Is it possible a child has a low IQ?

amother

Royalblue

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 8:44 pm

marina wrote:

Yale and Harvard and all the other Ivy League Schools have disability offices - that means that there are kids with disabilities who got into schools that the rest of us could not even hope for.

I went to a peer school of the ones you mentioned and I would be shocked if the disabilities offices do anything other than arrange adderall and extra time on tests for kids who are fairly average but have been getting accommodations their whole lives and thereby qualified for Harvard and Yale.

amother

Blush

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 8:51 pm

There is another point. Maybe the opposite is true, that IQ itself is a predictor of nothing. I have a brilliantly high IQ, according to tests conducted on me as a child. But my EQ (emotional) and SQ (social - I made that up-) intelligences are so low that I have been a complete failure as an adult. People would say- I never reached my potential. Well maybe I never had any potential. Or maybe if my deficits had been addressed as a kid I could have done more.

My point is I'm all in favor of teachers taking into account both the strengths and deficits of each child so that they can each grow to be the best person they could possibly be. And that involves things like distinguishing between intelligences and processing, as well as many other things.

debsey

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 8:55 pm

amother wrote:

They do much more. Arrange for textbooks on tape to accommodate kids with dyslexia or poor vision, arrange for tutors, teach executive functioning and time management skills, etc. Harvard and Yale have strict admission policies. They're not going to accept a kid who is really just "dumb" but has lots of fake diagnoses. They want documented histories of disorders, accommodations in school, and a documented history of good achievement despite those disorders. They also have minimum SAT scores.

If you are "dumb" and you take the SATs, some extra time isn't going to suddenly put the information in your head. But if you're dyslexic, and you need extra time to read the question, but then you know the answer, the extra time is crucial. The system is less amenable to gaming than you think.

amother

Sapphire

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 8:56 pm

amother wrote:

I guess my point is that I think that someone who has a language processing or auditory processing disorder will ultimately have the same consequences as someone with a low iq. They will both struggle academically, not understand instructions well, won't understand what they read properly, and struggle socially. It seems the reason we use the term "processing disorder" instead of "low iq" is because: a) its much less offensive and b) it helps the parents feel better about things as it gives false hope that its a fixable problem. A low iq can't really be fixed but a processing disorder is fixable. However, the truth is that a processing disorder is very unlikely to be fixed. Most young teens with processing disorders were diagnosed years ago and here they are years later struggling with the same problems. The only solutions are the same as with low iq which is put these children in a remedial class and give them easier work. This puts unfair and unreasonable expectations on the teachers and schools because now they are supposedly working with a fixable problem and its their job to fix it.

Sorry my personal experience you are wrong. My son was the way you described I thought he'll never understand anything cause every single thing that most kids pick up by them self had to be taught again and again and again he didn't use his head at all (they thought that he is on the autistic spectrum), I had lot of therapy and now he is doing a great job in school and he became such a deep thinker that all his teachers are amazed how a boy from 8 years old can think of devori Torah on his own b"H. He still has some auditory processing delays which causes him to talk a little slower

debsey

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 8:59 pm

amother wrote:

You sound like my son. His IQ is off the charts - genius level. Still took him years to learn to read, especially Hebrew. Aside from all his tutors and special ed teachers, he has social skills therapists, ABA therapists, and goes to special social skills clubs, all to help him learn how to interact with other people.

Over the years, he's caught up beautifully with his classmates, on an academic level (in some subjects, like math or memorizing mishnayos, they'll never catch up to him.....) but on an emotional/social level, he's still light-years behind.

I would never leave his therapy or functioning in the hands of the teachers! If I would have listened to the classroom teachers, he'd still be in a self-contained class, instead of thriving in his current class. His teacher from two years ago met him and couldn't believe how far he's come. But she's not a professional, so how could she even know what's possible?

debsey

Mon, Jul 04 2016, 9:01 pm

amother wrote:

Sorry my personal experience you are wrong. My son was the way you described I thought he'll never understand anything cause every single thing that must kids pick up by them self had to be taught again and again and again he didn't his head at all (they thought that he is on the autistic spectrum), I had lot of therapy and now he is doing a great job in school and he became such a deep thinker that all his teachers are amazed how a boy from 8 years old can think of devori Torah on his own b"H. He still has some auditory processing delays which causes him to talk a little slower

Completely, totally agree! Liking wasn't enough.

FranticFrummie

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 1:47 am

amother wrote:

a bunch of lay people spouting buzzwords that explain how every single kid is equally smart but some of them are "sensory" or "visual" or "gluten sensitive". That is clearly not true.

OR, maybe we've just gotten a lot better at recognizing different ways that different brains work, and are getting better at diagnostics.

Do you really want to go back to they days when all kids who were not "in the box" to be labeled as "[crazy]"? Maybe all the "lazy" kids just need a good beating, and all the autistic kids should be in institutions.

Puke

amother

Purple

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 2:42 am

I'm the poster from before . I'm with DEbsey on this one.
Unfortunately it's people with attitudes like yours who have allowed children with learning difficulties to be sidelined and considered "stupid". Which is so far from the truth.
Most teachers want every kid to fit into their little box and are sometimes just too lazy to go out of their comfort zone to teach in a way that every child will understand.
I, too am hurt by your post. My dh and I have invested a lot of time and money to give my daughter an education that will help her excel.

What you seem to be saying is that it's all a waste of time and we are just covering up her low IQ.

I think your dh should find another career. Most children need a teacher who believes in them in order to be successful. He seems to have a problem with that.

amother

Tan

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 2:56 am

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding and overestimating what IQ actually measures. You seem to think intelligence is fixed and IQ measures the upper limit of how much a person can achieve intellectually, or how much they can learn or not learn. According to developments in neuroscience, which aren't even that recent, that is incorrect. Intelligence is not fixed. Intelligence in a nutshell is made up of a whole bunch of cognitive processes which at their core are brain cells (neurons) firing electro-chemical signals at other brain cells, thus making connections or pathways between them which allow for faster, easier electro-chemical communication the next time around, and the next. Think of it like a dirt road. The first time an OTV rides over an area it is bumpy and slow going and it creates shallow tracks that are hard to see. The next time one rides over the same area it slowly deepens and smooths out the tracks, and again and again and again until over time you have a clearly marked path that is smooth and easy for even an ordinary vehicle to travel over. This is what happens in our brain every time we practice a skill, including a cognitive skill. Intelligence is not fixed because we can always increase our neural connections and strengthen the ones we already have even through old age.

So if teachers have the right information, guidance and most importantly attitude, they can help even the *dumb* ( Puke

) kids get smarter. And the teachers who don't might even be able to learn. Unless you think their intelligence is fixed.

amother

Indigo

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 9:50 am

I totally believe that people with any LD can learn and grow any farther than ever before through therapies, accommodations, tutors etc.

I wonder if OP feels the same but is frustrated when it feels like EVERY parent of a "special accommodations student" (for lack of better term, they aren't dumb, [crazy] (blech) etc) decided that their child is a genius but misunderstood. Some kids have to be average by definition. Some kids no matter how much help or therapy will still be below average. We need to push our kids to their highest ability but sometimes they aren't going to get far. And for the person who said those kids are in special ed schools- not always in the frum world especially.

And about disability offices-many deal with physical challenges as well. Permission to get someone to take notes for them, ADA accessible rooms, medical needs... Things that are impediments to learning but don't change the difficulty of the class. I know someone who got specialty headphones (no music capabilities) from the office because she needed to block out noise because pencils are distracting but then she took the same exam as everyone else in the same time.
Not a teacher here. Just a parent and one of the bazillion therapists trained to help your family...

marina

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 1:48 pm

amother wrote:

Sure, there are some disabilities that are in some instances clearly distinguishable from cognitive weakness. But those are the exception rather than the rule. It is fairly obvious to everyone when a kid is brilliant but can't read, that it might be dyslexia. It might be obvious to a therapist in other circumstances where lay people would not pick up on it. But what OP seems to be referring to, which I observe all the time, is a bunch of lay people spouting buzzwords that explain how every single kid is equally smart but some of them are "sensory" or "visual" or "gluten sensitive". That is clearly not true.

Just not true. When a school psychologist conducts assessments and the team discusses those results, they do not qualify a child as learning disabled if the IQ is low enough to be considered cognitive delay. Instead they qualify the child as cognitively delayed.

Disability categories, especially in k-12, have very specific categories and rule-out requirements. It's not just the Oh-There's-Something-Wrong-With-Him disability. The testing is done to rule out disabilities and figure out what is the problem. If a child is low IQ, he will not be categorized as LD, emotional disturbed, health impaired, etc.

And people do learn in different ways. Some people are actually visual learners. This is not a big deal. I am a visual learner, which means that if you are just talking in a lesson, I tend to tune you out and don't really remember much of what you said, unless I specifically try very hard. In contrast, if there's a power point or I'm taking notes or other visuals, I will remember the lesson well. And I don't have a learning disability at all- it's just a style of how I learn best.

marina

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 1:51 pm

amother wrote:

) kids get smarter. And the teachers who don't might even be able to learn. Unless you think their intelligence is fixed.

With some exceptions, intelligence is fixed by the time a child hits puberty. Obviously, we all learn more skills as we age, but the speed with which we learn them, for example, will be affected by our intelligence (as with other factors). People with lower IQ will learn things slower. They will need to ride over the area ( in your example) more times than someone else.

amother

Blue

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 2:12 pm

marina wrote:

I don't mean any disrespect but I've heard the term "visual learner" very often to describe students that are weak. Maybe I'm wrong but the problem is that to succeed academically, students need to sit in a class and understand verbal instructions. They also need to be able to go home and read and understand a textbook. Visual learners struggle with this and most schools and colleges don't have accommodations for these students because I dont think they exist. I don't think students graduate from college without having listened in class and read books. Can someone name a college that accommodates visual learners and will not require reading the standard textbooks?

cnc

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 2:16 pm

amother wrote:

Almost every single one of my college textbooks/courses had accompanying power points.
Besides the fact that most textbooks are loaded with figures and diagrams.

Visual learner has nothing to do with being a weak student or not. (I happen to better at auditory learning ).
A good teacher is one that incorporates as many as possible learning methods into her lessons.

debsey

Tue, Jul 05 2016, 3:21 pm

marina wrote:

you should call the board of education in your town, they do it for free.

Marina, with all due respect, while the board of education does do a basic evaluation, it is not usually enough to help a child with processing issues. The job of the board of ed eval is to qualify/disqualify for services. More nuanced explorations of exactly the processing issue and how to work with it is beyond the scope of a board of ed eval. If I had only relied on a board of ed eval, my son would still be in a completely self-contained environment. Because he had a full eval by a team, which included neuropsychologists and learning disabilities specialists, we were able to pinpoint his exact needs and get him help, to the point where he is completely mainstreamed (and thriving! and thrilled!) today. There are ways to get this type of eval covered, as well.

Board of education eval is a bare starting point.