Schooling decisions & WISC scores interpretation

[jrichstad]

My 6yo just finished testing through our local school district and his scores are not a surprise to me--"very superior" in fluid reasoning and Verbal Comprehension but average in working memory and processing speed.

He qualifies for our district's excellent Highly Gifted program (vs "regular" gifted <eyeroll>), which is why I had him tested; I suspected he would. My question, for those of you with kids who might have similar profiles, is whether the working memory/ processing speed deficits are going to make it too frustrating, or whether this is a common enough profile that I don't need to worry about it . 

My follow-up question is, I can see that he encounters enormous frustration when he meets the limits of his working memory/ processing speed and I'm wondering of there are ways to work on that. 

[GracieJane]

Working memory is just the ability to hold multiple variables of a problem in the mind simultaneously while trying a solution. Have him practice really convoluted word problems and solve equations not using paper and pencil. When you tax working memory over and over again, day after day, kids develop really amazing problem-solving skills. 

[Cake and Pi]

That's a pretty common profile. Sometimes it's associated with underlying 2e (esp. ADHD) issues, but sometimes not. All of my gifted kids have big processing speed and/or working memory gaps. One has about four standard deviations difference between processing speed and nonverbal indices. It hasn't negatively impacted his learning as far as we can tell, and he actually performs better academically than similarly gifted siblings with smaller discrepancies because he does not have any specific learning disabilities.