Even back then, which was almost thirty years ago, you did not use the word "moron" to define a child. At four years old, how valid is one's IQ anyway?
Actually, I think they still did, although it as just going out of regular usage, I think. I remember being given the scales of intelligence and looking at the various categories when I was first at uni in the mid-70s and yes, "idiot savant" was there (I found it fascinating and had my own thoughts on the truth of what the textbook claimed) as was "moron" and so on. It still referred to Downs Syndrome as "mongolism" but the book did say that Downs' Syndrome was becoming the more accepted term. There were a number of medical conditions including sub-thyroid "cretinism" that were described. It was about this time that one of my nephews was suspected of literally being a cretin. However, the term "cretin" was avoided because the doctor said, "We only use the term 'sub-thyroid' now."
The boy turned out to have some mild cerebral palsy (which the doctor described as "he's a mild spastic") which he outgrew mostly, as predicted. However now he's an adult there are aspects to this man which do not equate with the neonatal oxygen starvation in his history - I'm sure, and so is his mother, that he is Aspie.
I do agree though - these terms had to go, they became just too pejorative.
And it is hard to get an accurate picture of a very young child. There are some good IQ tests which have been developed for this purpose, but like all tests, they rely on basic assumptions such as "the subject is willing and cooperative", and "This child comes from the same cultural background as the children on which this test was developed."
easy child 2/difficult child 2 was assessed when she was just 4 years old. However, she was cooperative and also understood what was asked of her. she scored about 140. Later testing using different test methods have shown lowerscores in previously excluded sub-tests such as coding, which has brought down her score to about 135. However, knowing she has widely varying sub-scores, I choose to still accept the earlir test as more likely to be accurate.
Knowing her low score areas, though, gave us a direction to work on with therapy. Sometimes something as simple as reading glasses can affect a coding score, for example.
Audrey - keep on flying!
A thought on the negative labels - difficult child 3's teacher wrote a note home to me saying, "You must stop him from insulting other kids, he's got enough social problems, he won't make friends if he keeps calling them names such as 'f*gg** retard' as he did today."
I was upset by this - she really couldn't see that difficult child 3 was simply throwing the same insult used on him, back at the kid who had used those words first. And to ask me to make him stop, when it was happening at school and never at home? As if we ever called difficult child 3 something like that!
And therein lies an even bigger problem - we are here discussing the problems of an alleged professional using an outdated term, so how much harder do we have to work, to correct these misconceptions in the minds of other parents and members of the public in general?
Of course the label used on difficult child 3 had come form another child, who had in turn heard it in his home (the 'retard' label, anyway).
difficult child 3 still gets a few local kids riding past on their bikes and yelling out "Moron!" or "Retard!"
I knew I couldn't make it stop, all I could do was help difficult child 3 understand that such labels do not apply to him - in fact, the labels are applied by kids who FEAR that the labels secretly apply to them, and by trying to make difficult child 3 feel bad about himself, these other kids can feel a bit better. Or that's how their faulty logic goes.
I talked to difficult child 3 and said, "What subjects are you good at?"
He listed them.
"What are you like at computers and reading?" (I chose something I know he's a prodigy at).
He grinned and said, "Mrs F often has to get me to fix the classroom computer, especially after Jake or Fred were using them."
I reminded him of an incident in our car (I was driving a small group of kids to a team event at a neighbouring school) when a younger kid, previously very scathing og difficult child 3 and calling him "dummy", discovered that difficult child 3 was a whiz at any computer game and had to beg difficult child 3 to "please get me to the next level".
I then explained to difficult child 3 about the terms "retard" and "moron". I explained that these are outdated terms which originally had a specific medical meaning. I talked about IQ testing and how it was originally developed to try to make it easier to teach kids at the level they could handle, and how it had grown so big it now risked getting really messy and inaccurate.
I then asked him, "Have any people ever called you those words?"
He said they had.
I said to him, "And considering how clever we know you are at so many things, and especially considering we already have an IQ score for you that puts you in the top 1% of the population, do you tink those labels would ever apply to you?"
He grinned.
I did have to reinfoce with him to NOT rub even the approximate knowledge of his own high IQ into the other kids' noses. I said that we don't divulge those numbers to our kids for many reasons but especially because it should never be used as a weapon in any way. Someone whose IQ is genuinely low does not deserve to be insulted about it and someone with a high IQ demeans himself if he brags about it. If you don't know the exact numbers, you can't brag and compare.
The thing is - I knew I couldn't control difficult child 3's environment enough to protect him from other people being mean. All I could do was help him know himself well enough, to not be hurt by any such rubbish. Given the opportuunity, of course I try to re-educate others too if they use the wrong term (especially if they do it as a deliberate insult). But the best protection is the armour from within.
We really do stress far too much about this stuff, don't we? I mean "we" as society. Because if there wasn't so much emphasis, then the negative labels would not be important enough to ever have had power to become insults.
MWM, your method of getting any testing needed, done by valued private professionals should be a benchmark where possible. Why do we keep hearing horror stories from Dept of Ed testing? It's not just in the US, we have the same issues here in Australia, so it spans the globe.
Interestingly - we could label that school counsellor as an idiot, but in doing so we are again using a previously medical term as an insult.
But we CAN call them fools!
Marg
