Testing, Testing....

As the final lap in the apparently interminable process of applying for special ed help for Douwe, he had to have a psychological screening. I have been being the Mommy From Hell about this for some months now. The child, I pointed out, has seen more specialists than you can shake a stick at, a veritable alphabet soup of persons with letters-after-the name has been consulted. Not a single one has ever even considered a psych screening worth the trouble.

This, I was firmly given to understand, makes no difference. Must Be Ruled Out. Well, okay, I gave up, threw in the towel, folded. Red tape has, after all, been raised to a fine art in this particular aspect of life, so I conceded. He was referred to an Audiological Center for testing, as they have some experience with administering such tests to children with speech and language disorders. Okay. Yesterday, off he went with his father to be tested.

Where they explained to Paul that they were not going to give him the psych test. He was to have an intelligence test instead.

Excuse me?

Well, you see, it is a non-verbal intelligence test, so it's all okay.

Come again? This rules out psychological factors exactly how?

Paul did not ask any of these questions as he is not, in fact, the Parent From Hell. He is a most agreeable parent, he figured it would do no harm even though he thinks testing IQ in children this age provides no meaningful information.

*shrug*. So they spent three hours checking to see if Douwe can't talk because he isn't bright enough to learn to talk. Or something.

The report has not come in of course. But apparently we may rest assured that Douwe is a person of at least ordinary intelligence and this is not the reason he talks funny. I know you were all very worried about this possibility.

I am waiting on the report, but there is one rather odd note. Apparently Douwe did rather well on the tests of abstract and concrete reasoning. He also did well on the part where he was to complete puzzles. And he apparently bombed most dramatically on the two sections which test spatial awareness. Paul did not know why this puzzled the nice lady who administered the test so much, but I do. There are advantages to having done special ed for a living, one of which is that you learn a lot about testing of various kinds. (There is also a downside, which is that you can become rather cynical about testing).

She was puzzled because this is impossible. A child who did this badly on those two sections of the test simply cannot have done so well on the puzzles section. I am curious to see, when the report comes in, whether the interpretation part tries to address this impossibility.

In any event, Douwe enjoyed the testing and there were for once absolutely no behavior issues muddying the water. He was completely exhausted when he came home and for the rest of the day. All he had to say further was that he would rather go to school today instead of going back there if that was all right.