There are some forms of severe ADHD (or, if you take out the hyperactivity, ADD) which can have motor impairment or other issues involved. Occupational Therapy assessment can give you a clearer picture - sometimes the answer is surprising. For example, we had to have easy child 2/difficult child 2 assessed by an Occupational Therapist (OT) in order to get accommodations for her handwriting problems in exams. The Occupational Therapist (OT) happened to find a few other problems we had not known about - turned out she also has dyspraxia and kinesthesia. The Occupational Therapist (OT) said, "Well, that just means you have some difficulty in knowing where your body is, in relation to everything. You're likely to seem a bit clumsier and have poor balance," at which my girl laughed. She's been working professionally as a stiltwalker since she was 8 years old! But it is true, apart from her brilliant sense of balance, she is unco. And when she was learning ballet, the only way she could learn a choreography routine, was for the teacher to manually position her arms and legs. She could not learn body movement by just watching.
So an Occupational Therapist (OT) assessment can sometimes give you surprising but valid information. Similarly, with a speech therapist.
Since you say he scores well in reading and verbal comprehension, help him focus on this as his strength. But be careful - as he gets older, this does become more subtle and therefore more challenging. You might need to work with him to maintain his high level of ability here.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 never seemed to have Asperger's, but we realised when she was 10 that she had problems with laying down memory. She had been doing well in school up to this point when she suddenly seemed to slam into a learning brick wall. We couldn't understand it and neither could she. A school-based psychometric assessment showed an apparent IQ drop of 20 points, which also didn't seem to make sense. Further investigation led to a diagnosis of ADD (inattentive type) as well as "she has some traits of Asperger's". This was despite her continuing ability to a high level in reading, grammar, spelling and comprehension. In fact, she never had problems with comprehension at any level and continued to choose English at the top level right through her schooling. But that memory problem - it drove us crazy. It was not immediately apparent, except academically. Especially in Maths, which had been one of her best subjects. She could sit there in a Maths lesson, follow it all, do t he problems, seem to really 'get it'. Then a few days later, she couldn't remember how to do it. She could remember being taugt it, but needed a refresher. If a few more days had passed, she wouldn't even remember having been taught it.
We were told this was due to the ADD preventing the memories being laid down as deeply as they should have been; the inattention t the level of the brain meant that the mental recording was only superficial and too easily erased. She needed help in ensuring her memories were more thoroughly engraved in her brain.
medications were the trick for her - a surprisingly low dose is all that was needed. She still takes medications (she's 24) but only on days when she needs to focus. So in Grade 6 when she was diagnosed, she had been almost failing in Maths (despite it being one of her best subjects in previous years). We had tried intensive coaching, but to no avail. Unless THAT topic kept getting revisited every few days, she would forget it so thoroughly she had to be re-taught. But after starting on medications, in Grade 7 she topped her class in Maths, six months later.
WHat I did with all my kids to ensure the best comprehension capability - I used to read every book they did. So with the girls, I read all the Babysitters Club books as well as Babysitters Little Sister. Christopher Pike and all those. Then Ann Rice books - I stayed up with it all. Then we would discuss the books. Because we started so young, it set up the pattern for them, to read between the lines. It is more difficult with boys because the range of books available do not encourage this level of introspection. So when that expectation hits at school, they can suddenly flounder, where before they were doing well.
WHat has been a support for difficult child 3 (who refuses to read narrative books despite a high capability) has been a TV education show on poetry. The program is made in the UK but screened in Australia as part of the TV for schools programming. As a result of watching this program (including more repeats of it than 'I Love Lucy'!) difficult child 3 now has a really good grasp of poetry analysis, and also professes to really love poetry. Unusual for someone with autism. His English teacher recently gave him a one-on-one lesson in poetry and was blown away by his ability, when in other topics he obviously struggles.
I read the books that the kids do, and we discuss them in terms of the hidden messages. "When the main character did this, how do you think the other characters felt? How would you have felt? How could she have done things differently? Can you see a general theme in this book, that ties all the sub-plots together?"
These talks were useful on so many levels - they gave me a window into how my kids were thinking, how their compassion and empathy was developing, and even if they were having serious social problems (not necessarily because of any lacks in them - easy child had problems with a classmate who would control all the social interactions in the class).
We now believe easy child 2/difficult child 2 has mild Asperger's. But her first year in high school *grade 7 for us) was marked not only by a return to Maths ability, but by her winning a major writing competition with a very imaginative and complex fantastic story. She had written it for school, I read it and sent it off to the competition for her. It matches with the sort of pictures she used to draw, from very young (pre-school) - very detailed, intricate,, complex. She just has a mind that works that way.
Mindy, it is possible that all you are concerned about could be explained by inattentive-type ADHD. There could also be some kinesthesia issues. But to be sure, it needs thorough assessment. The motor skills issues need Occupational Therapist (OT) assessment. The possible NonVerbal Learning Disorder (NVLD) - Speech Pathology. But go carefully with SpeechPathology - we have a very good friend who is a Speech Pathologist, who recently assessed difficult child 3. She went beyond the basic tests which showed his abilities all now within the normal range or above. Because difficult child 3 had language delay IN THE PAST but has now caught up and progressed to a university-level vocabulary, he tests now as normal. But she dug deeper and fond a wide gap between difficult child 3's vocabulary, and his ability to access that ability in normal time-frame. This is a facet of the earlier language delay and is actually responsible for his speech dysfluency. As a result, difficult child 3 will always be frustrated by his difficulty with word-finding. Interestingly, easy child 2/difficult child 2 has word finding difficulties too, although she never had language delay.
These gaps in function can be extremely frustrating, especially as a child is beginning to get a handle on what they are good at and what their classmates may be better at. When I talk about brain maturity, I am not equating that with intelligence or even capability. But sometimes some parts of a child's brain can take a little longer to mature, and this can show up in a sudden gap in ability than seems to appear almost overnight. The child feels shocked - he could do that before! Or he thinks, why has the work suddenly become impossibly difficult, just in this little area? I remember when I went to high school (age 11, here), I went to a high school out of the local area where I had been going to school. The curriculum material had been subtly different so when a certain topic was taught, the other students were familiar with it and I was floundering. In my best subject, too! It was a huge blow to my confidence and it took me years to recover, even though that topic only lasted a couple of weeks.
Whatever your son's problems, I would suggest working primarily on symptoms, for a start. Get the experts to define the range of his capabilities, in order to better support him and teach him that the beat way to achieve is to identify your weak areas, then target them directly. Too often the education system teaches our kids to avoid the hard stuff. The bright kids especially, need encouragement and support to learn to go right to the problem areas and work on them. Being bright, it's too easy to slide by and close your eyes to one small, tricky, topic area. But this is a very bad habit to get into and will do them a disservice life long, if they don't break this habit.
easy child came home from school one day when she was 6. "David beat me in Maths today, I need to study. That cannot happen again." As she got older she needed to keep this attitude toward her own learning. She's needed occasional encouragement and "attagirl" support to keep this. School can really knock a kid's confidence, even a bright kid's. If learning problems suddenly emerge from the mists, it just adds to the hurdles your child needs help over.
WHatever it is - ADHD, Asperger's, or something else not yet identified - follow the symptoms and work from there, to begin with. Use what works and dump what doesn't. And don't feel guilty asking for help, for a kid who already is a high achiever. Every child deserves the right to be able to achieve to the best of his abilities. If learning problems get in the way, and this kid SHOULD be in the top 10% of the class but is only in the middle range, it is still OK to say, "He needs help with his learning problems so he can do as well as we all know he is capable of." Anything less is frustrating to him, and demoralising.
Similarly, if the best a kid can do is the bottom 10%, he needs to know that achieving that is absolutely great.
We need to learn to work to our own potentials, not everyone else's expectations.
He sounds like a great kid, actually.
Keep us posted.
Marg