One of the many rituals of torturing the special ed kids is the comprehensive tests that administered every three years. Yes, in addition to the week-long standardized tests that are given to all kids every spring, special ed kids are routinely poked at by professionals to make sure that are dumb enough to qualify for services. 

Ian just finished a battery of tests. He had six days of IQ testing, speech testing, handwriting testing, and educational testing. These aren't multiply choice, bubble filling tests. It's intense grilling by professionals who get in his face and demand answers to questions for hours. 

For the most part, his scores showed us exactly what we knew already. He has higher than average spacial skills. He has poor verbal skills. He has bad handwriting. His teachers and I already knew this and talked about this in the two hour meeting that was necessary to arrange for the tests. We have another two hour meeting in a few weeks to discuss the findings of these tests. 

The tests themselves are ridiculous. Kids with a speech and language disability are given verbal instructions to solve wordy problems. That makes sense. 

The reports were sent to my house in a brown envelope last week. I quickly flipped through them. The report by the teacher who assessed his educational level was particularly annoying. 

She explained that she asked Ian to give his full name, address, telephone number, and family members. He did that. She then reported that she asked Ian, "Where do your parents work?" Ian reported that Steve worked at X bank at home, and I worked at the New York Sports Club. 

Now there's nothing wrong with working at a gym. A good friend of mine is a spin teacher at that club, but walking two miles on a tread mill while watching Kardashian reruns on VH1 isn't really my job. 

Her question was poorly worded for testing a child with autism. She asked WHERE do your parents work. Ian was focused on the location part of that question. But thinking about it, I think lots of kids would have problems answering that question. People don't often work at one place anymore. Steve's employment situation is a little complicated right now and can't be discussed on the blog, but let me just say that he works for different companies at different locations. 

And then how do you explain to a kid what you do? A big part of my job is watching the kids and attending stupid special education meetings. I guess if she asked Ian, "what is your mother's job," he would say that her job is being a mom and that would be partially accurate. But then there's everything else that I do when the kids are in school – the writing, the blogging, the looking for topics, and all that. I don't really talk about it with the kids, because it sounds so boring. 

Jobs are pretty complicated these days. It's hard to describe a job that doesn't fit in neatly into the teacher, fireman, librarian category. It's basically impossible to describe Steve's job to people outside of the Investment Banking world. 

Do you have a job that can be easily explained to children and elderly relatives?