5 Year Old Tested by Early Childhood Development. Low Cognitive Development?

My 13 year old is crazy smart but he blew at the early tests. The testers actually told me they use them to guide, not as fact because these kids just don't test well.

Yep... And we got some skewed results.

My son is ADHD-c and gifted.

He's been tested twice, same series of tests, different testers in cognitive/reasoning etc for a school I was looking at enrolling him. The first set was so wacky I CRIED thinking I was 'that' mom, but the school rejected it out of hand, because they'd already met my son, and sent us to a tester of their own (that had been booked until the 2nd coming, until the school called and got him in).

The first one was not done by someone who is used to Gifted kids... And that's the one that came back wacky. Why? Because a LOT of these tests are subjective.

Some examples:

First tester noted he didn't know the difference between a bike and a car (speed). 2nd tester played me that Q. What my son ACTUALLY said was MY bike is faster than a car, it can go 220 miles per hour!!! Swoosh! In answer to 'Which is faster? A bike or a car?"

2nd tester said with gifted kids word choice is KEY. 1) he qualified it as HIS bike, and 2 he code a spied greater than that of our car. The 2nd tester specifically asked what the speedometer read in our car, and laughed to say that was common of observant kids to know the exact readouts. So his answer clearly demonstrated that he knew cars were faster and took it to another level.

First tester marked him at zero for spatial reasoning. Why? Because she gave him tangrams (something he'd never seen before) and told him to make various shapes with them, and ditto had him do puzzles.

My son HATES puzzles, and as I said, had never seen tangrams before.

2nd tester gave him a 3d puzzle (also never seen), after watching my son 'shut down' wiyh the tangrams ... and started a different 3D puzzle of his own. Kiddo has his built in minutes. (My son DOES have 2D issues). He also nixed the simple spatial Q's 2 Q's in because there were too many 'What IF' aspects, and gave my son full marks. Why? Because just like with the first tester my son didn't answer them, but kept asking questions trying to get the missing information. (Like how fast the cars were going, and is the kid crossing the street on crutches, and why was the kid by himself, anyway? Was there a fire? Robbers?). He got a zero on that section from the first (A car is 10 blocks away. Is it safe to cross the street?)

The first tester stopped at x point.
The second tester did the ENTIRE test.
(Important, because gifted kids often skip steps, so will know things -say, angles- in the LATER part of the test but not -say shapes- in the beginning of the test. Gifted kids do a LOT of 'backfilling'

So tester 1 didn't even have my son reading (reading at an upper elementary level), because he didn't know how to 'complete the letter', and didn't have him do math (he was doing prealgebra), because he got stuck on estimating 'duckies' and kept giving her the actual number instead of 'more' or 'less'.

Similarly, the ADHD (which the first tester didn't catch at all) has its own quirks, while the 2nd tester was VERY used to ADHD, Aspie, and Dyslexic kids... Because most of them are gifted... And twigged to it almost immediately.

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So... You just got a VERY long answer... But yes. We've done these tests. And they are fairly notorious for their subjectivity. Which we found out first person.

Cognitive development isn't necessarily how smart they are. Most kids with sensory issues are super smart, they just have issues. Some can't stand to have clothes touching them, some need to wear tight fitting clothes so they feel that pressure and can focus better, some need to be naked...lol.

The evaluations need to be gone over with you and hubby with the person giving the eval so they can explain each and every word of it to you and explain why the tests reflected these scores.

I would be upset and on the phone with them right now wanted a full explanation. They should not have given these to you outside of a meeting to go over the scores with them. That way they could help you through the process of understanding this information.

Cognitive development does not necessarily mean "unintelligent." I have a nephew who is 2 months younger then my son, and he is very smart. He also has cognitive difficulties. The biggest difficulties for him are not being able to focus on one task without being distracted easily, he does not engage in imaginative play, and is a bit aggressive. When they play together my son will make up stories and create scenes and such, my nephew can't play like that. He kind of just uses the toys for their purpose. If they are trains, he rolls them. If it's a ball, he bounces it. If he is swimming, he just swims. He doesn't pretend that the train is in a special place doing cool things, or that the ball can bounce all the way to space, or that there are fishes in the pool, etc. When he hugs, he has to hug hard. If he runs, he can't jog. If he is anxious, he isn't just a little anxious. He is full on gagging and shaking. If he says no, it is not just no, it is NO. (Those are what I mean by aggressive. He is not casual about anything.) My son knows all his letters, shapes, numbers, etc. While my nephew knows much of that information, he struggles to integrate new information with old information. Like I said, he is very smart. He just has these cognitive quirks that can become problems, should they not be taken care of.

I think you have gotten some wonderful caring advice. just a few things to add.

yes attention span has tons to do with it, A good evaluation will already factor in an acceptable amount of distraction, so if this test fits your sons needs and was administered correctly, and he still had excessive trouble focusing that might indicate he needs help.

It might be a bit much to deal with right now if you weren't expecting it, but if he would benefit from some extra attention ( and what kid wouldn't) then as contradictory as it seems maybe you should be glad he tested this way and will qualify for some help, My DD has a physical disablility, but because it wasn't technically bad enough the help she was given was limited, we had to seek out our own therapy. i wish she had tested a bit worse because things would have been alot easier for her.

Usually by kindergarten, the schools are lookign for the children to know upper and lowercase letter -all 26, to be able to count to 10, to name colors and common shapes.to be able to focus to complete a kiddy puzzle with 10 pieces by himself, to know how to hold a book and that you turn pages left to right, So it does sound like he is ok with what he can do, BUT I'm wondering about how he does it, example, you said he can identify a number 7, but it most easy to show him 1-10 and say point to 7, it's much harder to show him a card with 7on it and say what number is this. do you see what i mean? It all depends on what they asked him.

just curious, when you see him with other kids his age at daycare or what have you, does he seem to be doing everything they are doing?

If after sitting with the results for a bit, and hopefully talking with the ECD people about what the tes results mean, and what services would be provided, if you still really really did not feel they were accurate, I bet you could insist that they be re-administered. but again, more help (especially at an early age ) is generally better.

I hope you can find out more about his performance, Is it possible he just refused to answer questions? They may not be testing for numbers and letters at all. ( I dont know) It's not about just learning some letters and numbers. Memory could be repeat back a series of numbers. (8, 3, 7, 1) Could be playing a Memory type matching game They may be testing for things like matching shapes that have been turned, concepts like hot and cold, (picture of fire, snow) fat, skinny, long, short. Questions like what is a pencil for? what is a cup for? what do you do if you are thirsty? lost? tired? Can he sort colored shapes in different ways (by size, color, or shape) most kids sort by color. Ask your self, Can he answer these questions? Will he refuse to answer such questions? How does he react to difficulty? Does he get frustrated and shut down? These are just a few things to think about before looking further into this. Hope you find out more!

Did they go over them with you? My son has had many of these and his cog was ALWAYS behind drastically until recently - after a lot of work. You need to make sure you go over the results with everyone involved in the testing. One set of tests felt accurate, another was just wrong - and I knew why but the testers would not listen to me - another made sense and the final one was just SPOT ON! The one that was spot on was done by the school he was just at and they were able to bring him from an average of 1.5 behind with an IEP and in an MLP class to needing only accomodations (501R I think it's a new term here) and being in a standard class. So the point I am trying to make is that with the right team, right understanding of your son you can make serious process - just make sure you understand what is going on and that you are actively participating in it all.

I haven't had this test per-se but my oldest has LDs and has many of the test designed for elementary school children. It's OK to be skeptical of the results, but do keep a VERY open mind. I had been told unequivocally by and evaluator when my oldest was in pre-school that he didn't not have any attention issues at all and lo and behold he was diagnosed with AD/HD at age 7 and it explained a lot of things. Had I been open to that, I would have made sense of some if his struggles earlier.

Some of what you list for what he can do does seem to support the findings. For example, I think my kids all knew letters by sight up to 100 by about age 3 and definitely by 4. I distinctly remember one of my kids reading the double-digit numbers on some hockey jerseys and toy race cars when he was not quite 3. They could write the whole alphabet and all numerals before Kindergarten. One of them (the LD one) was actually so bad with colors that we thought he was color blind so I remember that it was expected that he be sorting by color and shape by around age 4 and if he hadn't hit that milestone, we were going to have his color sight checked at his well visit.

All that said, kids develop at all different stages and levels. Evaluations are good tools to be able to identify areas of relative strengths and weaknesses and allow our children who do need a little extra help to get what they need. Knowing more about our kids doesn't change who they are, it just helps us to help them more.

This journey can be very overwhelming - make sure you take time to process the information you get each step of the way, keep organized records, and let yourself feel what you feel and get those feelings out of your system. it's natural to feel a wide range of negative emotions but those will pass.

Honestly, at this point, I am sick to death of the Learning Disability Industrial Complex.

And I don't generally have a chip on my shoulder! I think the world of teachers, of anyone who chooses to work with kids. I've just had one terrible experience after another.

My son had some sensory issues when he was younger, which primarily manifested as extreme shyness -- I mean, elective mutism shyness. He's grown out of the worst of it, though summer is a challenge because neither swimming nor sunscreen is his friend. He's also got lower-than-average muscle tone.

Anyway, the whole testing apparatus was a nightmare for us. One person said my son clearly had cognitive delays. The very next person said he was clearly "on the spectrum" (i.e., autistic). Next person after that? Said he was completely typical and fine. And these were all licensed professionals! At one point, I was even asked to fill out this form that seemed designed to determine whether my 3-yr-old was a sociopath/psychopath (it was all like, "does your child torture animals?"). And this was because he was SHY!!! (Sorry, I still get sort of worked up over this.)

Anyway, what I really, really want to say is, get him evaluated by a pediatric neurodevelopmental specialist -- an MD. ASAP. This is a much more reliable, and generally much less alarmist, evaluation model. It's also the only thing insurance companies and schools have to listen to.

I know it's hard, but if what they're telling you is not at all consistent with anything you're seeing, then you're right and they're wrong. A diagnosis is just about never, ever one-stop shopping. You have to keep following up and consulting with different people until you find something that fits with what you're seeing.

One memoir that was really helpful to me was Raising Blaze by Debra Ginsburg. The author is a fantastic role model in the way she knew BS when she heard it, even from prestigious, white-coated professionals, and never stopped searching for a diagnosis that fit.

Oh, and my son? The developmentally delayed, severely autistic psychopath? He's almost 6 now, and is reading at a 3rd-grade level. He's got great friendships, though he can be a bit socially immature. He's not the most athletic kid around, but he can handle himself on a soccer field. He's a sweet-natured, wise-beyond-his-years, super-funny, gifted little boy. There is no doubt in my mind that your son is all those things and more. The tests just aren't smart enough to get it right.

Best wishes, and sorry so rambly,

Mira

I think the two are unrelated. He can be VERY smart and have cognitive issues. The things you listed my daughter could do at 2. Shes 5 and finishing K now and some kids started at your sons level and did awesome through the year.
Th only thing I would pay attention to is the teacher now is concerned,and not stress on the test results. She is with him a lot and sees a few issues. I think its great you have someone so caring and its great your keeping a eye on it.

If this is the first time your child has ever been tested, that might play a huge role in the results. When my son qualified for early intervention they did not even pick up on sensory issues, instead, they told me my 24 month old son was speaking at the level of a 13 month old and some of his processing was at this level as well. It got me so depressed for months because I vacilated between "How could I have missed this" and "What the f- are they talking about"? Basically, it is just a flash in time and can be effected by multiple factors. His possible sensory or attention issues may have played a large role since everything is related. I would call them now if you can to help ease your shock. If your son needs help, at least he is getting it now when it could help him the most. Since he only goes to daycare right now, they may have not been trained to pick up these issues. I know my son was in daycare 2 times a week during his time in EI and they never said one word to me.

Sorry to hear that. My son is about 4 1/2 and has had many evals done by many different people. I think he scored in the low average intelligence range. He is reading, and doing simple math! So I think kids can definitely freeze or just generally have a hard time get anxiety or over-excited at things like that and then the tests are skewed. I would not worry about your son! Definitely get an IEP if you can, my son has one and it is great! He gets all this extra help in the classroom etc. Good Luck!