Just got test results it's worse than I thought. My mom gut says she's performing way better than the results. Is that a thing?

[FloridaLisa]

Ok, ladies, I'm about to become y'all's new best friend. I have SO much to learn. I've posted a couple of times on this board because I've suspected something was up with my youngest but then she'd make a big leap and I'd dismiss it. Thinking all along if we worked harder, if I focused on teaching her more that she'd "catch up." I had talked to her evaluator privately and we mutually thought she was a late bloomer. Behind on some markers like nursing, walking, talking, reading but always got there eventually. 

She's now 6th grade and I had her tested. Just got the results and I want to cry my eyeballs out. There were no LDs...just a tag of slow learner, developmental delays. Some of the results were shocking actually and I can't believe it's talking about my girl. Not because she's my girl but because I see what's she's doing. 

So my real question: Can a child perform in actuality better than what tests show? And even more important: can you teach a child with cognitive delays so that they will outperform what their tests indicate they're capable of? 

Please don't quote as I'll edit some of this later. This is her story...but I need information to meet her in the best possible way. 

[kbutton]

Short answer is yes, and at least some of it is that you are probably accommodating her in very specific ways that you don't even realize are optimizing her chances of success. (That part = you're doing a good job, Mom!)

Longer answer--you can't necessarily increase her overall capacity by lots and lots (theories vary on how fluid intelligence is), but you can continue to help her be the best her capabilities will allow her to be.

 

 

[PeterPan]

4 hours ago, FloridaLisa said:

Ok, ladies, I'm about to become y'all's new best friend.

Good, we love new people to come in! It's a great place to be!

4 hours ago, FloridaLisa said:

a late bloomer

Here, try this link and see if it works. I think your gut is right that she's progressing, that she has a seemingly normal progression, but that she's just BEHIND. So there's data to show this, and that's what the curves on this pdf will show you. It's not your imagination! The challenge then is that, without intervention, she'll actually have her early adolescence spurt (which she has not had yet) and then be permanently behind. 

So what are they advising you to DO now? What do you want to do? What does she want or what needs does she notice?

Everybody has their own way of going about this. Like I'm on this perpetual rampage to intervene with my ds, but he can't even read a book independently of his own choice for pity's sake. That's not functional and where I want to stop. But some people are like ok, finding normalcy, just continuing to develop her as a whole person, a functional whole person, is going to get her to an ok place for her. And that's a judgment call you make as the parent, what is best for her, whether that's intervention or identification and accommodation. 

If you want to intervene, you'd probably be talking some more evals and finding someone skilled to work on those areas (language, whatever). If you don't intervene in that way, then you'd continue to offer high support and just work it out. I've had friends who chose that path and the kids are happy. That wasn't a good path for my ds, but for some kids it comes into a functional whole.

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC3684183&blobtype=pdf  

Edited October 24, 2018 by PeterPan

[Heathermomster]

It depends upon which test you are looking at.  For example, the WCJ is an unaccommodated test of achievement, and my son scores low on it.  In the classroom, where he types and receives extended test taking time on exams, he performs very well.  You’d never know by classroom test scores that he has mulitiple SLDs.  

The only NP test that reflects my son’s academic performance is the WISC-IV subtests for PR and VC.  Any vocab or comprehension number is high and that’s about it.  

Edited October 24, 2018 by Heathermomster

[FloridaLisa]

9 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Good, we love new people to come in! It's a great place to be!

Thank you for the welcome and helping me think through this!

Here, try this link and see if it works. I think your gut is right that she's progressing, that she has a seemingly normal progression, but that she's just BEHIND. So there's data to show this, and that's what the curves on this pdf will show you. It's not your imagination! The challenge then is that, without intervention, she'll actually have her early adolescence spurt (which she has not had yet) and then be permanently behind. 

Being permanently behind makes me sad....IF there are things we can do now to help her reach her potential. I don't think she's frustrated now or feeling labeled and that's because of homeschooling (she does have a wide friend group). But I know that gap is likely to widen and she's going to notice differences. Plus, I feel I'm getting a late start, probably again b/c of homeschooling and thinking we just needed to double down. 

So what are they advising you to DO now? What do you want to do? What does she want or what needs does she notice?

No advice yet. Because she's not in school, I'm a bit on my own. I've got the evals and now I'm in research mode. 

Everybody has their own way of going about this. Like I'm on this perpetual rampage to intervene with my ds, but he can't even read a book independently of his own choice for pity's sake. That's not functional and where I want to stop. But some people are like ok, finding normalcy, just continuing to develop her as a whole person, a functional whole person, is going to get her to an ok place for her. And that's a judgment call you make as the parent, what is best for her, whether that's intervention or identification and accommodation. 

If you want to intervene, you'd probably be talking some more evals and finding someone skilled to work on those areas (language, whatever). If you don't intervene in that way, then you'd continue to offer high support and just work it out. I've had friends who chose that path and the kids are happy. That wasn't a good path for my ds, but for some kids it comes into a functional whole.

I definitely want to intervene. I feel the fight rising up in me to help her in the best way I can. Her working memory was the lowest and I've already ordered some things based on recs here. (A Fist Full of Coins, the Cusimano book, Bop It, Simon). We use SWB's writing and it's her favorite subject! I love that she's getting rich literature, she's learning to narrate and summarize, and I think it's helping as she scored well on writing, surprisingly. We're using MUS math, changed from Saxon last year when she hit a wall. I'd love to see some breakthrough with number fluency -- I don't know if that's the right word -- but just seeing connections between numbers. It's not there. She always struggled with patterns, with mental math. She reads on a 4th grade level and fatigues easy. I have her read to me and she enjoys that. I'm leaning toward Barton, a friend has loaned it to me, though she didn't test dyslexic. She's just a slow learner. 

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC3684183&blobtype=pdf  

 

[PeterPan]

33 minutes ago, FloridaLisa said:

Her working memory was the lowest and I've already ordered some things based on recs here. (A Fist Full of Coins, the Cusimano book, Bop It, Simon).

I love your list here! Lots of fun stuff. What you can also do is do those tasks while doing Heathermomster's metronome work and/or with background noise. Obviously work up to that. The metronome targets the EF portion of the brain, and it costs you nothing. The distraction is because we need to be able to use our skills with distractions. Even libraries now are not quiet, lol. You're definitely not going to go wrong playing games. Play games every day. :)

33 minutes ago, FloridaLisa said:

I'd love to see some breakthrough with number fluency

Maybe what you're thinking of is number sense? Number sense and the language of math are in the language side of the brain, and the computation is on the opposite side. She could actually be fine with the one and not the other, sigh. Ronit Bird is the bees' knees on intervening for dyscalculia. Because she's older, she's probably going to progress through materials quickly. She has 3 printed books. Overcoming is her book targeted for older students. She has several AWESOME ebooks that are low priced. The Dots, C-Rods, and Multiplication ebooks together comprise the majority of what is in her younger target age print book Toolkit. I don't know where your dd needs to start. Dots is going to make click basic addition facts, so if that's what she needs then that's your place. C-Rods is going to extend it through multi-digit and mental. Most people do 2 digit math mentally and anything more with a calculator, so it's reasonable for you to want her to have that skill. Ronit Bird has a free Card Games ebook with a phenomenal Turnovers game that I used after Dots to extend the concepts to subtraction and then +/- numbers. Highly effective.

I'm sort of Common Core about math, you could say. Anything I teach with Ronit Bird, I'm trying to extend more ways, to more scenarios (measuring, money, time etc.) and I'm asking how we could write it more ways, express it more ways, language it more ways. It has worked out really well for my ds, but he has a bit bright IQ and this ability to grasp hard things and complex things easily. I'm just more recommending that you not see the topics narrowly but see them broadly and look for how they are appearing in other areas. Bust out the play money or Ticket to Ride or measuring tapes or cooking measures and be applying these things to lots of areas.

We did a lot of fractions war using the fractions puzzle (no longer sold sadly) from RightStart. We had to start that tediously slowly, because it was all greek to him. You can never be too patient like that, building them into a foundational concept and helping them really understand it.

So definitely figure out where the holes are, how they're showing up in LIFE, how they would make a big difference if you could catch certain skills, and go for it. Love it.

33 minutes ago, FloridaLisa said:

Being permanently behind makes me sad....IF there are things we can do now to help her reach her potential.

This is such a hard thing because we have a lot of emotions there. You're going to need to give yourself permission to grieve, and your grief might not be her grief. You've made her life GOOD and in her world she's NORMAL. No matter what the disability, in her world she's normal and needs to be normal. It sounds like you've done a really good job of that! So take time to grieve privately, go off, eat/gorge at Cheesecake Factory, talk with girlfriends, get it all out of your system. Then go back with a gameplan to work. You're not going to fix her or make it go away, but you can improve function. You want to look at what she needs for life, what skills would make her life good, what skills would be pivotal that if you got those things then other things would open up. So things like typing, using executive function supports like planners, independent living skills, having a hobby, having number sense with her finances, these are all really great goals. 

It's ok that you can't make it all go away. She's still going to have a really great life. 

33 minutes ago, FloridaLisa said:

She reads on a 4th grade level and fatigues easy. I have her read to me and she enjoys that. I'm leaning toward Barton, a friend has loaned it to me, though she didn't test dyslexic. She's just a slow learner. 

This test is $7 and has threshold data so you can know which areas you'd need to focus on to improve her reading. https://rise.serpmedia.org  For my ds, it turned out the scores were all ASTONISHING. Mind you, he won't read a single book, but his scores in every area were crazy high. Decoding is on there, and if she's above the threshold then at least, per the data, working on decoding will not bump her reading comprehension. Now if she's reading at a 4th grade level, clearly something is holding her back. Did they run a CTOPP or the TILLS? If they did, you shouldn't need this RISE test, but you never know with these people, lol. So see what they ran for language, phonological processing, etc. Did they run the CELF or anything for language? It's a wretched, miserable, fast food nasty, overused (have I spit enough?) screener, and many SLPs who specialize in literacy are moving on to the TILLS.

Are you open to paid intervention there? Could you get funding through your insurance to hire an SLP who specializes in literacy? I like Barton a lot, but depending on what is going on Barton may not address ALL the issues. There are more factors in reading than just decoding. Granted Barton hits some more things, but it's not meant to intervene on language disability or other areas. So you need some data here. If you can get coverage to make it affordable, an SLP who specializes in literacy might be able to give you more detailed testing and figure out what to target. Some will even use Barton! But it can be she needs something else or more things. You need data and some digging to know that. 

Just from my own experience, you don't want to do a lot of interventions that flop. They kind of get worn out, lol. You want to do enough testing that you've found the issues and are on a pretty solid path that you know will probably work, kwim? 

33 minutes ago, FloridaLisa said:

We use SWB's writing and it's her favorite subject! I love that she's getting rich literature, she's learning to narrate and summarize, and I think it's helping as she scored well on writing, surprisingly.

Bring us up to speed here. So she's 6th grade by age and she's using WWE? WWS? And does she do anything else like subject narrations for her history, book summaries, or writing across the curriculum? Has she done any outlining? How did that go?

There are standardized tools for narrative language like the Test of Narrative Language, and there are also informal assessments. Both would be with an SLP, and it's another good reason to consider looking into the SLP. You're doing the RIGHT STUFF, but it would still be nice to find the holes.

Edited October 24, 2018 by PeterPan

[Storygirl]

Welcome! I know very well the feeling of first getting those unexpected test results. The sadness, the sense of being overwhelmed and surprised, the feeling that instead of finally having answers there are just more and more questions. Not knowing what to do next, even when I had a list of suggestions from the psych. All that to say, you are not alone! I've found it really a blessing to have found a community here.

If you feel comfortable and decide to share more specifics about the test results, you may find you get more detailed information from boardies. So many of us have had so many tests run over the years and have had to interpret results for ourselves, and many are willing to share what we have learned, both about the tests themselves and what they might indicate, and the kind of supports and curricula that have been helpful.

[Storygirl]

And to answer your big question about whether kids can perform better than their test scores suggest.... it's possible. And it's possible to have struggles that don't show up on testing.

For example, we just got some new testing results for DS14 yesterday in a meeting to update his IEP. He scores with a significant math disability on his testing, and his math teacher was very surprised. He said DS is doing better in the class than many who do not have math disability and IEPs and without significant extra assistance.

On the other hand, DS can score within typical range on the reading comprehension portions of the testing, but functionally, he has significant problems with reading comprehension.

Two other points I wanted to make. One -- if you received an IQ score, but the subtests showed wide variety (meaning some scores were significantly -- 20 points or more -- higher or lower than others), the overall IQ score is less meaningful overall. If the gap is too big, psychs are not really supposed to calculate an FSIQ, though our psychs have done that anyway but included that those results are not considered valid. So if, for example, the working memory is really low, but the other scores are higher, that WM score can pull down the overall IQ score. But functionally, the child can still be performing well in those higher scoring areas of learning.

I hope that makes sense. It may or may not apply to your situation.

Point Two -- Some psychs are better at interpreting and explaining scores than others. Was this testing through the schools, or private? DId you get a full report with an explanation of what was found and suggestions for what you can do to help?

[PeterPan]

7 minutes ago, Storygirl said:

On the other hand, DS can score within typical range on the reading comprehension portions of the testing, but functionally, he has significant problems with reading comprehension.

Some of that might be the multiple choice vs. real life open-ended questions and using your language thing, sigh. Ds is phenomenal with multiple choice, and a lot of the tests they use, even for language, have significant multiple choice components. The CELF is known to under-identify kids with language disabilities, (sensitivity drops off quickly at 1SD) but still schools persist in using it.

Edited October 25, 2018 by PeterPan

[MistyMountain]

Yes tests can be wrong due to a variety of factors. With my kids there has been testing that I do not feel is accurate and it goes both ways testing both higher or lower depending on the kid and thing being tested. I also did see research myself that you can be a late bloomer intellectually just like with other stuff like some people are a late bloomer with height. I realy think this will be the case with some of my kids and they will follow in dh's footsteps in that regard. 

Edited October 26, 2018 by MistyMountain

[hepatica]

For your own feelings, I would highly recommend reading Ungifted, Intelligence Redefined, by Scott Barry Kaufman. He was a kid who did poorly on IQ tests and was in special ed throughout school and ended up with a PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale, and is one of the foremost experts in interpreting and understanding what "intelligence" means. He does a deep dive into IQ testing and learning disabilities and the meaning of giftedness and talent etc. I think it is a book all educators should read, but it really does hammer home the point that you cannot define a child by test results.