Son did poorly on IQ evaluation because of cheese

04-30-2006, 05:21 AM

My 5 year old son is a lover of dairy products - milk, cream, whipped cream, sour cream, cream cheese, and especially cheddar cheese. When he had his evaluation on Thursday, the Psychologist had the test broken into two parts - item identification and problem solving. She opened her briefcase and pulled out a cup of pretzels and m&m's to give him when he gave right answers. My son seems to think she had a block of cheese in her briefcase and kept pointing to it. She said "that's not cheese, that's just a block of wood." She poured out a box of random toys and asked him to pick up the objects she listed, but his eyes wouldn't leave her briefcase and several times he asked for "the cheese." He wasn't even looking at the objects on the table. He was so distracted by this phantom cheese that he would just hand her whatever just to get it overwith. I KNOW as a parent he knows the difference between a horse and a button, but he was annoyed that he wasn't getting the cheese so he wasn't going to be accurate at all. He didn't care about this game she wanted to play, so he just handed her the closest things to his hands, and she gave him the appropriate poor marks. I tried to explain to her what was happening and she said that this test really just sets a baseline and nothing more and that his IQ wouldn't really be able to be tested until he was 7. It was frustrating to watch though. He finally realized it wasn't real cheese and then did very well on the problem solving portion of the test. I was still gritting my teeth though.

Gosh darn cheese obsession!!!!

04-30-2006, 07:17 AM

Your son sounds obviously pretty smart to be able to do well on the difficult problem-solving portion of the test. I think his I.Q. must obviously be quite high, since he knows the answers. Hopefully, he will be able to focus next time, so he gets an accurate result.

04-30-2006, 01:19 PM

Mrs Black my daughter who is in the spectrum has the same problem as your son its the obsessive thoughts and thats what puts her in the spectrum my daughter has a very high IQ but this issue here gets in her way shes come along way shes ten but things shes thinkn on come up time to time it waxes and wanes its puzzling she use to throw a fit if we told her to talk about something else but shes much better at it.I no she does not do well with anything with Whey protein in it she gets out of it big time.Your sons doctor might of let your son look in her case and reasure him she doesnt have cheese and if she did she would give him some and do you have cheese at your house etc its hard to just switch these kids off because they wont go for it easy.

04-30-2006, 02:46 PM

Why didn't she just give him the block of wood so he could see it wasn't cheese? Sounds to me like she had the problem

05-04-2006, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liamsmom

Why didn't she just give him the block of wood so he could see it wasn't cheese? Sounds to me like she had the problem

I really like you liamsmom!!! That is what I was thinking.

05-05-2006, 06:16 AM

I remember one test a dev. ped. did with my son. He wanted to test his fine motor skills. He took out a small film container and some cheerios. The idea was that Dean had to put the cheerios into the container. He failed. Why? Because he ate them instead.

05-05-2006, 06:44 AM

Sounds like a Visa moment priceless

05-05-2006, 07:24 AM

I find it ironic that one of the facets of ASDs always described by evaluators is the lack of "theory of mind," the ability to see other people's ways of thinking. I think this kind of mental block is common among evaluators in charge of making judgments about kids and adults with ASDs. I call it "Clueless Evaluator Syndrome."

05-05-2006, 08:22 AM

Well, I guess it baffles me that she didn't pull out the blocks and show them they were plastic, but it's all good because now he qualifies for the HCBS medicaid waiver. WOO!

I had to laugh about the Cherrios though...that was adorable!

05-06-2006, 08:05 AM

Hey when I was a kid I stuffed a cheerio up each nostril (sp?) I had to wait until they were soft enough to sneeze out cause I pushed them up too far for the Dr to reach. Lucky for me they have holes and I could breathe

Thankfully my son doesn't do that.

05-09-2006, 07:59 PM

i think my nearly 5 year old flunked his iq test on may 3rd

last years test gave him an iq of 56 and we were hoping for a better score this year but alas it was even worse

this year has brought a new level of defiance for isaac... he even resorted to removing articles of clothing to avoid doing any testing... we managed to stop that before the pull-up came off

consider yourself lucky, isaac answered all of 2 questions for the entire test... oh well, here's looking to next year

05-11-2006, 07:11 AM

Those tests are such bologna. My son son tested average IQ but was very tired and stressed because he was so tired of evaluations that he wasn't participating. Meanwhile my son can use hemorragic in a sentence properly and say stehescope (SP?) use the computer bette than his Dad.

It all depends on the environment, the child's attitude at the time of testing so many things don't base too much on the tests. Kids are so individual and have strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of use and yet the evaluators expect them to perform like some cookie cutter formula.

05-11-2006, 07:30 AM

Liamsmom,

Truer words were never spoken!

Son did poorly on IQ evaluation because of cheese

Sign Up Today!

Join Our Newsletter

Whoops,

Thank You