Extreme Testing: 21st Century Edition

Once I took the SAT – probably four times but it was so long ago it feels like a “once upon a time” story.  I really sucked at it.  I think that everyone around me was embarrassed by my performance.  So I went to a place that taught me how to cheat a tiny bit on the test.  Then I did better.  Tests have never been my thing, but they say that knowledge is power and these days we have so many precise ways to judge that – there is your daily testing, your standardized annual capital-T Testing and the ever-looming Extreme Testing (ET), to give us what promises to be truly awesome insights and power.

All of these testings serve a variety of purposes — some completely non-sensical and some completely jaw-droppingly precise and awesome. But the chief of them all, the big kahuna burger, Extreme Testing (aka, the psycho-educational assessment) should really be making me feel the power in every vein just about now.  Four kids have been Extreme Tested (don’t calculate how much that costs - for the love of all that is holy, it’s at least 3K a pop). I have learned amazing things about each of the kids and, perhaps, about myself if I think hard enough. 

Five learnings:

1.     Dyslexia turns out to be genetic!  100% in this case!  Boom!

2.     Extreme testing uncovers non-academic things like mood and anxiety disorders!

3.     You aren’t limited to just one learning difference – it’s a whole smorgasbord!

4.     Things identified through ET are easier to address in younger kids.

5.     I missed the “younger kid” window.

As it turns out, Extreme Testing has no companion Extreme Answering.  No Princeton Review or Kumon, no simple outsourcing or offshoring.  I’m thinking like a Cosmo quiz that might point a parent in the right direction would be cool…  But, so far Cosmo has failed me.  Just this once - it happens. 

The tests were the inexpensive and gentle part.  The rest sort of has to be fumbled through and cobbled together.  There isn’t really a rx pad or an operation manual or a flow chart for this.  And even thought there were 5 pages of recommendations and accommodations on the back of each kids’  report, the charge of selecting and enacting those recommendations has become, for me, a bone crushing weight of responsibility.   The slow-burining question of 'So what now?' has resulted in my feeling myself fracturing into a teensy bit of a split personality – like this:

·      I am the parent-masochist.  I should flush the 32-page reports. Quit the meds.  Cease the tutors.   Millions of kids before survived and got all kinds of grit through suffering and toughening and teasing…    I’m not reading any of that new wave literature on learning disabilities crap.

·      I am the curative therapizer -  No child of mine will be teased again for thinking the sports channel is “EPNS”.  There will be tutors!  There will be summer intensives!  There will be brain training games on the internet!  I will read every single book on this topic.  This is our new age 21^st century parental imperative – fix it all.   And fix it I shall.

·      I am the zen parent - I cede control a tiny bit – the responsibility is far greater than my power and like curing cancer or world hunger, we can only do what we can do and we can only hope that it is enough to make happy, healthy kids who have the tools to create their future.

Turns out that sucking at the SAT was really not as dramatic as it felt.  Eight weeks of training and I was good to go.  For this kind of new age testing though, I just don’t know what the magical path is, only that somehow I have to pick one.  Well, four.  Four paths, in my particular case.  Since that isn’t at all overwhelming, let me consider the options a while longer while I take a quick 12^th mortgage out on the house.   And I appreciate you kindly ignoring my twitching eye.  It’ll go away.