Oh my...

I sat on one side of the room this morning, reading the news on my mobile, while Shmoo and the psychologist did a couple of cognitive assessments on the other side of the room. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He started off okay but then the questions got a little trickier and he had to think a bit more. Which was fine. He did. Until he realised that E would accept 'I don't know' for an answer and not push him too much to have a go like The OH and I would at home. So that became his answer for many of the questions, anything that he thought might be too hard for him. And then because he wasn't putting any effort in, his mind started to wander and he wasn't paying attention properly, wasn't listening properly to instructions. Instead of answering E's questions, a lot of the time Shmoo ended up just repeating them back to her. And there were so many questions that he knows the answer to but he still said 'I don't know'. Like the meaning of the word 'island'. Over the last couple of weeks Shmoo and I have had sooooo many conversations about homophones and the difference between 'island' and 'Ireland' is one that has come up frequently. He knows what an island is! We live on one FFS!

*Sigh* But what can you do? So I just smiled encouragingly at him when he looked over at me for reassurance; and, as usual, we'll keep encouraging him to try, to at least have a go, to tackle things one step at a time rather than freaking out because the problem looks too big.

E ended up splitting the assessments so we'll be finishing them off next week.