-by Ketika Kasetwar, Jan 2026

I start this with a confession : If I had taken hundre rupees for every time a parent forwarded me an “assessment report” and asked, “So… now what?” I would probably have become a very rich person by now.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: most regular psychometric assessments in India are spectacularly bad at supporting parents of 2E and 3E children.
Not slightly flawed. Not needs improvement.
Just… fundamentally mismatched to the child they are trying to describe.

And no, this isn’t because parents are “overthinking” or “expecting too much”. It’s because these systems were never built for them. Starting from many who conduct the assessments are not even aware of these terms.

Who are 2E and 3E children, really?

A child having twice-exceptionality (2E) is gifted and also has a learning difficulty or disorder – ADHD, dyslexia, ASD, anxiety, sensory processing challenges, or something else entirely. A child with thrice-exceptionality (3E) has giftedness plus two additional exceptionalities.

The myth of “this report shows the whole child”

Children with 2E or 3E are simultaneously thriving and struggling, often within the same hour. Now imagine trying to capture that lived reality in a short time frame, of at most a couple of hours, using grades, ticks, and remarks like “needs to focus more” that do not take into context whether the child is comfortable in the environment in which the assessment is being conducted. As a guide to many families with children having 2E and 3E, I closely know the effect of an uncomfortable environment on their child’s behaviour and interactions with a complete stranger who is asking just too many questions!!! Unfortunately, no assessment takes into account a time that needs to be spent with a child to first create a conducive environment, which is required to get the most appropriate results.

I know a child who half-way through a WISC assessment, just started giving vague and funny answers, as the questions being asked were very vague. For instance, when asked which liquid is ‘taste-less’, the child asked if the question is about a generic answer according to textbooks or in their own opinion. The reply from assessor was – In your opinion. The child answered – ‘Milk’. It is a tasteless liquid for the child in their opinion. When asked don’t they find water tasteless, the child reply that a glass of pure water from a natural spring high up in the mountains tastes very different from a glass of water taken from an RO purifier in a region where there is a lot of hard water provided by the municipal corporations.

This is how a 2E or 3E brain works. The child was talking from their experience of having lived in both such regions, which the test system does not have the flexibility to incorporate. Even then, the assessor should have spent a little more time to build a more friendly atmosphere. And not respond with a condescending nod, that the child picked up and deliberately messed up the assessment just to get it done with.

The result – a report that does not reflect the child, when compared with other tests!!!

Boxes work for systems, not for children

Regular assessments are norm-referenced. They compare a child to an imaginary “average child” who learns linearly, performs consistently, writes neatly under time pressure, and behaves predictably in groups. No 2E or 3E child was given that memo before the assessment. What happens instead is masking. Giftedness compensates for difficulty and the report says “average.” Difficulty overshadows giftedness and the report says “below expectations.” Sometimes both cancel each other out and the child is labelled inconsistent, confusing, or unmotivated. Parents walk away with reports that say everything, and explain nothing.

Most assessment systems rely on either- or thinking. Either the child is bright or struggling. Either capable or delayed. Either motivated or lazy. But 2E and 3E children live in messy both-and spaces. They can discuss abstract ideas and forget homework. They can read far ahead of grade level and struggle to write a paragraph. They can solve complex problems and completely fall apart during transitions. Regular assessments don’t know what to do with contradictions, so they flatten them.

The Indian context makes everything heavier

In India, this problem is magnified because many educators and assessors have never been trained to even recognise twice- or thrice-exceptionality. Behaviours get labelled as attitude issues. Emotional overwhelm is dismissed as indiscipline. Asynchronous development becomes immaturity. Sensory overload is called overreaction. Somewhere along the way, parents are subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, made to feel that their family dynamics is the problem.

Deficit-heavy reports, strength-blind narratives

Read most assessment reports closely and a pattern appears. Long lists of weaknesses. Clinical language. Alarming labels. Very little about strengths. And not to mention the repeated copy-pasted text that lists the ‘recommendations’. For 2E and 3E children, this is deeply damaging. Strengths are not decorative extras. They are the engine through which learning, regulation, confidence, and resilience develop.

When reports ignore strengths, parents are left with remediation without meaning, interventions without engagement, and labels without hope. Children, meanwhile, internalise a dangerous message: something is wrong with me.

What reports miss but parents live every day

Assessments capture a snapshot. Parents live the entire movie. They see how learning flows at home but shuts down in school. They see curiosity explode outside textbooks. They see anxiety hiding behind humour and exhaustion hiding behind brilliance. Most reports don’t ask parents enough questions. They don’t listen long enough. They don’t sit comfortably with contradictions.

So families are handed documents that do not resemble the child they know.

Data without direction helps no one

Even when assessments identify concerns, parents are often left asking practical questions that reports don’t answer. What does this actually mean for learning? What do we do tomorrow morning? How do we support without breaking the child? Scores don’t guide daily decisions. Charts don’t reduce anxiety. Generic recommendations rarely work for complex children. Parents need contextual, realistic, strength-aware guidance, not just conclusions at the end of a report.

When reports quietly erode parental confidence

This is the damage few people talk about. When assessments repeatedly fail to reflect a child accurately, parents start doubting themselves. Am I imagining this? Am I being biased? Why does no one else see what I see? Over time, parents don’t just lose trust in the system — they start losing trust in their own instincts.

And that is a quiet, painful loss.

What parents of 2E and 3E children actually need

Parents don’t need more assessments. They need better ones. Evaluations that look at the whole child rather than isolated skills. Reports that honour strengths alongside challenges. Frameworks that understand asynchronous development instead of punishing it. Processes that involve parents as partners, not spectators.

Most of all, parents need reports that say, clearly and respectfully: your child makes sense.

A gentle truth to end with

If a report leaves a parent feeling more confused than clear, more anxious than empowered, and more worried about compliance than connection, the problem is not the child. And it is not the parenting. It is a system trying to measure complexity with blunt tools. Parents of 2E and 3E children are not failing the system. The system is failing them.

The change in system will come along, when parents start trusting their gut instinct and insist on getting an assessment conducted in the right spirit, with empathetically trained administrators and with the right intention to ‘assess’ the child in the relevant contexts and environment.