Previously explained in Part 6: ND kids usually have “Spikey Profiles” (meaning their IQ scores cannot be averaged, because they are great at some things and need help in other areas), whereas NT kids have IQ scores and cognitive abilities that can be averaged and predicted by age group. Read my blogs and books about this topic, it’s really important for teaching ND children.
NT children can be grouped into age groups because they do learn in similar ways at the approximate same age, but ND can’t – because of that Spikey Profile. This is why mainstream schooling disadvantages them and harms them simultaneously – because mainstream schooling was built on and created for the ‘average’ intelligence.. or the ‘typical’ person in society. But more and more – there are less and less ‘typical people’. The school system is more and more unrealistic and redundant because you shouldn’t be teaching (or doing anything for that matter) based on ‘average’, because you will also segregate/ harm and ostracise the outliers in society. Schools are built on the racist/ supremacist/ ‘normal’ /‘abled’ expectation and want for perfectionism in society… but society isn’t built that way. We are human – we are not infallible.
A child with a Spikey IQ profile may be at grade 1 level for maths, but grade 6 for English (or vice versa).. but only be aged 9 – so the schoolwork that is made for a 9 year old (grade 3 or 4ish) would be totally inappropriate for them. This causes behaviour problems and disconnect with learning because the curriculum is not meeting their needs.
Spikey IQ’s are one of the biggest issues when trying to teach ND kids. Because IMO it’s not just about the spikiness of our cognitive abilities, it’s also the spikiness of our disabilities. As in; we can have multiple disabilities that cause our learning differences as well. We may have excellent speed processing and terrible memory (spikey IQ which causes fast learning, but then we forget certain aspects). But we may also (on top of a spikey IQ) have apraxia and dyslexia (co-occurring disabilities = spikey disabilities), causing spikey abilities/skills in talking and reading etc. Spikey IQ can cause our intelligence quotient to be variable, but our cooccurring disabilities can cause you to deem us incapable (assuming incompetence) or for us to actually be unable to do certain things.
You cannot gauge an ND persons intelligence when they have a Spikey IQ, or disabilities – because we can be disabled in all sorts of ways, even if we have ‘averageable’ intelligence: being able to average the IQ score because each test resulted in a similar score. Averageable can mean the person has high IQ (higher over all test results) or lower IQ (lower over all test results). Spikey means they received greatly varying test results over many or some of the individual tests (both high and low results).
Being lower in IQ or higher in IQ also means the person is ND – because they diverge from the typical – typical being the people who are placed in the ‘average’ or ‘typical’ IQ resulting areas. Are you beginning to see that there are possibly not many ‘typical people’ in the world after all?
But that’s what we base education on and how we develop our lessons. We base them on the ‘average’. This is why higher IQ and lower IQ are being failed. And then the ‘average’ are also being failed because those with higher or lower IQ cause behaviour disturbances in classrooms – because they are being failed by their needs not being met, but also because we actively behave like they don’t exist/ shouldn’t exist. (We’ll talk more about this in the blog about teachers think one child is ruining it for the other 29). Basically: children who are being taught in a way that doesn’t meet their needs – will act in a way that tells you something is wrong (with behaviour as communication) – they act out to show you that the lesson isn’t meeting their needs. Because lessons are developed with the average person in mind – the lesson never meets the needs of the higher or lower IQ in the room.
Gifted/Talented: some ND people have high IQ’s but are still unable to do the work, because the work is not developed for them. This group are usually expected to be ‘able’ more than their peers, just because of a higher IQ. But having a higher IQ does not make you more able… especially if the system or curriculum works against you.
Eg: if you are autistic with higher IQ, ableists assume you don’t struggle as much as people with lower IQ’s. This is another ridiculous fallacy. Sometimes they struggle more. Because society has more demands and expectations for them, but the struggles are not acknowledged or they are even told that those things aren’t valid for people with higher IQ’s to struggle with. Autism is the neurotype that usually comes with co-occurring SPD, justice mentality, and concrete thinking – those things make us struggle with the environment/ society and demands the same or similar no matter what our IQ score is.
An autistic person can have a very high IQ but extreme SPD – which means they may not struggle with understanding things or learning certain things, but they will struggle immensely with sensory input and output. Or an autistic person might have a lower IQ or Intellectual Disability and very low SPD – which means they will struggle with understanding or learning things, but won’t struggle with sensory issues as much as the person with severe SPD. But the higher the IQ- (usually) the more we struggle with justice issues, societal pressure and expectations and with being ‘able’. We are perceived as being ‘more able’ but the fact is it often works in the opposite way. The more intelligence – the less ‘able’ we become in a society that only tolerates average. And if you have an ID or lower IQ, the more disabled you become with people either dismissing you, presuming incompetence, or infantilising you – or not teaching you things because they think it’s a ‘waste’. Both ends of the scale are problematic and experience harm.
When we have a spikey profile (of both intelligence and ability) we become even more unable – and more unacceptable to society. Having spikey profiles makes us the outliers – the people that society shun and don’t understand…. But actively seek to exclude through their unwritten rules, agendas and education. Education is one of the biggest ones. When we are super capable at one subject, but struggle a lot with another – we are seen as broken or unteachable because they just assume laziness in the topic that we struggle with.
Everyone has things they are good and bad at – spikey IQ isn’t that, but it does bring up the fact that schools make you do all subjects – and expect everyone to at least pass all subjects… in an average room of average students (without disabilities or differences), you’ll still have kids that are better at some subjects and terrible at others. Why are we expecting everyone to want to do all topics, to want to be good at everything (or even want to pass everything). There’s many subjects at school I’ve never used in real life, wouldn’t want to either. I should’ve been allowed to not do those subjects… but that’s society for you… everyone must by a clone and do clone things.
We may be delayed in speech (eg: not be able to use mouth words at all, or perhaps situationally non-speaking – where we can use mouth words, but not consistently or reliably), but we may be ahead of our peers in reading ability. But you won’t know, because one of the only ways schools test ability in reading is by making kids read aloud. There needs to be another way.
If a child is deaf – you don’t test their learning by only gauging what they heard! So why do teachers test learning reading by our speaking ability. They are sometimes completely not related – especially for multiply disabled children. We have multiple ‘invisible’ disabilities that you cannot see – but are there all the same. Those disabilities may cause us to not respond in the way you expect an NT child to respond, but it doesn’t mean we didn’t learn it or comprehend it; the same as or better than the NT child.
Teachers often assign the lack of response to inability to do the assigned task but that’s a falsity that needs to be undone. But teachers are not taught how to assess ability in disabled or different children or how to teach them. They are just taught “this is the lesson or thing to be learnt in this specific way, if they do not show aptitude by showing only these skills – then we mark them as incapable”. The world is grey, but schools work in black and white.
When children start school / kindergarten – society takes the opinion that all children are starting at the same place… at the same development and can all learn the same thing at the same time, in the same way – if we just force it. But this is untrue and a harmful standpoint. Some children are smarter or have more developed skills, some children have developmental differences, some have disabilities, etc. Kindergarten/school tries to control that development – they try to teach everyone the same thing by assuming they’re all the same (sometimes they’ll spend time trying to get everyone who is below the assigned stereotypical average – to the average)… whereas they expect the ones above average to wait for the rest to catch up. This is unfair to all involved.
If we did it differently: and used actual childhood development to create education -instead of the other way around- we’d all win.
Eg: schools teach curriculum to turn atypical development into typical – they start with the curriculum and then try to teach it to kids of all different abilities and developmental milestones. Whereas humans all learn at individual levels, rates, times and ways. We each learn things in our own ways and in our own time. If we aren’t ready for a concept, the concept cannot be learnt. But schools push concepts and learning on all children whether they are ready or not. It’s abnormal learning.
That’s like taking a child out of the womb way before they can breathe. Sure, they may live… if cared for and in NICU for a long term with lots of medical equipment and professional help.. but they would’ve developed naturally and been better off if you left them in till they were ready. And yes, sometimes emergency c-sections are vital for the survival of a baby and mother – but hospitals don’t just remove them and dismiss them – they know they won’t survive without making sure they have the tools and equipment they need to live. Or the other end – hospitals don’t leave babies in the womb way past the due date (eg: makes the child who is ahead of the class -wait til the rest of the class has caught up) – because that also harms mother and baby.
Schools take the stance of ‘take the baby out of the womb too early’ (teach them things before they are ready, or make them wait till everyone else has caught up – ‘leave them in the womb indefinitely’). They want only the babies who come out naturally at 9 months – with no problems or issues. But if they do have a few of the premmie or overcooked babies – those babies are the problem – not the system or the way they teach or that they’ve made the lesson before understanding that each child is at a different stage of development and learning…. But they blame the parents and the babies for being outliers – for being different, for being spikey in IQ and abilities – for not learning a lesson that has no basis on that individual child’s development stage or ability. Sure the 9 month ‘normie’ babies learnt the lesson, because it was aimed at them – but the rest you failed, because you fail everyone when you expect everyone to be perfect and ‘normal’.
And what is the response of school systems when you say this? It’s always things like: “the parents need to get them to learn these things before starting school”, or – “the child should be put in a ‘special’ school” (because we are never going to change our system – even though our system is the problem – not the children). Or: “there’s only so much we can do”.
Try to stop this mindset. There is something you can do – you can get the system to change – to put children into ability grouped classes not age grouped classes. Stop trying to control development – work with it, not against it.
The whole system works against how humans learn and develop – it’s nonsense… see it for what it is. Stop blaming people and things that have nothing to do with the outcome you see (eg: bad behaviour) – the behaviour is a natural consequence of the system being wrong wrong wrong. People behave badly when things harm them and they have no control. Give back the control – and you see the behaviour change and calm.
When a person has spikey development/ IQ/ abilities etc – they need to be taught at their development ability – not the classes preconceived notion of ‘normal’ ability or development. If you only teach to the normies – you will always be failing the majority of the class. And those who are failing will always reflect your failure back at you – through ‘bad’ behaviour.