Page 39 - Silver Lakes Issue 8_2022

TODAY’S CHILD

insight into your child, into your behaviour
and into the family which, hopefully, you
can use to break problematic cycles.

How to approach the assessment
results
If you are considering an assessment, be it
for scholastic issues or personal challenges,
keep two things in mind:
• The resistance to test results is often
similar to the resistance experienced
in psychotherapy. You may experience
resentment at the findings, anger at
implications of inadequate parenting,
and automatic reactions to terms like
“learning disability”, “attention deficit”,
and “low self-esteem”. Listen with an For example, before stating that a at a given time. Furthermore, if you
open mind to the test results before you person is an introvert, two or more are fortunate enough to work with a
reject them, and ask many questions instruments need to have introversion functioning team in your school system,
about what you have understood. as a finding. A single test, in isolation, is you are getting the attention of many
Teenagers may experience resistance of limited value. experts, all determined to understand your
to the entire process of testing. It is child.
therefore important to explain that There are several private practitioners,
these assessments are not tests in such as educational and counselling For therapeutic evaluations, such as
the conventional sense. They assess psychologists, who offer scholastic personality challenges between family
learning potential; that is, the teen’s psychometric services. They can be found members, partners or spouses, many
ability to learn, and not their IQ or brain on the web or via word of mouth. psychologists offer a range of assessments
capacity. aimed at assisting and developing more
• Psychometric assessments are Schools may also provide this service, functional relationship skills. Furthermore,
imperfect. Any psychological test but there may be questions around the within therapeutic evaluations, several
is a sample of behaviour at a given quality of assessments conducted on large instruments exist which assess mental
point in time. This is one reason for numbers of children simultaneously as the status. These can be useful in diagnosing
test batteries – the use of multiple findings offered may be too generalised more serious psychological disorders,
assessment questionnaires and to be useful to the individual. These treatment plans and prognoses for the
instruments. Because of this, the bulk assessment situations also create future. These types of assessments
assessments are expensive. unfavourable impressions of psychometric are more readily available across the
Psychologists make use assessments as the generalised feedback registrations of counselling and clinical
of multiple tools to find provided does not match the context or psychologists, whereas educational
correlation and consistency the child – for example, general codes psychologists tend to focus primarily on the
in their findings across given for career choices which are not scholastic context.
the instruments, really applicable within the modern South
before forming African context. The process may also Focus on five main points
a conclusion. be riddled with internal politics and Within our overlapping professions in the
hidden agendas. education context, people do not always
agree on the definition of terms such as
However, being assessed within the “learning disability” or “attention deficit”.
school system has proven to be Across professions – for example, when
much more cost effective, since you sit at a meeting of the education team
the cost of having the psychologist at your child’s school in the company of
present is divided among the psychologists, social workers, teachers and
number of children being assessed other education specialists – there can
be differences of opinion regarding these
heavily laden terms. My advice is to avoid
focusing on these labels as they can often
not be useful in problem resolution.

INTRAMUROS SEPTEMBER 2022 | 37