disability. Which is kind of funny in part because part of why they think so is that his Language test scores were "literally off the charts; I have never actually seen scores like this before," said the psych dude.
Why is this a problem? Because although he's beyond the 99th percentile in Language (and math), he's "only" at about the 75-80th percentiles in non-verbal reasoning, memory, etc.* Which results in various behaviours that look a lot like ADHD, because the difference between his language comprehension and, for example, his ability to pay attention, are so big that they cause problems related to over-inflated behavioral expectations. He can compare and contrast Jean Valjean and Aladdin verbally for hours, with great detail and enthusiasm (both thieves, both for good reasons, both pursued by authority figures which would normally seen as good but are actually so militant and unmerciful that they are portrayed as bad, etc etc) but when you ask him to write about it, he writes "They were both thieves but they were good." So he really looks like he's being lazy or unable to concentrate.
The kid is literally too smart for his own good. Who knew. I wish I could talk to my mom about this. Can you imagine what she would've said?
* Forgot to mention to my dad that Daniel's physical writing skills (holding a pencil, etc) are way below average.
There are also other reasons why we thought he had ADHD; he suffers from incurable motormouth, often spaces out completely, and could fill all our energy needs if we could somehow channel his jitter-mania into a generator, but apparently it's the huge gap between his verbal and "other" abilities that's the main problem.
Took Daniel to a psychologist to see if he had ADHD and after $1,300 of testing he told us No: he's got a Non-Verbal Learning Disability. Which is kind of funny in part because part of why they think so is that his Language test scores were "literally off the charts; I have never actually seen scores like this before," said the psych dude.
Why is this a problem? Because although he's beyond the 99th percentile in Language (and math), he's "only" at about the 75-80th percentiles in non-verbal reasoning, memory, etc.* Which results in various behaviours that look a lot like ADHD, because the difference between his language comprehension and, for example, his ability to pay attention, are so big that they cause problems related to over-inflated behavioral expectations. He can compare and contrast Jean Valjean and Aladdin verbally for hours, with great detail and enthusiasm (both thieves, both for good reasons, both pursued by authority figures which would normally seen as good but are actually so militant and unmerciful that they are portrayed as bad, etc etc) but when you ask him to write about it, he writes "They were both thieves but they were good." So he really looks like he's being lazy or unable to concentrate.
The kid is literally too smart for his own good. Who knew. I wish I could talk to my mom about this. Can you imagine what she would've said?
* Forgot to mention to my dad that Daniel's physical writing skills (holding a pencil, etc) are way below average.
There are also other reasons why we thought he had ADHD; he suffers from incurable motormouth, often spaces out completely, and could fill all our energy needs if we could somehow channel his jitter-mania into a generator, but apparently it's the huge gap between his verbal and "other" abilities that's the main problem.
