• Anita Deme says: 
March 11, 2013 at 3:21 pm 
Hello Dr. Mullin, I was so happy to chance upon this discussion after getting my son’s triennial review results back. He is a 14 year old boy originally diagnosed in preschool with ADHD but now is classified as other health impaired. He is a bright and sweet boy. He has an IEP and has accommodations for time and a half for testing. His teachers complain that he is not writing notes and that he seems to drift off during lectures, they need him to practice time management and autonomy. They say that sometimes he is angry and resentful and other times he seems happy, and that he strives for perfection and never tell lies not even little “white” ones. Homework is a struggle and if I do not stay on top of it he leaves out assignments. He sometimes works for hours on homework well into the late evening and night. When I confront him about the teachers e-mailing me of work missing, he is so remorseful about failing to do it.
He says he is overwhelmed and stressed and does a lot of escapeism into video games or just into his own world. It seems like he needs the world to stop spinning so fast.
We are having a year end IEP meeting deciding what course of action to take with him for High School next year and I do not seem to understand the testing scores too well. There seem to be a big gap in %iles in different aspects of the testing.
His testing results were:
WISC-IV FSIQ=119, VCI=132, PRI=110, WMI=107, PSI= 103
SS %ILE
VCI:
SIMILARITIES 16 98
VOCAB 18 99.6
COMP 12 75
PRI:
BLOCK DESIGN 10 50
PICTURE CONCEPTS 13 84
MATRIX REASONING 12 75
WMI:
DIGIT SPAN 12 75
LETTER/# SEQUENCE 11 63
PSI:
CODING 12 75
SYMBOL SEARCH 9 37
Any information would be most valuable to our decision making process. His grades do not reflect his abilities. He has come a long way but we cannot seem to put our finger on what is his true disability is and how to truely help him.
• Melissa Mullin, Ph.D. says: 
March 14, 2013 at 11:34 pm 
You son has a very strong verbal ability with average scores in the other indexes. I think that his executive functioning skills may be the issue. Most children with ADHD have issues with executive functioning. You can have him take the quiz on my website to see how he rates. You can take it and answer the questions as you view him and he can take it for himself. Compare the two scores, do you agree? I have also just completed an Executive Functioning Workbook. I hope this helps.

 

• Rejeania says: 
October 26, 2012 at 4:22 am 
Our son is 7 years old and in 2nd grade. He was diagnosed with ADHD at the end of Kindergarten. His main areas of concern are attentiveness and hyperactivity. It was believed that his difficulty with his grades in K and 1st grade was stemming from his inability to sit still and concentrate coupled with trying to find the right fit with medication. He is currently on Ritalin twice a day and has responded fairly well with the dosage, although he did have some days that he would be inattentive and disruptive but this was not a daily problem.
• Once the behavior was under control, he continued to have problems across all subjects. He is able to comprehend and answer questions verbally, but he is unable to express thoughts on paper. This problem exists in ALL subjects (Math, Science, Social Studies and Language Arts). When he took a verbal comprehension test he scored at approx. 50 percentile but when he took the written comprehension test he scored less than 2 percentile. When given an assignment it takes him 10-20 minutes to begin. He is not playing during this time he is quiet and thinking. He then begins but the assignments take him at least twice as long as the other children in his class.
• The school and Sylvan both expressed that they believed this was a focusing issue. He is smart and grasp the concepts they are teaching, but he does not seem to be able to express them with pen and paper. We consulted our pediatrician and he increased my son’s Ritalin three weeks ago. Since then we have had no behavior problems at school. He is now sitting in class and no longer disrupts the people around him. However, after meeting today with his teacher he is still having issues with the school work.
• Again I was told he has problems beginning assignments and then he has trouble finishing them in the allotted time. He can copy sentences and stories, but he struggles with putting his own thoughts on paper. He also seems to miss part of words/sentences. For example on his spelling test, the word was “fast” he wrote “fa” and stopped the word “against” was spelled “again”. He seems to miss the last part of what people say to him. Does this sound like an extension of the ADHD or does this sound like it could be something more?
REPLY
  • Melissa Mullin, Ph.D. says: 
October 28, 2012 at 12:52 am 
One of the common issues with ADHD is that students miss information when it is being taught. While the medication has helped your son’s behavior, it does not teach him any skills he might have missed before be began medication. The two areas I would look at are working memory and fine motor skills. ADHD affects working memory and this hinders a child’s ability to work with multiple bits of information at one time. Basically due to ADHD your child has not built the foundation for focusing and working on a task, he needs guidance and practice to learn this skills. Learning metacognitive strategies like: STOP, THINK, PLAN, DO can guide your son as he starts a task. When it come to writing something down he needs help to outline it, organize it and then write it. 
For fine motor skills Retrain The Brain and Handwriting Without Tears are good programs. Taking a drawing class is another way to build fine motor skills.
REPLY
    • Rejeania says: 
October 29, 2012 at 3:01 am 
First – Thank you so much for your response. It is wonderful how you answer each post. As a parent of a child who struggles, it is nice to have someone who will not only listen to your concerns but will give some guidance. I have had a lot of people telling me what is wrong with my son but no one has had any ideas on how I can better help him. I have been working with him at home on his writing skills for the last 6 weeks. We started out writing letters, then moved on to words and then sentences. Now that he has shown he can write out the words and knows a sentence structure, I plan on working with him on outlining his thoughts. He has 2 stories due at school which the teacher has sent home for me to help him with. I will start with those and help him outline his thoughts.
I will also definitely look into these programs. Thank you again for your insight!