Monday, January 4, 2010

Update - She's AVERAGE!!!!

It has been a while since I last updated. Things have been chaotic. Taylor has now finished at her Early Education Program and looks forward to starting at her new school in February.

The biggest development in the past few months has been the results of the extensive cognitive/intelligence testing that was conducted by the neuropsychology team at RCH. You may recall that we had to undergo a WIPPSI (an IQ test), administered by the Education Dept. We were shattered when their test results indicated that Taylor had an intellectual disability. We were also a little dumbfounded as how can a test that is clearly slanted against hearing impaired children and children with language impairments, yeild accurate results. Despite my protests - the label was applied.

After discussing my frustrations with Taylor's neurologist, he referred us to the neuropsychology department. There, they conducted extensive testing of her verbal, non verbal intelligence, plus processing speeds etc. She was allowed a signing interpreter. It was a grueling process. The testing was conducted over several sessions over many weeks and the results have finally arrived.

SHE IS AVERAGE NOT INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED!
She has issues with her verbal receptive and expressive language = "LOW", which we expected BUT everything else was "AVERAGE". Average intelligence, average processing speed, average, average, average AND she testing "HIGH" in her visual processing, comprehension and cognition.

So all in all, she is an average kid, with average intelligence. Can't tell you how happy that makes us.