Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing anxiety... for the parent!

Hi,

Is it just me or did anyone else get anxious when their child/children were tested?

My DS5 will be tested for the first time this Friday. We are hoping to find out if he is in fact GT and if so, at what level. I won't say that I'm freaking out about it (yet!), but I have to say that I have many fears. First off, he can sometimes be very silly, and I'm concerned that he may blow the test because of that. I'm not sure if that sounded right; I'm not hoping that he has the highest IQ of all time, but I just want him to do the very best he can so we can gauge what we are dealing with here and then try to create our education plan accordingly. It seems he goes in these cycles of being silly/having attitude, and wouldn't you know it, he's in one now - it figures! Anyway, did any of you ever fear that your child wouldn't perform his best?

Then, getting past the test, I have to say I am a bit anxious about what we will actually find out. My mommy gut tells me that he is definitely gifted, but what if the test doesn't show that? What if it does? What if he is PG? I guess I am just overwhelmed by everything sometimes, because I know in my heart this kid will not be seeing the traditional K-12 education. I'm still learning so much about everything in the GT world (and many thanks to this forum, which has been invaluable), but it is just so overwhelming!

If you've made it this far, thanks for listening to my anxiousness/fears. So, please tell me that I am not alone!

M2,

take a deep breath and look forward one day.... That's all, one day. Once you get through that you can look at the next day and so on. That piece of advice was given to me by someone on here and it works.

Playing "what if" will drive you crazy, which in turn will drive those around you crazy. Tell your son to do his best and send him in. Don't look past that until it's done. Think of this as a puzzle, you have to do it a piece at a time. Take the test, get the score, educate yourself, then start looking at your options.

Occasional anxiety attacks are just part of being owned by a GT kid!

You are not alone. We just went through WISC IV a few weeks ago. Everything you said went through my mind at that time. I still remember waiting for ds to be done testing and I asked dh if he is nervous. He said, "Leave me alone, I am trying very hard not to think about it!"

I was for sure anxious about the testing. That's why I sent Dh there and stayed home I was worried that I would make DS nervous as well. I had lots of mixed feelings about testing. I wasn't even sure if it was the right thing to do.

I did quite some googling after the test and even more once I had the results (that's how I got to this board) but waiting for the results wasn't nowhere as bad as the feeling before the testing. I still remember the moment when I saw the full report.

Good luck with the testing.

It is totally normal to be nervous! I think for me I was concerned that we were paying all this money and I wondered if I would feel like an idiot if my suspicions were not confirmed. We had also asked our psychologist to look out for ADHD so that was another concern.

Let me reassure you about the skills of the psychologists though. My son was tested a few weeks before his fifth birthday. He is a very strong-willed, intense, opinionated child. If the psychologist you have chosen is experienced with gifted children, then she will use all kinds of "tricks of the trade" to get him to perform his best. One "trick" my psychologist used was to let me stay in the room. I did not really want to be here, but she asked DS if that would make him feel more comfortable and--of course--he said yes! So, I also got to see some of the other things she did to get him to answer questions.

My son is a goofball, and for some of the "easy" questions, he would answer with an off-the-wall answer just to be silly. She said to him, "imagine I'm an alien from another planet and I've never heard these things--even if they seem 'easy peasy' to everyone else." That helped a lot. On the flip side, my son is also an extreme perfectionist. So, when she asked him something and he wasn't quite sure, he would clam up even if I knew he knew it. So, she would try to tease answers out of him and did a pretty good job. She said things like, "I'm going to ask you a hard question, and you have to try to answer it even if it makes you stretch your brain. Then you can ask me a hard question." So, she asked hers and then he asked his--his were things like "What makes us alive? How do humans make metal? What makes plants grow?" She joked that he REALLY wasn't going to let her off easy! It took longer to test him (almost 2 hours!), but I could tell that the psychologist was really committed to getting a good picture of my child.

In the end, I think a good psychologist will use lots of tools from her bag of tricks and then will also know if she didn't get an entirely accurate score. In my son's report, she wrote "test results are a considered a minimal estimate due to child's extreme perfectionism and hesitancy to take risks--risk taking improves overall scores and processing speed."

Hopefully, it will be a good experience and you will at least get some good information to support your mommy gut!

You are not alone, I am sure parents gets somewhat anxious.
We want to re-test our DS and I am sure I will be anxious all over again hoping he doesn't score below the 1st test LOL!

A test is like a snapshot- it can be very flattering, or make the subject look not so good. I'm sure we all have photos of ourselves and our kids that we love and others we hide in a drawer to relegate to the trashcan. Don't get too hung up on the actual numbers- look more at the patterns and pay attention to potential strengths and weaknesses.

There are many variables that affect how well a child will score on assessments. You can try to make the experience a positive one for your child by not fretting openly, making sure he has a good night's sleep, giving him a good high protein, low sugar breakfast on test day, etc.

If in the end, you don't feel that the results form a good picture of your child, then consider retesting with a different tool and administrator. YOU know your child best, and parents are actually pretty good about pegging their child's LOG.

What a great analogy. Thanks!

I actually remember being very nervous before my son was tested. I was so afraid that his score would be average and I would have wasted my money trying to "prove" he was gifted. My mommy gut said that he was moderately gifted but I figured that all parents think their children are the smartest and most gifted kids in the world at some point. We were also seeing tons of behaviour issues that seemed to fit with him being gifted and in the wrong preschool setting--if he actually wasn't gifted (or didn't test gifted) could I convince myself and DH that he needed a new school environment.

When the tester told me that he was not only gifted but highly gifted based on the testing I was so relieved that someone had validated my concerns and observations over the past year.

In our case the mommy gut held true and from reading on here and talking with other parents it does seem like the parent knows best when it comes to LOG (despite my own personal under estimate of my son).

Thank you everyone for your advice and words of wisdom.

Our son was tested this morning, and it looks as if my mommy gut was confirmed, and then some. We don't have scores yet, but based on what the tester was saying, he's way up there.

About a year or so ago, when my husband and I started to realize that our son had a special gift, I started doing reading about gifted issues. I will never forget something in the first GT-related book that I read (the name of the book escapes me now). It talked about the difficulties and challenges of raising a gifted child, and basically said, "Hang on for the ride!" No kidding! I feel like I am dipping my big toe in a huge ocean that is raising/educating a gifted child, and it is definitely overwhelming! It is so comforting to know that there are others out there "like me".

Again, your thoughts were truly appreciated.