Testing and Assessment

At some point, either because you see signs of Outlier in yourself or in your child (or someone else does), the question of testing might come up.  A school might offer testing on site (eh, we don't recommend that--too much distraction in a room with other kids and you want as accurate as you can get).  You may choose to go to a private psychologist.  You might be tempted to try one of those online ones (don’t, they are invalid).

Here are some things to consider:

1)  An Outlier brain is not a normal brain.  It processes differently, experiences differently.

People need to be assessed, not just tested.  A good assessor will know, for example, that Outliers tend to have very slow processing speeds (perfectionism) and would not allow that to artificially depress the IQ score.

To that end, get an evaluator that specializes (yes, SPECIALIZES) in Outliers.  It takes a bit of work, but it is worth it if you can find one.

2)  A “2E”  kid (or adult) will have incredible coping skills for their weakness.  However, a simple test will not be able to differentiate between “Normal IQ” and “High IQ that is able to compensate for, say, dyslexia”.  A good evaluator should know to test IQ in the morning when the brain is fresh, and for exceptionalities such as dyslexia, etc in the afternoon after the brain is wearied and has trouble compensating.  You want an accurate picture of strengths and weaknesses.

3)  A child will never test higher than they really are.  They cannot “guess” their way higher.  However, they can test lower than they really are.  This is important to note if the test scores and the behaviors are not matching up.  Illness, anxiety, grouchiness, a poor fit with the evaluator, all can contribute to a lower test score.

4)  The standard test that is used today, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, is very good at evaluating most of the intelligence spectrum, particularly the lower to middle.  However, it does have a “ceiling”—meaning a child can be smarter than the test will show.  In fact, Wechsler himself said that his test was not meant for the higher end of the spectrum.  They have made changes since the first iteration, but it is something to consider.  You might consider going to an outdated, but still useful, Stanford-Binet long form.  We did not with our Outliers, but it is an option.

5)  It is important that your child be tested, particularly if the child is showing signs of brilliance and/or signs of struggle that are causing him or her difficulty in class--unless you plan to homeschool.  If you are going to homeschool, then you can move at whatever pace the child needs:  fast, slow, and sometimes both.  We have mentioned a particular Outlier who, as a child, did not read until she was 8.  Soon after, she was able to skip three grades in English.  She was homeschooled and therefore there was no stigma of late reading nor battles with the DoE over grade skipping.

6)  A child who is brilliant will not always get A’s in class.  In fact, a child might get all F’s.  Do not allow administrators to say “Obviously he is not gifted, or his grades would be better.”.  Bad grades can be caused by a myriad of reasons including:  learning or processing struggles, emotional struggles, motivational struggles, or a desire to buck the system.

7)  It can be unnerving to get your child tested.  It will seem like a reflection on your ability to raise children (it's not, anymore than their shoe size is a reflection on your parenting).  You might be disappointed because your child did not score well (don't be, they have their specific traits to do the work they were made to do.  Remember, this is merely a position on a bell curve, not a statement of worth.)…..or because they did (don't be, this is who the Lord made them to be).  You might feel overwhelmed (yep, that's ok).  Your child might feel disappointed if they did not do well, or upset if they did--help them understand that their IQ is like their shoe size:  just a number that helps them find the best educational fit for their brain (like a shoe size helps them find the best fit for their foot).  Seek out resources if your child is an Outlier such as the SENG Website

8)  Having more than one child can increase the complexity—do you tell the children what their scores are?  What if there is one that scored significantly higher than the other?  We told both their scores, emphasizing their individual strengths, but they were old enough and mature enough not to make it a battlefield.  Additionally, do not forget that someone can score lower than they are.

9)  Scores do not equal success.  Really, they don't.  A high IQ means only that:  a high IQ.  It does not guarantee success, struggle, emotional issues (or lack thereof), good grades, or anything else.  It is just a piece of information.  How successful the child is depends on the child and the environment, no matter what the IQ score is.  There have been many more extremely successful people with normal IQ’s than extremely successful geniuses.

10)  No matter what the score is, your child is still your child and still precious, unique, and has a very special place in this world to do good things.  If  your child is not an Outlier, that is fine--it would just get in the way of their true calling. 

For example, I am not talented in basketball--it is not my calling.  If my folks forced me to try to be something I was not, then that would interrupt the pursuit of my true calling. 

Let me restate:  If your child is NOT an Outlier, then that is actually good news for them as it would get in the way of their true calling.  Their true calling does not require them to be an Outlier, and it would actually mess them up.  If they are an Outlier, then that is part of their calling.  If they are not an Outlier then that is not part of their calling in life.  It makes no difference either way, what is important is that they are nurtured to find the path THEY are supposed to follow.

Shall I emphasize that again?  It really needs to stick.  You got it?  You sure?  Ok.

Feel free to ask any questions about assessment.  If we don't have the answer, we can find someone who does.  The only question we cannot answer that we know of is "Who in my area does intelligence testing?".  We have no idea; the world is a big place.  We recommend looking at the Hoagies Gifted Education Page or getting in touch with your local gifted education group (you can generally find them on facebook).

Now, if you know of an excellent evaluator in your area, please list them below.  Thanks.

Don't Be This Parent.

For those pushing and hoping for higher IQ scores for their kids.  Please understand this is not to be cruel, but it is a hefty dose of reality.  Your child is what he or she is and that is enough.


Recently an article came across my desk regarding a woman who had conned and wiggled her son's scores so that he would seem to have a ridiculously high IQ.  She stole someone else's SAT scores, etc.  He was, briefly, a novelty.  She thought she was opening doors for him. 

The child, though, started acting out and crumbling under the pressure of the lie he was being forced to live.

You see, being an Outlier is not a goal that one can achieve.  It is not something one can do or earn.  It just *IS*, like having a specific hair color.  Even if you dye your hair, eventually the roots show.

An interesting note about the hair color analogy:  Redheaded genes are not just about hair color.  It also, apparently, makes redheaded folk need more pain medication and sedatives than blondes or brunettes.  Now, would it make any sense to dye a redhead black and think that would affect the amount of pain medication he would need for a broken leg?  No?  Same thing.  You support "nature" with "nurture" but you cannot change genes in a person by making them something they actually have no genetic basis for.

The dumb thing is that:

a)This woman did not understand at all what being an Outlier really meant.  It is not about scores or worth or job opportunities.  It is about how an organ system (in this case, the whole nervous system, not just brain) in the body works. 

I have a cousin whose dad was a wrestler.  The thinking, when my cousin was small, was that perhaps my cousin would also be a wrestler, but my cousin ended up with the metabolism and speed of a jackrabbit.  He can consume an amazing amount of calories and as soon as he does you can see the sweat start to form on his brow as his metabolism revvs up.  He spends calories like a new lottery winner in Vegas and does not retain any for weight.  He was made a runner, not a wrestler.  And that is ok. 

The woman who tried to bolster her son to look like he had a higher IQ than he did would have been like if my uncle had tried to keep my cousin in a near-hypothermic state to slow down his metabolism so he could gain weight to wrestle.  It makes no sense to force any organ system of the body to do what it really was not capable of doing.  My cousin's body does not receive and process calories like a wrestler.  This boy's nervous system does not receive and process stimuli like an Outlier.  It was a dumb, and tragic, thing to do.  You cannot make your child more capable of processing stimuli.  You can bombard them with stimuli, like flashcards and such, but you cannot make them use that stimuli in Outlier ways.

b)  Besides the brief media stir up if your child is at the furthest end of the bell curve, no one cares if your child is an Outlier--in fact, it often stirs up negative reactions.  It does not win you parenting points.   It was a genetic thing that may have come from you....or not.  Might have come from your spouse or been a fluke or come from a great great great granddaddy

c)  The truth is going to show through at some point.  The boy broke tragically.  He could not sustain the rouse because he was not built for it.  It was like embedding goose feathers under the boy's skin and proclaiming he was the first flighted human.  Eventually he was going to find a cliff he had to jump from, and he was going to plummet and crash.  All because of a lack of understanding of what an Outlier is and the myths and false pride that is linked with the idea of  high IQ.

Why are we harping on this?  Because it is not fair to kids to put this pressure on them.  Their minds are engines that will only go as fast as they can go.  If you have an Outlier, you know that you do not push them to, say, be sensitive to tags in their shirts or wet socks (ugh!), or make them cry at the thought of social injustice in Africa at the ripe old age of 5.  Outlier kids just DO these things, pulling the parents into the Outlier path (shout out to you--you know who you are!), not having the parents push them onto it.

I get it.  We all want our kids to succeed, to have the best in life.  But we cannot do that by making them something they are not.  They can either succeed in what they are born to do or fail in what we push them in.
I feel sorry for the boy.  I actually feel sorry for her too as she obviously is a woman in need of help.  But it bugs the mess out of me that this happened because it did not have to.  If Outlier (gifted) education was not so fraught with emotional connotations that it cannot be discussed accurately (leading her to think she could fake it in her son) and if there was less competition placed on kids, this might have been avoided.

If a child is an Outlier, he needs what my cousin needs:  (mental) fuel to burn.  If your child is neurotypical, he needs what my uncle needed:  a mat (life) to become excellent on.  My uncle has no more worth than my cousin, any more than a runner is any more an athlete than a wrestler, any more than an Outlier has any more worth than the neurotypical.

Slow as Molasses in January--Processing Speed Index

Hey folks, Atro here....

I came across an interesting article entitled Processing Speed and the Gifted Child. 

On IQ tests, there are several subtests.  One of these is called the Processing Speed Index.  Unlike other parts of the IQ test which requires more complex thought (recall of information, puzzle solving, etc) Processing speed is pretty much transferring information as quickly as possible.

So you might have a list of single digit numbers and a grid.  You have to just put the same numbers in the same box on the grid as fast as possible.

Here is the thing...very often Outliers struggle with Processing Speed so much that the score can be one, two, or even more standard deviations below the rest of their scores.  Some of this is due to perfectionism--you are supposed to write as FAST as you can and it can be sloppy, but sometimes Outliers do not want to sacrifice precision for speed or they actually CAN'T sacrifice precision for speed.  Sometimes there are underlying problems, such as dyslexia or dysgraphia that inhibits the Outlier from scribbling quickly.

I know of one young man whose PSI score was subnormal--not just sub "gifted" but actually below what a neurotypical person would score.  It was several standard deviations below the rest of his ability.  Another young woman's PSI was so low in comparison to the rest of her scores that the psychologist actually threw it out.

We won't go into the deeper discussion of the ceilings on IQ tests or which tests are appropriate and which are not right now.  However, do understand that, since they use PSI as part of the Full Scale score, it might artificially depress his or her IQ meaning he might not make cut offs for gifted classes in education simply because he is too much of a perfectionist to scribble.  His "giftedness" is getting in the way of his "giftedness".  In that case you might need to go to bat for your Outlier if the system is balking.  It is never wise to let one score depress the entire IQ score.  One must look at the subtests. 

Incidentally, this also can help point out a twice exceptionality as explained in the article.