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Subject: Request for appointment

Date: October 15, 2040

To: Dr. Anna Tessier (redacted)

From: Zoe Barsalona (redacted)

Hi Anna,

I'm Zoe. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I hope you can help my child. My child is acting out in school, while at the same time, exhibits "all-or-nothing" behaviors around learning that causes my child anxiety.

I work 9-5 from Monday through Friday. Do you have any spots open after 6pm this upcoming week? In addition, what are your prices, and is there a block discount for 10 or more sessions?

If you cannot see me and my child, can you please refer me to other therapists who are familiar with the situation my child is facing right now?

P.S.: My child kept pestering me about a story my child wrote. The link is in an attachment.

Thank you,

Zoe

Attachment: Blurb of my child's story

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Anna starts reading her inbox and, without being given more details about the child in the request for an appointment, namely, their age, she would not be able to tell what's age-appropriate for the child whose mother just wrote to her. That mother feels a little uncomfortable giving away too much information about her child. I can understand why, but the client's age will be asked at the intake stage, Anna thinks while she opens the attachment after the email software has determined the attachment is safe. These symptoms are common in kids in middle and high school, giftedness or not. However, if new details emerge that could cause me to suspect that kid is gifted, one way or another... I hope both Zoe and her child, Samantha, are comfortable with an evaluation late at night since it's all I have for this upcoming week.

Anna then proceeds to answer to Samantha's request for an appointment. Her answer is laden with questions about the child, such as the age of the client, whether the would-be client, Samantha, has suspicions of giftedness, contact information of educators working with the child, and local policies in place for giftedness testing. With the caveats of confidentiality.

However, Anna's job as a youth psychologist takes place in the evening, simply because of the realities of the clients. So she can start reading Samantha's story. In the opening minutes of reading that client's story, in her apartment in Maryland (and more specifically somewhere between Baltimore and DC) she rents with someone else...

"As much as I would like to believe that the child could be advanced for their age, there are obvious signs betraying the child's age" Anna thinks out loud, before she looks at the sidebar of other recommendations based on what she just began reading.

So that child landed me on Wattpad, a platform for indie literature. There must be millions of stories to choose from. I can always read another one, Anna realizes quickly, upon reading blurbs, that, while there might be millions of stories on the platform, there are a handful of dominant story types. Fanfictions are abundant, but for original stories...

What the hell am I reading here? All I knew about indie literature until now was that it covered some themes unsuitable for commercial literature, and that's what indie literature gems are made of, Anna struggles with the temptation of screaming after clicking on one of the recommendations.

Bad boy this, good girl that, werewolves elsewhere, orbs for eyes used everywhere, love triangles too! And... while so many of these books tended to portray boys as sex-obsessed, and certainly a bad boy or two, it's not even sex that bothers me most. After all, teenagers being sexually active are a common occurrence these days. Or even when these writers acknowledged there still was stuff to learn, they mostly used it as a means of getting the bad boy and the good girl together. At least Samantha had a good boy rather than a good girl, and the mean girl was not a plastic kind of beauty, Anna's train of thoughts begins to pick up speed.

The cold, hard truth hits her like a train when she starts making mental side-by-side comparisons between each of these books she just read. Starting with the mean girl: Samantha's mean girl is genuinely overweight, has no popularity at all (presumably because of bullying people into letting her copy homework) even though the writer has mostly reversed gender roles in the much-maligned bad boy x good girl plot. And... dialogue! That was the factor that, to Anna, betrayed the would-be client's age bracket.

There might be things I can forgive someone as young as Samantha, whose mother led me to even check out Wattpad in the first place, but I know some of these writers on the platform are much older than my clients, Anna sighs, now that she has a clearer picture of the bad writing she saw on Wattpad. I would never have dated a bad boy of the kind I kept reading about!

When not at work, she keeps reading what resources she could find on writing and storytelling online in an attempt to make more sense of what she kept reading. This catches up to her on Friday afternoon, when her roommate, Yulia, catches her reading one of these stories that she believed had plot holes.

"What's going on, Anna? You seem a little down..." Anna's roommate asks her.

"As much as I would have accepted a lack of academic ambitions on the characters' part, they should be failing by now... there's no mention of them even attending classes at all!" Anna's face turns red as she answers Yulia's question.

"What are you talking about?" Yulia asks her, rolling her eyes for lack of context.

"It's about a book I am reading"

The worst in all that is that it really doesn't take that much to fix the plot hole, Anna reflects on this reading. Just a well-placed line or two about either studying-induced fatigue or studying in the bus.

"Oh, ok" a confused Yulia shrugs before Anna, discouraged by what she has been reading, stops reading the current story.

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And then comes the therapy session with Samantha and her mother accompanying her. Oh God, the sheer amount of questions Anna asks for the two cover a lot of ground. After all, it is the intake stage. But when all things seem to point to Samantha acting up in class because she feels more than a little bored:

"Samantha, do you feel bored in class more often in a particular subject area or you're bored in most subjects?" Anna asks her after turning to focus on the fourth-grader.

That question gives Samantha pause for some reason. Especially when the wording might cause her some concerns.

"What subjects are part of what you call most subjects?" Samantha asks back, a little confused.

"Sorry if I wasn't clear. Language arts, social studies, math, science being the main subjects susceptible to bore kids in your situation" Anna answers Samantha, before the child makes her think of her fourth-grader self.

Oh boy. I myself needed very few repetitions to get the material right back then, just like the client right in front of me, and my cohort was intellectually dominated by the same 4 girls year after year, Anna gets a flashback from her time in elementary school. She also has a question or two primed about the areas of interest of the client, to identify appropriate interventions.

"Language arts and social studies" Samantha answers after a few seconds, now that Anna made herself clearer about what subjects were covered by her earlier question.

"I already have a feel for your writing, but it's a very informal picture at best. You're a very good writer for your age"

"What do you mean, it's an informal picture?" Zoe asks the therapist.

Anna then turns to the mother. "I'm not going to lie. I didn't administer anything yet, so the best idea I had until now was what your daughter wrote in the attachment you sent me. However, this is only one possible area: I suspect she's using creative writing as a way to stretch her mind in ways schoolwork doesn't"

Even though the child's school district considers CogAT (Cognitive Abilities Test) scores to be valid for 3 years, I wonder if I should administer it to her at an above-grade level or at-grade. Probably above-grade. However, a CogAT administration is easily two hours long. My own childhood region had no opportunity for giftedness screening, at least when I was in elementary school, and so I was not identified as gifted. Yet I recognized my past self in a few of the signs of giftedness, Anna ponders what's appropriate for Samantha, while also being reminded of the CogAT being an intelligence test, with all the limitations it carries. Achievement must also be tested for.

"I love writing! This year, I am going to enter the National Novel Writing Month!" an overly-excited Samantha shouts.

"What exactly is the National Novel Writing Month my daughter is talking about?" Zoe asks both her daughter and the therapist.

"The National Novel Writing Month is about writing a fifty-thousand-word novel in a month" Samantha explains to both.

"That's very ambitious for a girl Samantha's age. There's strong reason to suspect that your daughter could be gifted but there's insufficient evidence to draw that conclusion" Anna them writes down what evidence she does have on the client file.

"What else would be necessary then?" Zoe asks Anna, a little uneasy.

"It would take a battery of psychometric tests, first the CogAT, which is the test your local school district uses for gifted education screening, and then the SCAT, or School and College Ability Test, which is widely used in enrichment programs for the gifted. The second test can be taken at home online but please, don't take it for your daughter" Anna explains what's in store for Sam, before handing over a tablet with forms to fill out to agree to, and coordinate, information sharing with the school district.

"Anna, what are these tests for?" Samantha asks her therapist, a little confused.

"These tests are there to determine which services are best for you" Anna then turns to the client's mother. "I have my concerns about administering the SCAT at home"

"What concerns?" Zoe asks her, while not knowing about that aspect of psychometrics.

"Test security. However, please be warned that, first, the CogAT must be booked two to three weeks in advance and represents a three-hour commitment, and administration fees will be charged for any additional test required" Anna then collects the tablet back and opens the price list for test administration.

Around here, it's not unheard of for parents to take home-administered psychometric tests in the children's stead, and therefore make the results unreliable. I think I am doing Zoe a favor by telling her about test security, Anna gets a flashback from a past client from her graduate school days at Columbia who did just that.

"You said there was a chance for my daughter to be gifted, I trust you know what tests are needed to confirm whether that's the case. I will only pay for what's absolutely necessary and no more!"

"SCAT and CogAT it is then... together this means blocking off half an evening to get both done" Anna then turns to Samantha. "If you want to accomplish what you want out of NaNoWriMo, I strongly suggest that you find writing buddies. That said, there is something I forgot to tell you and your mom"

Anna then proceeds to talk about how Samantha's mind appears to develop faster than her body. If Sam wants me to be one of her writing buddies, so be it. And then I may as well be entering it, too! I won't mince words, writing a 50,000-word novel in a month is daunting even for me, and I will need writing buddies of my own, too, this flash of an idea makes her tell something extra.

"Please, I believe it would be beneficial to allow your daughter to engage in some activities in her areas of interest with older people: she will feel better understood for who she is as a person while performing these activities" Anna then suggests to Zoe. "For the SCAT, I'd say that you might be better off trying to book an appointment directly at a testing center rather than to do so with me, since my schedule is busy for the next two weeks or so. Speaking of the next stage of testing..."

The three gets together and attempt to determine when Samantha can finalize the testing Anna deems necessary to decide whether Samantha is, well, gifted. Which is, well, several weeks from now.