IQ test

[Summerblaze]

I wrote on here a few weeks ago as I had had a meeting with an Ed Psych who told me that after an hour of meeting my ds he had decided that he would never get passed the age of a 12 year old as at the age of 16 he would just stop learning.

I have just received his report through and apparently they did a performance iq test on him. He came out as a 72. This seemed really low but I was unsure really how an iq test could be done on my ds as he probably wouldn't have concentrated on the test as you, I or an older child would. Surely this would have made a difference.

When doing homework with him, if he is interested that day, he can read most of the words on his sheet. If he can't be bothered, then some days I can only get him to read a couple of words.

It is absolute nonsense that he will stop learning at the age of 16!

All the research in brain plasticity shows that you learn, and your brain changes, your whole life.

All IQ tests are rubbish. There is no way to measure intelligence (or even define it).

If the result is helpful to you, use it. If the result isn't helpful to you - forget it!

Well, if the EP stopped learning at 16, you'd better see a different one. Obviously her a levels, degree and postgraduate qualifications are worth nothing, and her annual updates won't sinking in either.

@ maria

Rofl Maria - totally agree. I think I remember your dc was quite young too? Don't let people what your child can't do ( unless in context of getting them more help / statements)

DS will be 6 in December but is more like a 4 year old. He had glue ear from age 1 to 4.5 so that didn't help at all. If he didn't want to do the test he would have just made up answers. The guy said that he kept saying chocolate to the answers of things. He does this to me too when he doesn't want to do his homework but I know damn well that he is just doing it to wind me up as he answered the same thing correctly the last 3 days.

Thanks. Never heard of anyone doing an iq test on one quite so young before especially one with his issues. EP said he had moderate learning difficulties. As far as we know he is not ASD. Both EP's, his salt worker, school and paed have said they do not think he has this.

I agree about IQ tests not being accurate. The mind is a very complex puzzle and no 1 test could ever solve it.

Take for instance supposing a Dc is very very bright but is also a perfectionist...surely the fact that the Dc wants to get an answer perfect would affect any timed tests which may of been included in the IQ test? Dc may have a vast amount of knowledge about a specific subject, which when asked a question about that subject causes a silent debate in their mind as to what the question is really asking for and what would be the correct answer? again wouldn't the time taken affect a test of processing speed?

It's not quite the same but Ds 8 had a S&L assessment a few weeks ago, he did really well. During one section I counted 7 questions in which he was asked to point to the left or right of something which he passed on without even attempting an answer......why? he still doesn't know his left from his right. He could of easily pointed to the correct answer if it didn't involve defining what was his left/right before he did, when he looked to me as soon as the first question was asked I could see the frustration . Yet the SALT didn't know that was what he was struggling with so it was seen as not being interested in the task at hand. In another test he was distracted by other noises (although quiet to us) so he couldn't recall sentences correctly, again pulling down his score and was seen as not being interested in the task at hand. Had these other issues not been present his overall score would of been a whole lot different.

Your EP was indeed talking bunkum.

However, in defense of my profession - EPs are not teachers who have done an EP course. To be an EP you used to have to do a psychology degree, then teacher trainingm then teaching (in order to experience the world you will be advising in) for at least two years, then a masters. So no, not doctors, but a 7 year training entry requirement. It would be more accurate to say 'psychologists who have had teaching experience' rather than 'teachers who do some psychology'. I am very very far from being a teacher.
More recently they have changed it so now you have to do psychology degree, two years relevant experience (doesn't have to be teaching, but relevant to education) and a three year doctorate training. This to bring it in line with other psychology careers. Again, minimum 7 years to qualify.

Re: IQ tests. They are not necessarily finite measures of potential, particularly in younger children, and particularly where language development is delayed. However it would be rare to move from, say, severe learning diffs to average IQ or low average to above average or anything; scores are often quoted within a 90% confidence range, so rather than being told your child's IQ is 73, you might be told it's in the range 67-77, at 90% confidence level. That means there is a 90% chance that if he took the test again later, the final score would be in that range. More accurate than giving a single number score.

The reason why only restricted professions can give IQ tests is not because they are hard to administer - they are not. It's because they are difficult to interpret. If a child was distracted by noise during a memory test I would note it and qualify the score (whilst noting also the significance of the fact that the child was unable to use a sensory filter to ignore the disturbance, depending on how intrusive it actually was). It is often those incidental happenings that tell us more than the actual scores. For example, your DS, sugarplum, could have said that he didn't know left and right, but instead he chose not to say anything and instead get several questions wrong. Assuming she had established rapport, that would tell me something about a child's confidence and social communication. I often pick up processing issues from the way children respond to questions rather than the scores, etc. For example, we do a test where children have to find two pictures with a logical link from an array (eg two of the pcitures are different sorts of trees). a child could score very low on that test because they can't remember the instructions, or because they have poor picture recognition, or because they want to solve it verbally and once it gets very symbolic they can't do that, or because their attention has wandered, or because they are rushing and making wild guesses. Its up to the administrator of the test to decide what the score is showing about the child's learning profile. That sort of 'rich' info is often much more useful to the teacher in identifying the real issues for the child than the 'scores on the doors' at the end of the assessment.

See, I told you to see a different ed psych . Lots of professionals do talk sense.

Hopefully yours was simply having a verbal diarrhoea day (defined as when the stream of words coming out of a professional's mouth bears little or no relation to what they really think)

Ilike, I have a theory that certain LAs preferentially recruit and retain the most incompetent EPs they can find. Cos the more expert ones are annoyingly independent-minded.

I am a LA psychologist, Maria...not sure if that confirms or refutes your theory ;)

zzzz you were a little more dismissive than that, you said 'EPs are not drs, I think they are teachers who have gone on to do EP degrees', then 'psychology degree then postgrad course, but still not a dr', and the whole point of your post was to emphasise that the EP is underqualified compared to a dr, which given that the fields are different is a bit irrelevant...though obviously this particular EP, and clearly the ones you have experienced, have been underwhelming and / or said stupid things. The thing is, it was the teaching bit that was the 'hoop to jump through' on the way to training as a psychologist, not that we are fundamentally jumped-up teachers. And of course the new breed are doctors in titular terms. I also find it pretty offensive that you say 'realistically you could have practised with only very minimal child psychology experience' as if they hand out the qualifications like sweeties. At one time they trained 100 ed psychs per annum (not sure of figures now) and there was VERY fierce competition for places. You had to be extremely knowledgeable about child psychology just to get an interview. A clinical psychologist in their 3 year training would cover a wide range of different types of clinical casework before deciding to specialise in child clinical psychology. An ed psych would have spent 3 years working daily with children learning pedagogy then applying it in their own class and then a full year (Sept to Sept) studying only child psychology in education, now of course 3 years studying only that. The more recent change to a doctorate is simply to bring it into line, for the Health Professions Council, with other professional psychology careers for registration purposes.

Why does the profession need to be heavy on pure maths / science type experience? We don't need to handle statistical analysis from scratch much, though we are it is true not as good as we should be at running research projects in practice. I'd like to see that improve. As I described above, the analysis of IQ tests is much more than simply number crunching.

I don't doubt your experience of ed psych reports is underwhelming. I am constantly appalled by what I read on here. But this board does not include everyone who ever saw an EP. I had an appalling experience when giving birth with the 3 midwives I encountered. They were uninterested, overstretched, and didn't listen to me or my requests with the result that my baby was born on a prenatal ward despite me being 'high risk' due to cholestasis, previous fevers in labour, prolonged ROM, and previous retained placenta. I did not recive the antibiotics in labour I was meant to and nor was my baby constantly monitored during labour as I was told must happen. Several friends also had bad experiences. Doesn't mean all midwives are crap. I am not crap at my job, what a pity it wasn't me you saw :)

Ilikemysleep Thanks for your detailed reply. I definitely got more from your post than I did from my EP.

He only did a performance iq test with him as he already knew he had difficulties with language skills. He obtained scores of 3, 5 and 8 which produced an estimate of 72 with a 95% confidence interval of 67 to 80.

Completely freaked out by this result as I don't really know what this means for his future. Felt sick when I read the report.

I don't know if you had read my pp. This is what the EP said to us in the meeting after he met ds.

^Today we finally got the Educational Psychologist to come to see him at the school.

At the meeting afterwards, he told us that DS1 was delayed by about 3 years and that he had moderate learning difficulties that he didn't think were part of anything else but maybe due to not hearing for 3 years of his early life.

Sounds great, I thought. May get some help so he can catch up. Not so!!

Apparently the council will not give the school anymore money as they have already had their quota of SEN money but it wouldn't matter anyway as DS1 has no chance of catching up. He will always be half to 2/3rds his age. He is nearly 6 but is more like a 3 yo so when he is 9, he will be 4.5 - 6 yo and when he is 16, he will be like a 9 or 12 yo. I said, great so when he is 40, he will be 20-30 but apparently it doesn't work like that so at 16 he just stops learning and will bottom out.

He had said a few minutes before that the pots of money the council give to are those with severe needs who will never live an independent life but my son will but then tells me that DS1 will end up no older than a 12 yo.

All he kept saying was that if he could read to age 9 level then he could manage and not everyone goes to university. I'm not at all hung up on if he goes to nursery or not, but I do want him to have the opportunity to maybe live independently and have a job and a family. If it not meant to be then so be but they seemed to have just decided now that he isn't worth it. He's 5 FGS.^

Ilike, you're definitely an EP with attitude and from the sounds of your LA, it's one which prefers to do the best it can, rather than muck people about, hoping all the 'expensive' families move out ASAP.

Hopefully, the doctorate and parity with clinical psychology training route, will produce more confident professionals who can stand up to their rogue employers.

BPS guidelines
"When working in multi-professional or multi-agency contexts, psychologists may find themselves in conflict with the approaches to work taken by other individual colleagues or by the multi-professional team or agency" and "If they conclude that misconduct has occurred, psychologists should bring the matter to the attention of those charged with the responsibility to investigate such concerns"

Quite difficult if someone is professionally isolated, in a job in which their expertise can be ignored unless less-qualified people choose to implement it. I would guess (in some LAs) EPs are also subject to the power games which influence office politics. And I didn't know that the educational branch of psychology was the historic poor relation: I'd imagine this makes it a bit harder to point the finger.

OP, have a look at this

The rate of development between 16 years old and 76 years old is rarely as fast as in childhood, so the 'IQ' score may not change a great deal. But that doesn't mean any dc's functional abilities, thinking skills or academic achievements are going to be set in stone on their 16th birthday: we keep learning as long as we are alive, learning disability or not, and we all learn most when we have the right opportunities and support. Yes a learning disability makes this harder (the clue is in the name ) But harder doesn't mean impossible.

Unless something disastrous happens, a person with LD will be older, wiser, and more expert at doing most things at 45y old than they were as a teenager. Just like someone without LD. Whether that will be enough to live unsupported, who knows. But we all know lots of people without any SN whose lives would fall apart without their current support.

Summer, as you say your son is only 5, and the hearing difficulty may have held him back, so there will be that uncertainty.
Our son was assessed by our EP at 7 who gently told us similar, however his IQscore came out quite a bit lower than your ds putting him within the severe learning disablity. At first it was quite a shock - almost I would say giving us exagerated bad news. It did however give us amunition to get help for ds, although the help has been like pulling teeth at times! Now our son is 14, and at an MLD secondary, looking forward to college in a unit within the local college. He is able to read 4 letter words most of the time, but I suspect will always need support of some sort. I think that early pessimistic forecast although shocking at thevtime, was helpful in re- gearing our thinking, and getting me into fighting mode! Many children at ds MLD school are doing very well, and will be independent- perhaps a little later than their more academic peers. More of the learning goes in learning life and practical skills (rather than esoteric things such as physics theory).
Obviously most of us go on learning well beyond 16, but the rate of learning new skills slows down once the brain is fully formed (in the mid 20s.)
What I am trying to say is don,t get overly hung up by the 12 year old level bit, think more in terms of using the report to get your son the help he most needs.

And we all go on learning from life experiences, so that will add to our understanding and maturity.