That'll Teach me for using my kids as Guinea Pigs!!

So....I am very excited as I have been kindly funded by my parents to buy the Lucid visual stress & Dyslexic screeners for 4-8yr olds & 8-11yr olds.  I waded my way through the COPS manual (Cognitive Processing Screener for 4-8yr olds), and said to my 6 year old son (who has no dyslexic tendencies as far as I am aware), 'I need you to help me out, would you do this fun, computer test so that I can practice how it works?'

He was well up for it - computer?  That's all that he needed to know.

So, we started the test & I was shocked at how difficult he was finding things.  He has always been extremely quick and able at most things; he can read efficiently and write pretty well...his maths is shockingly good at times and he certainly doesn't have trouble sequencing days/months/time etc... I have always been pretty sure that he didn't have my daughter's dyslexic tendencies, but now, watching him complete these tests, I wondered if I had been severely mistaken!

Perhaps I had concentrated so much on my daughter that I had completely missed my sons needs.. He was struggling pinpointing the rabbit jumping out of the hole sequence, couldn't recognise symbols and was saying blue was green & red was yellow!  Was he colour blind & I had never noticed?  Was he suffering with visual stress? Was he dyslexic???!!!!

We had to go to the cinema, so we left it & watched 'Life of Pi' (wow - what a mind-blower that is!), then we returned. 

I looked at the results of my son's tests in detail & realised that there were many inconsistencies; he had scored high on some tests & very low on others that tested the same things..

I said to him, 'Were you doing what you could do; or were you doing what you thought the children who I would be assessing would do?'

He looked bashful & I decided bribery was the answer - 'If you tell me the truth, I'll give you £1.'

'The children you are going to be assessing,' he said.  'I was pretending to be them!'

The little monkey is such a good actor I was totally convinced!  I re-ran the tests that had given me scores that concerned me (5-10%) & he scored 80-90% !!!

We laughed - a lot! And he got his £1 (in fact he got £2, his dad was impressed with his cheekiness too!)

The good thing is - the screeening tool works - even if children don't answer totally truthfully; it shows the anomalies.

The bad thing is - my son is a better actor than me!