Why Give Your Child an IQ Test?

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - March 11th, 2016

After reading this article, you may be asking why.

Why should I give my child an IQ test?

The most common reason to test a young child is for a school gifted and talented program or for admission to a private school.

Sometimes parents just know that their child is ahead of his or her age milestones and they want to understand that better, so they arrange for their child to be tested. 

I remember seeing a report on the Today Show about a super-smart girl named Elizabeth Barrett. They first featured her at 17 months because she had taught herself to read simple words. Then, at 2.5 years old, she was reading the newspaper and speaking Spanish. She knew all her state capitals. When her mother asked her what the capital of Maine was, she offered a classic gifted-child response, connecting two unrelated concepts by saying, “Augusta, just like [the month] August!”  Parents of kids like this suspect that their child is developing at an advanced rate and they want a psychologist to confirm this, and to give them direction on how to handle a child like that. 

Other times, a child seems to be behind where they should be developmentally.

Parents want to get to the bottom of that as well – so they have the child tested.  I had my 3 year old son, Sam, tested because he seemed to be so far behind his older sister developmentally – that’s when I learned he couldn’t hear, which was the cause of his learning delays.

If you have a chance to get your young child tested, do it.  I can’t recommend it enough.  It will help you understand your child’s strengths and weaknesses better and you’ll be able to help them build up his strengths even more and improve his weaknesses.  My own daughter’s IQ test at age 4 telegraphed a learning disability that emerged later and made school much more difficult for her than it needed to be.  Had I understood what those early test scores were telegraphing, we could gotten her help much earlier.  Don’t make the mistake I made.  If your child is tested at a young age, look at the scores for all the subtests and be sure that you understand what they mean.  If you are a member of www.TestingMom.com, you can always reach out to us for help in understanding your child’s test scores.