This is not a blog meant to help anyone do better on IQ tests. This blog is only to help you understand IQ tests (and similar tests) and what it means when you, your child or someone else takes one. There is also no separating IQ tests from Special Education, so I'll be writing a lot about that as well.
There are two main reasons for me to take the time to write this. The first is to make my life easier as a school psychologist. Most people don't know what school psychologists do, but one of our most important functions is being on the team that determines a child's eligibility for Special Education. We are the ones who administer IQ tests professionally, and the ones who train for years to know what they are and what they mean. I am fortunate to work in a situation where I have the time to sit down with parents and students and explore their worries and explain what I have found. In some places, the School Psychologists are so over-worked that they have to send their reports off and hope that the parents and teacher who read them will understand them. I'm hoping that this can serve as a little bit of a "greatest hits" of the questions I usually have to answer for teachers and parents. I'd like to think maybe if you google a question you have about something I or my colleagues do, then I'll come up and we can save some time.
This brings me to the second reason I wrote this; everything out there that you can google about IQ, about IQ tests or about how your brain and environment interact to make you act smart, tends to be terrible. As I write this, I have a "Cracked.com" window open and an ad at the bottom is offering me a "Free IQ" test. A google search for "child has a higher IQ than Einstein" returns 1,390,000 results, so I guess Einstein was not all that special. If you want to raise your IQ, then no problem! "Raise your IQ with nutrition" returns 22,000,000 results. Clearly there's nothing to it (please don't give your money to anyone who says they can raise your IQ, and it'll be easy).
I haven't seen very many neutral sources of information on IQ and testing, so here's my attempt at one. If a reader or child of a reader has had an IQ test, then I don't know how they did or what challenges they are now facing, so nothing here is a substitute for direct help from a professional. I'm also not going to follow this blog up with a "raise your IQ 20 points!" diet or video or computer game, but to not write anything, is to throw up my hands and give up the internet for the people who use fake information to sell fake products and services.