<p>frazzled2thecore: As someone with a “severe” physical developmental disability who once had my mother point out serious confounds with how a diagnostician (not a psychologist) was interpreting my IQ score, I’m all for parents having being active and involved advocate for their child/children. Really, seriously I am. With that being said, as someone who’s currently being trained in IQ assessment and interpretation, I recognize now that’s an extremely tricky business, including avoiding OVER interpretation, and it seems very unsound to me to see posters offering up the type of interpretations–or even suggestions for diagnoses!–that they are. Might these be things to bring up with a psychologist to discuss? Yes, certainly, but there are appropriate venues to discuss things of this nature–be it with other parents or professionals–and I just don’t feel like, professionally or ethically, an anonymous message board is one of them. YMMV. Additionally, IQ scores shouldn’t be interpreted in isolation but in light of other data–observations during testing, current performance information, other measures, background info, etc. </p>
<p>As for the above comment regarding a learning specialist v. a school psych… Admittedly, I’m biased but as a first year school psych PhD student I’ve been really surprised by how much for focus my training so far as put on identifying, understanding, and appropriately intervening with academic and learning issues.</p>
<p>We did not “tell” our LD son his IQ although of course it’s a component of his IEP testing every 3 years…it’s actually pretty irrelevant since most of his life is predicated on how he does and not what his IQ is. He asks sometimes but our response is “you are an intelligent person just like your brothers, just your dad and I (or mom and I), the number doesn’t really mean anything and it’s not something that will change your life” It did tell us, however, that he could achieve if we put some effort into managing the LD.</p>
<p>@gplusk, When you asked for a clarification, I wasn’t sure what part of the results you were asking about. At the basic level, your brother’s results mean that he scores in the top 12% of the population on verbal IQ, the top 2 out of 1000 on performance IQ, and the top 1% overall. </p>
<p>The information about people who are “twice exceptional” or gifted/LD might be somewhat confusing. Normally, one wouldn’t think that someone in the top 12% of the population was “learning disabled.” What the other posters mean is that there is a large discrepancy between your brother’s performance IQ and verbal IQ. The discrepancy is enough to raise the possibility that some special work to enhance his reading comprehension/writing/vocabulary might be warranted. If access to scholarships through the National Merit program is important to your family, it’s worthwhile to notice that the qualifying standardized test is 2/3 reading and writing and only 1/3 math.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I think that some people are just imbalanced in their talents. Your brother would fit a common profile for an engineer or computer scientist. The suggestion about architecture is also good, if he has an artistic slant.</p>
<p>Mo3B - I couldn’t agree more! We’ve never told our son the number and very often have said things similar to what you mentioned: It’s simply a number, the effort you put in is what’s going to make the difference. I think there is a distinct drawback in making too much of a label with your kids.</p>
<p>Coleytown, my son doesn’t have an NVLD diagnosis. His low scores were Digit Span, Object Assembly and Coding. His high scores were Arithmatic, Vocabulary, Picture Arrangement and Block Design. He’s a freshman at Tufts. As a freshman his grades have ranged from C+ to A. He’s been struggling with beginning Arabic despite having taken an intensive course last summer. (Where he got lost about half way in.) But so far he’s managing. He’s planning on spending this summer doing Arabic in the Middle East. Hopefully being immersed 24/7 will be a help. (Language immersion worked for me - I have no natural facility, but now speak French and German fluently.) If Arabic continues to be a problem he’ll switch from International Relations to Political Science with an IR focus. He’s been good at math, but his grades have suffered because he often spent test time refiguring out formulas from first principles. His junior year pre-calc teacher loved him despite giving him a B+ and wrote an amazing recommendation. He’s a procrastinator, but writes well and has done very well in his paper intensive courses. </p>
<p>All through elementary school he seemed about six months behind the program and I wondered if he should have been held back. (His summer birthday, put him in the middle of his cohort age-wise in our district.) But as time went on he seemed to catch up. I don’t think being older would make much difference now.</p>
<p>I didn’t tell my son his IQ till he graduated from high school. I told him that the testing showed he had average abilities at some things, but very above average potential in most things and that he had the capacity to do whatever he wanted, though some avenues might require more work than others.</p>
<p>psych_: I absolutely respect your position & I would hesitate to tell anyone to take what they hear on an internet message board as gospel. But I will say the the professionals that we consulted at the beginning of D’s journey either didn’t explain things to us well, or didn’t take one of the two issues (gifted or learning disabilities) into major consideration while discussing options. I got a lot of good info on things to ask about from other parents on message boards (not CC) although I understood it was coming from a layperson standpoint. But I’ll be the first one to say that the closest I’ve ever come to a medical degree is from walking past the med school ;)</p>
<p>coleytown: D is finishing up her freshman year in college. Ended up being a NMF. Doing way better than I could have imagined 4 years ago. She has a comorbid diagnosis of ADHD-inattentive that responded well to meds. Feel free to PM me :)</p>
<p>My son also does not know his IQ or test scores. I imagine that knowledge could upset him.</p>
<p>Psych, I don’t think anyone would consider the posts here to be in any way, shape or form, a diagnosis nor is anyone attempting to diagnose anything from the limited information the OP provided. I think we were just offering suggestions for what it could mean. </p>
<p>All we are doing (If I may be so presumptuous), is recounting our personal experiences with the OP’s situation and what it meant for our kids.</p>
<p>You’ll notice that I suggested that more testing should be sought if the child in question was having issues in school.</p>
<p>I really appreciate reading and learning from other parents with kids in the same situation, so please keep posting everyone, it helps!</p>
<p>RobD, that’s great about your daughter, I wish it was easier for my son.</p>
<p>S also has a late birthday and was held back in kindergarten, but school has been a struggle since day one.</p>
<p>He is, believe it or not, a psychology major who wants to help people, maybe even those with learning disabilities. Ironically it’s his disability that may prevent him from getting the credentials required to do that.</p>
<p>“it’s actually pretty irrelevant since most of his life is predicated on how he does and not what his IQ is”</p>
<p>Amen to this. I have two children, one who tests in the profoundly gifted IQ range, the other not. Guess who’s always been the more successful student?</p>
<p>There is what has been called an “optimal IQ range,” which is between 120-140. These folks are way ahead of most of their peers, yet are able to “relate” to them better because they still think the same way.</p>
<p>At the higher end, kids find it hard to relate to their peers and either draw inward or choose to relate to adults. As they grow older, they have trouble with many social aspects – hardly anyone understands their jokes, their peers need everything explained and re-explained SL-O-O-WLY, which gets frustrating, and hardly anyone shares their interest in M-String Theory and would rather talk about the Big Game than the implications of the Big Bang.</p>
<p>When one’s child has an IQ approaching the top 1/10th of one percent, I believe it’s much better to explain the situation to them. They already know they’re different, they can overcome many of these issues if they understand why, what to do, and how the vast majority of the others think.</p>
<p>^^^ Lorem, there is also such a thing as discipline, competitiveness and a psyche suited to doing well in school/college. My son’s IQ is higher than range you cited, yet he lacks many of the above characteristics. He’s been always a C student because the As he gets on exams are dragged down by zeros on missing/late assignments, projects that don’t interest him, etc. Just because you have the capacity for a high level of abstract thinking doesn’t mean you will actually PERFORM at a high level. Achievement, whether we’re talking about elementary school or college and beyond, takes more than high IQ which, by itself, means very little in the long run.</p>
<p>katliamom, I’d guess that your profoundly gifted child is not yet in college? People do have to accommodate themselves to a certain amount of “grunt” work, to be sure, but I think your son would become an excellent student in the right college setting.</p>
<p>One of my kids has a 42 point spread between WISC-IIIR verbal and performance scores – found this out when he was six. Our pediatrician (bless him) recognized the implications immediately. Ceilinged everything except math on the verbal side, and even that was close. Along with this came visual-spatial integration issues, sensory integration issues, horrendous fine-motor skills and ADD-inattentive. Spent a good part of the primary years in occupational therapy.</p>
<p>The disparity has caused frustration for him over the years, as he intellectually knows many tasks should be easy for him, but they are not, and they are hard in a different way from how many of us experience them. Sequential, timed tasks are very tough. He spent a lot of intellectual energy in elem school getting his body to cooperate enough to produce work. Once his teachers let him keyboard (which back then actually took some doing), things improved.</p>
<p>All that said, he has learned to compensate and has done quite well for himself. He knows how to work hard to accomplish his goals. He is often too hard on himself and we have to watch against self-sabotage. Most importantly, he is a kind, thoughtful person whose social intelligence will get him far in life.</p>
<p>We’ve never told our kids exact IQ numbers (though the reports are in the file cabinet if they were curious), but they know enough about standard deviations to have an educated clue. We told them they have the raw material to be whatever they want, but it will take discipline and and perseverance to accomplish those goals.</p>
<p>Gplusk, a 10 is the mean score on each section of the WISC. A 17 or higher is in the 99-99+% range. It is possible to get every question correct in a subsection and not get a 19. On the Performance subtests, speed is often an important part of the score, so a child who works slowly and accurately may get a score that’s lower than what might expect. Just so you know, adding all the subtests doesn’t give you the IQ score. </p>
<p>My recollection from when my kids were tested is that age 13 is a a bit old for the children’s version of the WISC. Was there a particular reason for your brother being evaluated?</p>
<p>The full scale IQ may not be accurate for kids with a big spread between Verbal and Performance. In our case, another test was administered that was not as speed-dependent, and its score confirmed the Verbal WISC scores should be regarded as a minimum score for him. The IQ testing certainly did not give us a full picture of my son, though it led to other testing that showed us the other issues. (A 6 in coding will tend to do that.)</p>
<p>As I recall (my older son took the test 15 years ago), speed becomes a HUGE portion of the score, especially in sections where everyone eventually gets the answer right (putting the picture blocks in the right sequence to tell a story, for example). The time it takes to respond is measured with a stopwatch and different time ranges (1-5 seconds, 6-15 seconds, etc.) yield different scores. So the self-confident kid who whips out his answer will always beat the deliberate kid who double-checks every step before committing to his answer.</p>
<p>For very young kids, where manual dexterity can be an issue, there is a variation on the way one grades the test called the “Kaufman substitution.” (Kaufman is also well-known as the designer of other IQ tests)</p>
<p>On the psych report, it should have a breakdown of what the various subtests are targeting. Your parents should have a copy of the report.</p>
<p>Both my older sons have had testing. My oldest is somewhat even in his subscores (verbal IQ 155+ {all 19s}, performance IQ 127) but with an almost 30 point difference in verbal and non-verbal (or performance), it indicates learning disabilities and there are definite issues and struggles that we have had to address over the years. However, he is very successful in many areas so his issues have not hindered him so much. (He is organizationally challenged and this will be his biggest hurdle in college)</p>
<p>My middle son has a greater variety of learning issues. He was tested at age 10 1/2, several months before being diagnosed with type I diabetes, and that accounted for some of his slowness. He tested profoundly gifted in the Verbal 148 (99.9%ile), perceptual was 135 (99%ile) and in processing speed, he tested mentally delayed (83; 13th %ile) with a coding score of 6. Huge learning issues abound in him.</p>
<p>One thing that psychs also do with the WISC IV when there is an indication of severe processing speed issues is to provide a “General Ability Index” that takes out processing speed and working memory. Had I known then what I know now, I would have realized that the poor working memory and poor processing speed indicated ADD. He’s been diagnosed by two professionals and now it makes total sense. At any rate, my son’s GAI IQ is 151, again in the profoundly gifted range. What this means is that he has great potential <em>but</em> he has a lot of issues that hinder his learning. We homeschool and I’m glad we do; he would not survive at a school. We are addressing his many learning issues and slowly trying to get him “on track”.</p>
<p>OP, what your parents can do with the results will depend on what the psychologist’s report says and how much he/she explains to them. As others have said, your brother has some great strengths but many times, gifted learners can become frustrated due to learning disabilities or unevenness (asynchronicity) in skills.</p>
<p>It means at 13 years old he has a mental age of a 17 and about 5 months year old.</p>
<p>well maybe.
My D when she was 8 took this test & some areas were the equivalent of someone who was 33.
Did that mean she had the mental age of someone decades older?
Or did it mean for a measureable task, she performed equally to someone who was 33.
But say that task was tying your shoes- is there really going to be a significant difference between a mental age of 8 & one of 33?
;)</p>
<p>I’m curious as to what test your d took as I’ve not heard of ones that give age equivalence beyond “adult average” or “adult superior”. My son took one called SB-LM when he was 6 and tested into “adult average” for one area (some sort of math or spatial reasoning, I think) but it didn’t give an age equivalence. Just curious…</p>