Saturday, May 07, 2011

Griffiths Developmental Assessment

While waiting to see the developmental pediatrician, we did the Griffiths developmental assessment with our current pediatrician who happen to be a good friend with the developmental pediatrician. This assessment was suppose to take about 2 and half hour. It assesses the child's development in a few areas whether they are on par, delayed or advance based on their age.

Today hubby, myself and Reese went for the assessment. I was a little worried whether my son will be up to it! It was tough! Half way through, he threw a major tantrum that caused my hubby to lose it and eventually he walked out of the room! I was left to console the crying boy and it took me and the pediatrician a good half hour to calm Reese down and get him to co-operate!! Reese was not very co-operative and after the major tantrum, it got worst but eventually we got through it. It took us about 3 and half hours.

He was given little tasks to perform, sorting patterns, building blocks, counting, some analogies, writing, drawing, reasoning, hopping, jumping and etc. It's not easy to get Reese to do things that he is not willing. It took a lot of coaxing and clowning around.

I am a little skeptical of the assessment. It's very British. There are many things that may not be appropriate for us that are not British. Like certain objects and its function that the child is expected to be familiar with. I also find the assessment some what rigid. The assessment result depends heavily on the child's performance when it was conducted. Can you imagine if a child is not in the mood? They will definitely score poorly. I felt Reese could have done better in the verbal reasoning section but he was tired and totally not in the mood.

Anyhow, initial tabulation of the score shows that Reese's critical reasoning skills is equivalent to a 6+ year old child, 2 years ahead (I believe it could be more if he was more co-operative) and other areas are either on par or slightly ahead of his age. As I have suspected all along, his social emotional skill is only equivalent to a 2.5 years old. That is 2 years behind. That could explain a lot of his behaviour I think. So you can see he has the intelligence of a 6 year old but a behaviour of a 2.5 years old! That is Asynchronous development.

Asynchronous development refers to uneven intellectual, physical, and emotional development. In average children, intellectual, physical, and emotional development progresses at about the same rate. That is, the development is in "sync." An average four-year-old has the intellectual and physical abilities as well as the emotional maturity most other four-year-olds have. However, in gifted children, the development of those areas is out of "sync." They do not progress at the same rate.

Next week we will have the full report and in August we will be able to get more answers when we see the developmental pediatrician.

**After the assessment, we were all tired and didn't have the appetite to eat. My poor boy had a little stomach discomfort too.

2 comments:

Ann said...

Oh....must have been really tiring.

I think he did great tantrum or not. Don't push yourself too hard to have reach perfection.

A gift from God said...

Dear Ann,

We did not push... just felt the test did not do justice in certain areas... :)

Doctor should have done it in two sessions so that it can give a better picture of the child's ability.