I have three kids, and they have all done psychological testing to determine which type of neurodiverse they are and what other learning disabilities they have. So, while I know how this type of testing is supposed to work as a professional, I also have a lot of parent experience. Today I’m going to talk about how it can be wrong.

Before we dive into the weaknesses of testing for learning disabilities, let me say that I do think there is value in the testing. I do think it can uncover challenges that kids are having and give parents tools to work with them. I have learned some very helpful things from some of the testing my kids have done. However, with one of my kids, testing has been more than a little bit atypical.

The ADHD Test

To my knowledge, the typical test for ADHD is one where the child has to respond to a computer program that is rather boring. I have one child who found it so boring they tried to eat lunch while doing this test, and obviously failed. The ADHD diagnosis for that child surprised me, but that is another story for another day.

When another child did that test, he did it fresh, at the start of the testing session, and he was fascinated with the computer. He did his very best and at the end of all of the testing, I was told my child was perfectly normal and average in every way. I honestly hope that psychologist has lost her license because that was amazingly untrue. She doesn’t work in the place we saw her in anyway, I know that much. A year later we repeated the testing, and he was still doing his best and fascinated by the computer, but we have gotten to look again at those scores, and he showed signs of attention issues during that session.

It has been several years and we just retested for college accommodations.  I told my kid not to do his best, but to do his average. I told him not to miss anything on purpose, but to not hurt himself doing his best. Just give a normal amount of effort. This will result in true test scores and show if he needs any accommodations.  These directions also were designed to reduce his anxiety. You may not be able to fake having ADHD on these tests, but you can push yourself to do better than your normal. You can also have abnormal results due to anxiety, or other things that are not ADHD. My son needs college accommodations to help him on his normal days, as those are the vast majority of days. If he doesn’t need them on his best days, which are rare, that isn’t indicative of his normal daily abilities. Interestingly, this time the ADHD test was given on an iPad, which he’s had access to since he was a toddler. He apparently tested out as “very ADHD” this time.

What is your Best?

Was it “cheating” to tell my child not to do his best? I would say no. On my best day, I had a natural unmedicated birth with a 9 pound baby. I put in my best effort that day. It was worth it. I have no plans to repeat that level of effort again in this life time. Am I capable of it? Yes. Should we decide that that version of my best is where we should put the bar for a good day? No. If we are determining what a person is capable of in work or school, we need to base it off a sustainable amount of effort they can do every day.

Neurodiverse people can have the ability to push themselves into a state where they give huge amounts of effort to appear neurotypical. When told to do their best, neurodiverse kids may be able to perform on a single test as well as a typical child. This ability is why we can suddenly get more done than normal. We can write the term paper in one night or clean the whole house in 2 hours before the in-laws arrive. We are capable to pushing ourselves further when required. This is why I strongly believe that ADHD and other diagnosis shouldn’t be based on a single test on a single day.

When Testing Fails You

As I already mentioned, when I was told one of my kids was “normal” and I knew that wasn’t true, we chose to re-test. I knew the evaluator was wrong. The thing about testing that includes an IQ test, like these tests do, is that you need to have at least a year between tests for them to be considered valid. As a homeschooler, I was lucky I was not watching my child struggle in school during that year. We did not have a great year of homeschooling, but we did our best. The next year, when we got a lot more information from testing, the most important piece being a diagnosis of auditory processing disorder, I was able to make changes to how we homeschooled to meet his needs.

In our case, the second round of testing got a set of diagnoses that were very helpful. However, our recent round added to the list ADHD. Adding ADHD at this time is actually very helpful to my son, as he has clearly been struggling with it for a long time, but we were able to accommodate him while homeschooling. As he starts college, he will benefit from ADHD accommodations like extra time on tests and copies of lecture notes to help him keep up in class.

Also, as I mentioned, not all those who give the tests are equal. If you suspect something specific, you may want to seek out someone to do the testing the has experience with that diagnosis. Diagnosing girls can be tricky for many things, as the diagnostic requirements are often written describing boys. So, if you suspect your daughter is autistic or has ADHD you may very well be right, even if the testing doesn’t back you up.