I didn’t want to get a WISC in the first place - although it was necessary for advocacy. And I don’t really want to do another now she’s older. But i don’t really understand her capacity, her learning needs or the best way to support and advocate for her. I also don’t know if there’s a problem to solve, given she’s pretty happy and slightly less erratic over time.
I don’t really know if the wisc was accurate, given how unwilling she has been to engage in externally imposed tasks. I don’t really understand what she needs from school to help her feel excited and engaged. Should i be doing more, or should I let my lovely kid sort out her relationship with school in her own time? Is there a problem to solve?
Thanks for your insights!
As Indigo commented, aeh is the expert on this topic.
I am merely commenting from my experience as a parent, that in my observations, the assessed IQ can be affected by the child’s willingness, and/or ability, to cooperate.
My eldest was assessed at age 3 for early school entry, before SBV was published, however I can’t recall if WISC or WPPSI was used. There was a brief interview before the session, wherein the psychologist advised both of us that she would perform a school readiness test as well as an IQ assessment and if my daughter got tired, the testing could be continued at a later date. I left the room and it is my understanding that she proceeded to perform the school readiness test before the IQ test. Three hours later, I was called into the room as my daughter had stopped cooperating. My three year old was arguing that she had been answering questions for three hours, she was tired and she wanted the psychologist to keep her promise that testing be continued on another day, whilst the psychologist was arguing that there was only one more section to go and it would be better to just ‘finish it’ (from what I’ve since observed of the attention spans of 3 year olds, I now think the psychologist was unreasonable, but at the time I trusted her as a professional). My daughter stood her ground and refused to even look at any more question material, but the psychologist pushed on with a few more questions and recorded my daughter’s refusals as inability to answer (these were questions which I knew she could answer).
The test report placed her in the 98th or 99th percentile for all sections except the last, in which she was assessed as being in the 68th percentile, with FSIQ of 138. At the time, she just needed an IQ of 130+ to start school early, so we left it at that for several years, but nearly six years later, circumstances required us to obtain a more accurate IQ assessment and I took her to a psychologist with an excellent reputation for working with gifted children and her IQ was assessed as 160+ on this second occasion.
The second psychologist also assessed my son (age 4) and volunteered her suspicions that although his FSIQ was measured as 148, his poorest performance was in quantitative reasoning (99.9th percentile for most other sections) and she had a ‘hunch’ he was much stronger than the test revealed. He has since proven to be an outstanding mathematician, so we have not bothered to get a more accurate IQ assessment for him. Our youngest was tested at age 3 (also for early school entry) by a third (local psychologist) and again this psychologist commented that she was slow to warm to the assessor (scored lowest in the first section) and the FSIQ may have been an underestimate, but since it was between the first reported FSIQ values of her two older siblings, we didn’t bother to get her reassessed.
Therefore, IME, the interaction between the child and the assessor is very important for an accurate IQ assessment.
