Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What do I tell DD about testing?

Newbie here...My DD starts her testing next week. We went with a private dr. rather than involving the school. DD is almost 8 and in 2nd grade. For K and 1st she was home schooled/virtual schooled. I started noticing that she was having trouble with focus toward the end of the school year, and have always believed her to be a bit "peculiar" in various other ways. I believed she might have ADD/ADHD and wasn't sure how to go about getting her evaluated without a school. After consideration we thought that getting some professional input from a teacher would help us make the determination of whether or not to test her and so enrolled her into a charter school. Boy was I wrong--and now I feel like I've thrown her to the wolves! They seem to be more clueless than I am about the whole thing. We've gotten the name of a good child neuro-psych in our area (specialized in giftedness) and my husband and I meet with her alone in a few days. My question is: How do you tell your kids that they are getting evaluated? She is the seemingly underachieving kind of gifted (if it's that at all) and I don't see telling her that she's getting tested will go over all that well. She detests writing and "work" of any kind, not to mention tests. What if she won't cooperate and the testing doesn't turn out right? I hate to think of spending all that money and not getting an accurate eval. On the other hand, I worry about tipping her off to the idea that there might be something unique/special/different about her and having her use it as a crutch for not doing stuff. Or worse get her worrying that something is "wrong" with her if she doesn't turn out to be gifted and it's something else (i.e. extreme laziness). Did your kids already know or were the tests a surprise? I just can't imagine how to brooch the topic without causing an uproar. Ideas??

Well, my DS knew that he was "different" and that school, thus far, had been a hot mess.... so, we simply explained he was going to meet a bunch of people and talk a bunch and have to do some tests to they can help us figure out how to make school better for him. He tends to enjoy IQ tests for some reason, though, and had take on previously with a counselor.

We did an eval this summer for my DS who was 9 then, just turned 10, so a little older than your dd. We told him that the doctor was someone who studied how people think and learn and that she would be able to give us some ideas about what would make learning more comfortable for him in the classroom (he had been complaining of boredom and headaches). We also asked him if he would like to go talk to her to help figure some of these things out and he enthusiastically agreed to it.

He's in the gifted program so he is already aware of that label, but I did not talk about the eval in those terms or talk about it as a test, etc. And for us, it really wasn't primarily about finding out how smart he is and we weren't trying to get him into a particular program. What we told him is the truth. There are challenges for him at school that we don't fully understand and we are hoping that the eval will shed some light on them and help make his school experience better.

I think it helped to show him how it would benefit him and solicit his cooperation so that he had some investment in the experience as well.

I told dd that she was going to answer some questions so that we could figure out where the best school for her would be. She happily accepted it. I sent her off with the tester with a big smile and a "Have fun!"
She had lots of fun and wants to do it again.

Excellent ideas! She seemed to respond well to the idea that someone wanted to understand (and help us understand) how she thinks. Of course I had to explain that it's a doctor, but not one that gives shots.

If it's any help, two of my children have been through neuropsych evals, and at your dd's age, both thought they were fun They were tired by the end of the day (ours were given as full 6 hours in one day, with part of the intent being to give the psych a chance to see how they worked when "fresh" in the morning vs at the end of the day). My ds has had a second follow-up eval but he was older, and by that point in time didn't look forward to it as "fun", but also didn't complain much about it either

I don't remember exactly what we told them the first time around, but I do remember getting advice from our actual neuropsych re what to say, and she had a great suggestion that worked really well - so it might be helpful to ask your neuropsych

Best wishes,

polarbear

We went with "the professional you are going to work with (whatever the title was for that evaluation) wants to learn more about how you learn so she/he will have questions, novel learning activities, and academic tasks for you to do. Have fun but at the same time take it seriously so that we can best help you get the things you need for your education."

I think I also mentioned the there will be questions/tasks that are easy, just right and too hard that you aren't expected to know...that is just how it is set up. The professional might not be able to give you feed back on the questions so don't worry about it. But don't give up because you might know that you got one, struggle with three more but then know the next one...you never know when there will be another one you know so just keep working hard and don't take any of it personally you aren't supposed to know it all and it "ain't over until it is over" and you can't predict exactly when that end is.

Then I mentioned not to be afraid to ask for breaks in between tasks as needed because once you start a task you can't stop to go to the bathroom or rest a bit or even if you just need a break to chat (he is a talker).

We told DS (6 at the time) he was going to meet with someone who would help us figure out how his brain worked best and what he was good at doing already, that it would help us make sure we helped him with school, etc. Said he needed to do his best and to explain his answers if they were unusual ones (meaning: if he thought someone might not know why he thought about the answer that way). He was very nonplussed about it all... we were matter-of-fact and so I think he took it from us that this was a typical thing kids did.

Ds6 was 5 and I just told him she was a special doctor who was interested in how people think. I told him she would play games and ask questions and that some would be hard and some silly but he was to help her as much as he could.