Your dreams for sophie are bigger than that room, and the opinions of the day, and I know that the dreams always come first.

For what it’s worth, (and it probaby isn’t much), I had a school psychologist make an unsettling remark about me in the 6th grade. I, in turn, made it my life’s mission to prove her wrong…which I did. I would venture a guess Sophie might just do the same thing! Certainly a different situation, but your post brought back those memories and I felt I could identify with little Sophie a bit.

You know how much my family loves Sophie and all of you. You and Ray surround her with amazing experiences and talented people. Sophie has just the right parents for her, and just the right big sister- – sweet Annabelle.

The thing that stands out in my mind this morning is that you have an awesome community that is behind you all the way. We are cheering for Sophie and her family.

This is not the first time in history that a number doesn’t represent the whole story. In your line of work, you know that most stories in the newspaper are only a “slice” of the big picture. As far as the psychologist’s limited “slice” goes, Sophie defies that number.

Sophie is a beautiful, complex human being whose story is still being told. I for one can’t wait to read the next exciting chapter of Sophie’s life—more sleepovers, trips to see new places, and new educational experiences and milestones.

Love to you, Rachel

If Sophie in real life is HALF as kick-ass as you present her on this blog — hell, if she’s a quarter — then she. is. amazing. period. (I know there’s a period there already, but I’m feeling especially emphatic at the moment).

I was telling my wife (also Amy) about this post, and she both started to cry and just got mad for you, for Sophie, for all the families like ours who have to listen to strangers put a bullshit number value on our kids and then get to go on with the rest of their day, probably not even thinking about how they just destroyed — however momentarily — your image of your own kid. It’s stories like these, combined with our own experiences, that make us think about just taking Archer out of the system completely, because who needs that crap?

Archer’s often non-responsive with new people, and I dread the day he has to take some sort of standardized test and/or be “evaluated” by someone he’s never met.

*Also, I have to say, from what you write about Sophie’s actions during the test, it sounds like she more or less intentionally bombed it. I swear sometimes my kid knows when he’s supposed to do the song and dance and intentionally refuses…and why shouldn’t he? The whole “testing” process is just a game — one that only really has significance to the tester and maybe the testee, if the testee is at all attached to the results, and maybe Sophie refused to play that day — why would she possibly care about the results some strange lady put down on a piece of paper?

It’s late and I’m feeling incoherent, so I better stop, but I guess the point is I feel your pain. And I hope you don’t let it get you too down for too long.

Three-year-olds can’t even push most adults’ buttons as well as it sounds like Sophie pushed this psychologist.

As someone who is actually uncannily good at standardized tests, yet truly not-so-good at dealing with lots of human situations, I’ll add my opinion to the many here who have written that standardized tests measure very little. Especially IQ tests.

The good news is that this low number might help you get Sophie more services. Instead of limiting her, it might help her — especially because you’re not going to let this single number define her.