Question about test results....

[bairnmama]

We just had ds evaluated for speech because his pronounciation is obviously delayed. He turned 4 in Jan and I still have a hard time understanding him about 50% of the time. But the question I have is on the portion that measured his oral/receptive level... he maxed out the test. I mean, the evaluator literally ran out of test to give him without him missing questions to where she had to stop. The copy I received put him at an age equilavent of about 6.8. Given that he does have an older sister and just seems to absorb whatever I'm teaching to her (and irritate her by answering the questions correctly before she can, even while playing in an adjoining room :001_huh:), is there any significance to that score? Would it have been possible for him to score higher if the evaluator had pulled out another section of tests for older children? With him, I've always just let him decide when he wanted to "do school". If he asked for a math lesson, fine, if not, that's fine, too. Nothing has been scheduled or required, but he's known all his letters and the sounds they make since just before he turned 3 and does simple addition easily. I'm just curious.

[zaichiki]

Maxed out the test? Yep... that means he's more advanced in that area than most other kids his age.

[KAR120C]

We just had ds evaluated for speech because his pronounciation is obviously delayed. He turned 4 in Jan and I still have a hard time understanding him about 50% of the time. But the question I have is on the portion that measured his oral/receptive level... he maxed out the test.
We had similar results when DS was tested for similar problems (articulation) at a similar age! LOL And the upshot is that basically they scored higher than the testers designed the test for, which generally (although I'm not especially familiar with the specific test and its norming) is a fairly high score. Now of course you have to consider that the test is mainly aimed at teasing out problems, so I don't know how "high" is "high" but maxing out the test is usually pretty well up there.

One of our problems, though, was the mismatch. When you have a kid who understands a lot and has a big vocabulary, but can't pronounce things right, he's even harder to understand (if you're listening for "dinosaur" but he's trying to get out "archaeopteryx"), and he can be extremely frustrated by the situation because of having so much to say and no way to say it.

In DS's case it turned out to be a tongue-tie. After it was clipped he improved a lot -- still has a bit of an "accent" but they graduated him from speech therapy... and at the end of that he was at definitely understandable if not clear as a bell.

[bairnmama]

Thanks for confirming my feelings... I've been thinking for quite a while now that he was a bit above the curve. I mean, he came up to me spontaneously at just barely 3 yrs old holding 2 trapezoids together from our pattern blocks. When I finally deciphered what he was saying it was, "Look, I made a hexagon!"


One of our problems, though, was the mismatch. When you have a kid who understands a lot and has a big vocabulary, but can't pronounce things right, he's even harder to understand (if you're listening for "dinosaur" but he's trying to get out "archaeopteryx"), and he can be extremely frustrated by the situation because of having so much to say and no way to say it.


That's almost exactly our problem. He has soooo much to say, but hesitates and stutters because he's searching around in his mind looking for a word similar to what he wants that he knows he can pronounce. His problem is an apraxia and his pallette is abnormally high. He was trying to tell his therapist about an "elasmasaurus", but he can't yet prounounce l's, medial m's, r's, or medial s's (among other sounds).... that one was fun to decipher!