I'm having a parent freak out! Kid's IQ score....

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Two things to remember: one is that scatter is what indicates autism, not necessarily where the scatter IS. See Dr. Temple Grandin's TED speech: she points out there are lots of verbal thinkers on the spectrum who balance her visual thinking. She talks about autism in terms of "uneven skills," and I can see where that perspective opens the umbrella a little wider.

Nothing wrong with wanting your kid to be "smart" like you: what I was trying to say is that, especially with kids who have difficulty communicating (which your child might, even with a high verbal score) the overall score on the test is not indicative of anything in particular. You picked out two particular examples where your child's unique perspective caused him to choose the "wrong" social answer; I am guessing there are lots of questions where this applies.

CubeDemon, I think this is what zette means: we assume IQ is measuring cognitive capacity: how well and quickly a person will be able to learn. The book definition of IQ (intelligence quotient) is "a number representing a person's reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100"

So there are all kinds of ways that number is faulty right there. For instance, not everyone does well compared with their age group on problem-solving tests because they may have specific barriers: I discussed cultural bias as one barrier; many autistic people have language barriers. If you don't understand the problems you are asked to solve, or why you should bother to solve them, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't solve them. It just means you didn't.

So, one thing that an IQ test ACTUALLY measures is a person's ability to understand and follow verbal or written directions. That's not at all the same as their ability to problem-solve or learn.

I worry that many of our "low-functioning" community are labeled as unable to learn or to problem-solve simply because they aren't offered better communication tools.

On any kind of test it is easy to have cultural bias. For example, one of my son's worksheets (not an IQ test) had a word problem about baseball that required adding up a certain number of hits and walks and calculating outs based on knowing the number of at bats.

There were a number of problems with this b/c first off, the correct definition of "at bat" was not being used, anyway. Secondly, my son had no clue what any of these terms meant, b/c he is not into sports. Someone from another culture without baseball would also have been confused. I told him what was expected, so he could do it, but during an IQ test you can't explain anything like that that comes up.

(We have tried making him culturally literate on this kind of thing, but he is not interested, and so does not retain this type of information.)

I love this story!! !!

That is so ASD, lol.

I have to admit, I was disappointed in my son's IQ score, even though it was decently above average, for the same reasons you mentioned in your post (sorry for not including all of it in the quote). It's been my hook my entire life, knowing I had that IQ, even when things weren't going well for me. It was hard to imagine that the child everyone has told me since the day he was born was brilliant, wasn't the same. I had bought into those stranger's encouraging comments hook, line and sinker. We can spend WAY too much time idealizing our children's potential in inappropriate ways, and that can hinder our ability to see their truth gifts as they are. So, we learn the hard way. We're normal human beings, we get sucked in. At least we recognize it now.

Your son will reveal himself to you as he grows, and it will be an amazing journey. Let it happen. Without assumption or expectation.

Yes, I agree. Our school is full of affluent, pushy, braggy parents. I feel ashamed to say I would have been one of them had my son been born a genius. I probably would never have been quite so annoying as some. But now I just have a way more pluralistic view of what success means for each individual. I wouldn't have chosen this particular avenue to spiritual growth, but when life robs one of an attachment, it's an opportunity to see that it was a false one.

This is why I've never got my kids' IQs tested. They receive all the other tests but I do NOT need someone telling *me my kid's got an IQ of 20. Nooooooo thank you.

No I do not think IQ tests are accurate in kids with ASD.

Same experience here. I'm now 20 and last time I took an IQ test (when I was 19), I got really bored during the test and gave the observer the finger and laid my head on the test. I ended up scoring a 124 that time with a significant portion of the test left unfinished. The time before it, I got a 144 and I didn't finish it that time either.
Those tests are so very uninteresting... I get fed up with the nonsense and just quit. What do I mean by nonsense? I find myself picking apart each question and looking for flaws in the question rather than the answer to the question.
Also, the anagram questions are very exhausting, I always skip them.

That's hilarious.

I taught kindergarten in Japan for a while. We had to test the students. The youngest girl filled her scantron with a picture of a dinosaur. I loved it so much.

I had an IQ test as a kid and scored around 90, now I am doing a PhD in a technical field and discussing complex topics with people who are probably in the 130 to 140 range.

IQ doesn't mean much if your brain and thought process vast differ from the standard as an autistic person. The test has been designed for the typical brain and only gives an accurate indication for exactly that, when you use the same test on someone with autism or on a savant it will become so inaccurate that it is rather pointless. Not to mention IQ doesn't mean a person is going to actually use his intelligence or is going to show intelligent behaviour to the outside world. There are many people who are intelligent but either find joy in simpler things or have too little motivation to work years upon years to enter the academic field. There are more people not in college or university simply because they have no motivation rather than because they are not intelligent enough.

There is another reason why most autistic people are incompatible with IQ tests: time bound. I very easily get information overloads and a LOT of things are stored in my brain unfiltered, I'm also a visual thinker so when I am presented with a problem I need to visualize and construct the idea to fit into my own mind and thought process before I can solve it. While for really complex problems this isn't an issue and sometimes even greatly helps me understand a concept, when I am presented with a large series of simple questions and problems I slow down quite a bit compared to typical people. And that is exactly what an IQ test does, it presents a large series of simple, accessible problems rather than one or two very complex problems. The latter you would find more commonly in academics. With IQ tests the time you take greatly affects your score, while in real life all that matters is whether you can solve the complex problem at all.

In academics and life in general there are only three things that are truly important, and none of them have to do with a high IQ ( of course assuming no mental handicap ).
- Doing what you love so you can be happy and get satisfaction from your work
- Being motivated to work hard for what you love, even if you have to pass obstacles that are unpleasant.
- Willpower, be willing to accept failure and learn from your mistakes. Don't simply give up after failing once or twice.

Totally agree with this list. It feels like it could be posted to almost every job thread we get at Wrong Planet.

The uplifting end to this story is that yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with someone regarding these IQ tests.

The reason my son got a second test is that I enrolled him in a study about trying to help kids on the spectrum transition to school. He was four when I enrolled him in the study. At the time, we had just left his special ed preschool, where he attended with other spectrum kids as well as typical kids. (It's called a collaborative school in our district.) There was a LOT of discussion about whether he should go to kindergarten in a special high autistic class, or do mainstream school with supports, or delay kindergarten. It was a really tough call. Long story short, he is in mainstream kinder with a lot of support. So having gone through all of that, I wanted to participate in this study to benefit other parents going through the same thing.

And truthfully, I wanted him to get another assessment, and I thought this one would be conveniently free. He had changed so much since he was first evaluated. I was just dead curious. Was he "still autistic"? Was his IQ higher? So I figured I would get some useful information to help him at school. Interestingly, I really didn't put too much stock in the IQ test until I had this freakout recently. It's probably for the best. I just figured I knew my kid better than a test, and I never even really inquired as to what the scores truly meant--until last week. Then, in the face of a neighbor genius, I just had to delve more into what my own kid's scores might say about him.

The evaluator gave her contact information in the report, and I contacted her. She called me yesterday and spent a while answering my questions. It was very, very interesting.

Her perspective is that my son's IQ increased, and she felt that looking at the numbers, this is a true increase. She believes early intervention is what did this. (She did caution that the tests are normed for typically developing children and of course, it's hard to measure IQ in kids with communication difficulties.)

I have no idea whether this is true. Is it the intervention we did? Is it that I quit my full time job so I could spend days talking to my son? Is it that he simply matured and this was his natural development? Is it that the first IQ test was inaccurate because he was so uncomfortable? It's impossible to know, of course.

We had some further discussion about how to utilize this information in his IEP meeting (which is tomorrow). And essentially, the most encouraging thing she said was that his IQ is just smack in the middle of normal, so he should be able to do all the work in school. So if he has trouble, the teachers need to know that he needs additional explanations, small groups, visual supports, etc. (Our school is great about this, so we're fortunate.)

This all makes sense to me, knowing my own kid. It seems to pretty much everyone who meets him that he's bright--not precocious or anything. Just a fairly smart kid. So I guess I'm going with "at least" as my mantra. His IQ is at least normal, and that's great, whereas his initial test showed "low average," which might indicate that he couldn't learn all the material in class. He actually should be capable of doing it. If we can figure out how to get the information into his head, he can understand it.

In terms of independent living, she said his IQ should hold him back. If anything, what might prevent him from living independently as an adult is the social skills aspect of life. And well, this is where I feel I've lived with my own Aspie traits and had quite a difficult time myself. I was the queen of getting fired for stupid reasons in my 20s--the stupid reasons always being weird outbursts, difficulty with people, inability to play games in offices. I always sought out treatment for depression and anxiety, but it makes me laugh now to think I was probably dealing with some Asperger's stuff. I mean, who knows, and I wouldn't bother to get diagnosed now. But I recognize a lot of my son's behavior and reactions.

So as far as IQ goes, I am feeling better.

I don't think I.Q. counts for a lot. I think it counts less for autistic people, and even less for 3-year-olds.
If anything, I think you should read your child's score as a minimum value. In other words, he is at LEAST as intelligent as the score, and probably more so.

On an IQ test in very early elementary, before I was diagnosed, my IQ was even less than that. I didn't fall into the intellectual disability category, but was pretty close. Fast-forward to the IQ test I took late in high school for getting accommodations on ACT/SAT, and my IQ was in the above average/superior range. I'm thinking that the low score had to do with several factors: attention deficit (aggravated by the being uncomfortable in an unfamiliar part of the school), not understanding the gravity thus not giving my best effort, etc.

There's no reason to set low expectations because of this.

Don't forget that people who do poorly in school move mountains in the corporate world. They become directors, senior vice presidents, and CEO's, where they can do whatever they damn please, thanks to US laws that pander to corporate management. Meanwhile, people who got straight A's in school (that's me) pop anti-anxiety pills to deal with the stress their boss puts them through at work.

Don't project your own past onto your daughter. I'd prefer my kid coming home smiling and laughing about saving $5,000 by laying off one guy and strong-arming another into quitting, rather than running for his pills and/or his 24-pack of cheap beer the minute he gets home from work. School success is often inversely related to corporate success. Perhaps teach her to succeed something else?

I have not read responses, so I may only be repeating, or perhaps my response is going to be completely out of sequence to the current conversation.

My daughter's initial IQ testing showed her to be just above borderline intellectual functioning. SHe was somewhere around 3.

She was tested at school last year (3rd grade) and her score was in the "borderline" between being kept in regular classes and being put in the gifted and talented class. She is not in the G&T class, but she does get "enhancement" activities in her regular classroom.

My son has scored high on IQ tests his whole life. He is in remedial everything and can struggles to get C's.

So, I don't think that preschool IQ tests are necessarily predictive of later IQ scores, but even more importantly, IQ scores are not necessarily predictive of school success.

I don't think there is anything wrong, on a very basic level, about being disappointed. You were hoping to share an academic interest with your son, and it looks like you are not going to share that interest. I think that "societal pressures" might lead you to feel guilty because it is related to intelligence and it is not "politically correct" to be disappointed in your child's intelligence. But my son's dad is disappointed because my son does not share his love of videography, something he was hoping to share with him. Only he doesn't have to feel guilty about feeling disappointed because there is no societal taboo against feeling disappointed if your kid does not like videography. My daughter is a good reader, but she hates to read. I feel disappointed because all of the books that I loved at her age (Chronicals of Narnia, stuff by Madeline L'Engle, etc) she refuses to read. I don't feel guilty about feeling disappointed at all. But I think I would feel like I should feel guilty about being disappointed if she couldn't read the books, as opposed to didn't want to. I think that guilt would be no more appropriate in that set of circumstances than it would be now.

I don't know if I am making my point at all, but I think it is unnecessary to feel guilty. As parents, we look forward to sharing things with our kids that we enjoy, because the things that we enjoy bring us such happiness, and it's always disappointing when someone doesn't appreciate it. Don't get hung up that it's academics that disappoint you. Just find something that you can enjoy together, even if that means taking an interest in something that he finds enjoyable.