Gifted Children Evaluations
Psychological Testing and Evaluations
Just as there are medical tests that can give us an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the physical body, there are psychological tests that can provide us with equally useful insights into the mind. These tests can reveal not yet understood strengths, even in the most gifted of children. Similarly, they can reveal weaknesses that the many strengths have masked. It may go without saying, but an in-depth understanding of the mind can help a person to maximize their potential, both by then enhancing strengths, and by weakening weaknesses.
Intelligence Testing: Intelligence testing provides far more than an IQ score. It actually measures intelligence on multiple dimensions, such as fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, & visual-spatial reasoning. It is important to obtain accurate test results. Test results may be skewed by how a child is feeling when taking the test(s). If overtired, medicated, ill, manic, hyper, etc., the scores can be inaccurate. Tracy Colsen Schaperow, Psy.D. works to overcome limitations of the testing process by using her psychological training to look for any abnormal state of mind or body that can alter test results. Consequently, her analysis takes into account any such matters she is made aware of. She conducts a thorough analysis of the data. This translates into the most accurate results available.
Social, Emotional, and Personality Testing: Perhaps more important to a child's emotional well-being than any other psychological tests are those focused on the social, emotional, and personality characteristics of a child. If you value this above all else, you may wish to strongly consider these tests, which can show emotional strengths that can work with their gifted minds, but also emotional weaknesses that can work against them. Another fact is that many such children have normal emotional and personality profiles, yet because they are so intelligent, the normal profiles act as weaknesses. Ahead are two examples:
A boy with a completely normal profile skips several grades. He is able to get along with the older kids, yet has limited interaction with same-age students. His social interactions are, like his intelligence, advanced in maturity. However, emotional development and intellectual development are not on quite the same level. Eventually the interplay of social and emotional development, combined with a deficit in youthful play, results in a shifting personality profile that results in long-term emotional instability.
A girl watches the news on television and at the age of five comprehends as much as a college student. However, no one thinks that she understands that much. Her emotional profile at age four showed everything as normal, but her watching the news at age five gets her to believe that the world is extremely dangerous (The news can do this to adults, too, as most of it focuses on the bad, rather than the good or neutral such as, “Not a single death occurred in the Flanders area all month.”), but her age five developed emotions and ability to filter out the truth from propaganda results in an anxiety disorder. An age five emotional profile can then show that she may be harmful to herself or others, yet all she really needs is some explanation of how the news and propaganda works, along with a different type of family support. The combination of testing and evaluation can result in a recommendation for a bit of counseling around such issues.
Evaluations: Tracy Colsen Schaperow, Psy.D. evaluates while she tests. For diagnostic psychiatric evaluations that do not involve standardized psychological tests, or for family systems evaluations, Sam Schaperow, M.S., LMFT does these. These kinds of evaluations are designed to find any diagnoses that may be present in a child in relation to being gifted (and also those that are not related, which may be overlooked if there is too much focus on the giftedness of your child). Social anxiety, generalized anxiety, adjustment disorders, depression, and insomnia are a few examples. In depth-evaluations can confirm or disconfirm previous diagnoses made with less data. A child can be diagnosed with hyperactivity when they actually suffer from anxiety, or something much different.
Family systems evaluations look for how the family acts as a positive and negative support for their child’s needs. These assessments look at the family as a living system, one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is understood that if one part of a living system does better or worse, all other parts of the system are altered. Factors such as family homeostasis, triangulation, fusion, enmeshment, etc. are evaluated. Such evaluations usually provide direction in terms of family systems therapy, which would then provide families with greatly enhanced tools to accomplish virtually any goal with their child and family. Examples include enhancing communication, tailoring school performance, calming or energizing the household (believe it or not, but this can have a profound impact on each person in the family!), and improving playfulness while maintaining the efficiency of productivity.