The WISC was lower for my son when he took it four years later. The educational psychologist that tested my son the month he turned seven used the KBIT and achievement testing. Based on that testing he predicted my son would score in the highly gifted range if he took the WISC. His half-brother was similar to my son in a lot of ways and is highly gifted so we were expecting that my son would also be highly gifted.
The educational psychologist said that my son would need to be tested over more than one session because of his disability that affected his endurance, especially his vision. He also said he thought my son could have scored even higher on the achievement testing, both math and reading, if he didn't have the fatigue problem.
We couldn't afford testing until insurance paid for it when my son was 11. We were told it had to be done all in one session even though he had fatigue issues. It was done by a university and part of it was done by a student. My son had anxiety and could not sleep the night before the test. He was getting a migraine and the Tylenol he took did nothing for it. The testing was all day, with achievement testing at the end when he felt horrible but he kept going and wanted to get it over with. He said it made him really nervous because they watched everything he did and wrote down everything he said.
The neuropsychologist looked at that one test and determined that, although he was verbally gifted, he also had developmental coordination disorder and some other issues that I didn't think he had because I had never seen any evidence of it and these affected his IQ score. I told her that some of the test results, especially the tests after his headache got worse just didn't make sense and did not match what we knew about him from past testing and things he was able to do that required good coordination and motor planning. He only seemed uncoordinated when he was exhausted. He had to take breaks more often than other kids because of endurance issues that were caused by what we later learned was a connective tissue disorder. She said she didn't think the headache and anxiety and lack of sleep would have made that much difference and seemed angry that I, just a parent, would question her. She teaches at the university and I have thought writing her to tell her how important it is to listen to parents and to look at more than just one test and that she needs to do more research if she thinks that anxiety, fatigue and migraines can't affect test results. Misdiagnosis made it harder to get a correct diagnosis and I want her to know how much trouble and pain and heartache that caused us. We might have made different medical decisions if we had been able to get a correct diagnosis.
I don't think I was pushy enough and now I regret it.
