Question 105 - at least neuropsychiatrists have a sense of humor

CaptainSerious

@fredalina 's post reminded me of what happened at J's neuropsych eval last Friday.  She mentioned feeling like the report made it sound like she didn't like her daughter very much, because it was so harsh-sounding.  I encountered a question on one of the tests the other day that made my head spin.  Here's a chain of e-mails between me and my husband about it.

Me:  You are lucky you aren't here. When they took J back, they handed me 3 more packets to complete about his behaviors/abilities (never, occasionally, always). One has 85 questions, the next 108 questions, and the last is 6 pages long!

Me (some time later):  Question 105:  Your child is perfect in every way

Not true
Just a little true
Pretty much true
Very much true

How can they seriously expect parents to answer this after asking us to enumerate all the ways they have problems? This should be question number 1.

H:  maybe they are testing the parent

Me:  No joke.

Me (some time later):  I think I failed.

Okay, but seriously?  I answered "just a little true."  My child is a great kid with a fantastic personality and sense of humor, but I just filled out 104 questions explaining the nuances of how he is not typical.  Is typical perfect?  Were they giving me a gimme, and I just tossed it away?  Was it to determine my accuracy or how tainted my view of my child is?  How in the world were they expecting me to answer a question like that? Do they now think I am not his biggest, number 1 supporter?  How sick and twisted to throw in a question like that at the end!

funchicken

Oh my gosh, I wouldn't have known how to answer that question either!  I probably would have left it blank, you know, because I'm the non-compliant type

It kind of reminds me of this psych questionnaire that was randomly distributed to the students when I was in college.  My roommate filled it out, and some of the questions were just plain bizarre.

CaptainSerious

One of the things they stressed to me was that, even if I had to guess, they wanted me to answer every question.  I guess some parents skip a lot, but I really didn't want to answer that one!

CaptainSerious

Fred, your answer is very eloquent and resonates with me.

Now tell me, what answer would you have circled?

BTW, they did have a section on one of the evaluations (I'm not sure if this was the one) that allowed you to write in comments or explanations.

CaptainSerious

One of the questionnaires was to help determine if he had attention difficulties. The others were also diagnostic in nature. I don't think they were to start conversion.