Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hi! And how do we get started?

Hi! I am so happy I found this forum! Such a great resource! I have twin girls going into 1st grade and an almost-3 year old girl. All of the kids are bright, but we have never had them tested.

One of the twins especially seems to exhibit a lot of the characteristics that a gifted child might in all of the online tests. The other one -- not so much, in terms of quirky behaviors, but she is a very fast learner.

The problem that we have is our district (although one of teh top in our state), doesn't have any gifted options, until kids get to middle school. We work with the kids a lot at home though, and I feel like the day for them is too busy with school-work, since we are essentially doing math and language arts at home on top of full day school. Our district does Singapore math, which is great, except my girls have been working on 2nd grade Singapore math at home.

So my question is, I'd like to (a) get them tested, to see if they are actually gifted, or if I tiger-parented them into being a grade or 2 levels aged, and (b) see what the school can do for them. For testing, where do I get started? The only test I found so far is SCAT, but the older girls are too young for it. As far as school, what can I do there?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Welcome!

1) For testing, you may wish to visit the list of testers and professionals on Hoagies' Gifted Education Page.

2) For school, a good place to start is knowing your state laws and your school or district policies. These can often be found online with a web search. Advocacy is the term used to negotiate for appropriate curriculum level and pacing. This post contains some resources for learning about advocacy.

I don't think it's possible to tiger-parent K-aged kids into doing 2nd grade math. There are cognitive development issues that can't be gotten around. It sounds to me like your kids are definitely gifted. (And the quirkiness thing is a bit of a red herring -- some gifted kids appear quite normal!)

Rather than testing to find out if they're gifted, I would save testing for if you need scores to convince the school to place them where they will get an appropriate challenge.

What makes you say that, MegMeg? My impression is that the international variation in expectations of children of this age is sufficiently large to rule that out.

Hi ErinP, do you know what types of testing your schools rely on to determine whether children qualify for gifted services? Are your DC old enough to do any of that testing? I would start with tests that are meaningful to your schools, because they are more likely to be helpful in your discussions with teachers and school personnel.

The lists of "gifted characteristics" are interesting, but I do feel that some of these lists start to almost try to describe one type of gifted child personality. Gifted children can present very differently from one another. The phrase I've seen thrown around here is true: If you've seen one gifted child, you've seen one gifted child. I have 2 DC that are proof of this - completely different personalities (extroverted/introverted; lively/compliant; etc.), but they tested within 1-3 points of each other in IQ.

I know there's variation, but: typical five-year-olds doing two- and three-digit addition and subtraction, with carrying and borrowing, and beginning to work on multiplication? I would be interested to hear if there are such expectations in some countries, and if so, how successfully they are met.