Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Really need some advice, Kindergartener

I'm going to try to make this concise but as parents i'm sure you know how difficult it can be sometimes to sum your child up. My son started reading when he was two, I just realized one day he could read. it was not small cat, dog, cup stuff but really reading. not just that but he had basically learned all of the kindergarten intake info, shapes, colors, numbers, value etc. more time went on and he continued to absorb info like a sponge he taught himself to count in Japanese to 100 after recognizing that there numerical system follows a pattern. he went on to learn how to read numbers in several languages including Kanji.

he also has some uneven development however. on the flip side of all of this is some social and emotional immaturities and he hasn't been very interested in conversational language and is somewhat behind in that area. we had him test last year for admittance to kindergarten at school near our home for gifted kids. he was not accepted. i don't understand why he's able to do the things he can do if he isn't gifted?

Over the winter his hand writing sort of showed up one day, he was able to write numbers and letters before but his hand writing became more neat and had a better relationship in size to a piece of paper. from that came an explosion in math. today (kindergarten year) we get all of our working material from 5th and 6th grade math sources.

so, his school puts him at "at least" a 2nd grade reading level but his pre-school teacher tells me it might be higher because he reads to learn. His math is on par with probably a 5th grader even though we do some work that is considered 6th. now what? what do i do for 1st grade? we already had him test at the charter school for gifted kids thats near us and they said according to his test last year, he's not gifted. we contacted a school about an hour from us to see what they would possibly have to offer a kid like him but they immediately said - step on is IQ test. uh? it didn't do so well with testing last time, can't they just watch him do some stuff and see for himself that he's well advanced? i think art of the problem is the conversational speech. as skilled as he is in his areas he's not a verbal acrobat and they keep wanted to test him verbally. by next year i don't know where he'll be in Mathematics and language arts but i know he won't be anywhere near 1st grade - on the other hand he's much more comfortable socially and emotionally with that younger group and i don't think bumping him up a grade is the answer. he needs both, he needs to be young AND he need appropriate academics. what do i do next???

If you can afford it, you need an IQ test by a psych who will take time to get to know your kid and make him comfortable. I was lucky that the person I was referred to saw right away that my son is very shy and uncomfortable with strangers, so she decided she had to get to know him and do all the testing herself. She usually has grad students do some of the testing, but he wouldn't have done nearly as well with a stranger each time.

so, although the testing last year says he is not gifted - he should still be tested again? i keep thinking why is he able to do all of this if he isn't gifted. Id read elsewhere that some kids "even out" as they get older so at the time i thought maybe thats what this was and thats why the test said he's to gifted - but if anything its going in the opposite direction.

Hi Londage,

I agree with Marcy. I think you may need to get a psycho educational evaluation. We are just starting the process of getting one done and are currently filling out forms detailing our child's background/interests, strengths and weaknesses. The assessment covers many areas (there are other members on the board who are more familiar with the ins and outs of the tests) but the evaluation will identify your son's strengths and weaknesses and provide insight into where he's at with conversational language. They will provide you with a report when the evaluation is complete. I'm not an expert in the area of IQ tests but where we live, in Canada, we have to have the psychoeducational eval to move forward in the gifted program at our public school board.

A lot of people recommend looking on the Hoagies website for help finding a psychologist that specializes in gifted kids. You might want to start with that site for more info.

From your descriptions your son does sound extremely bright. Do you know what kind of test the charter school administered? What type of score/result they were looking for? Did they offer you any feedback?

"He needs to be young and he needs appropriate academics." I get this sentence. My daughter is the same. She's 6 and reading at a grade 5 level and doing math well beyond her grade one class but likes to play house and pretend to be a dog.

Good luck!

I didn't even know there was more than one kind of test. all i know from the school was that the first day he went in, he was with a group. it was supposed to be a two hour thing and they brought him back out 5 minutes later because he refused to test with the group. we brought him back for a one on one with a grad student and that lasted longer, he was with her for about 45 minutes and then we got a letter in the mail that said basically test one, didn't test, test two didn't qualify. all i remember is that two of the three parts were to do with speech and language and those just aren't his areas especially with someone he's never met before. i knew from the start this style of testing (esp. the part with the group) was a nonstarter. i tried to tell the school that but they just said - this is what we do. after we got the results i thought, uh so he's not gifted? i was confused and thought that that was the final word on it until the math started. we just registered him for kindergarten and thought ok well if he's not gifted he'll probably just be one of those that evens out. Now were right back where we were last year of scratching our heads and not really understanding whats happening. i saw on some other post that the psychiatrist testing is like $500 =\ thats a lot of money for us. i want to do it if he needs it but i don't understand why the school thats for gifted kids would say he's not gifted if he actually might be. should i call them? it was last year but maybe they could at least explain whats going on with him if its not a giftedness.

It is possible that he is "twice exceptional" and there is a disabiltiy that is depressing his IQ scores in certain areas. DS was tested at age 3 and then at age 6 (not for giftedness, but because of other concerns). He wasn't exactly cooperative at age 3 but his IQ was in the average range. At that time, his language was somewhat delayed. He could whip together a puzzle, easily, but was not doing much in terms of conversations. I think his verbal IQ was in the low average range and non-verbal was above average (so it averaged out to average). Fast forward 3 years and he was tested again. His scores had shifted way up and his IQ was around 130. At around age 4-5 he made a lot of gains with speech, and that was reflected in the higher scores. DS has developmental coordination disorder/developmental dyspraxia which caused the delays with his speech. Your DS could have something similar going on. Autism Spectrum Disorder also can cause problems with conversational speech. I think it would be a good idea to take him to a neuropsychologist and find out areas of strengths and weakness, and whether there is a disability involved, or simply a delay. We had testing done at a major university with both kids.

Do you have a copy of the test results from the charter school? If not, I'd get a copy of that if at all possible, to include with your records. Even though he didn't test as gifted, the reason you want a copy is to know what specific test was administered, and how he scored. There can be many nuances to testing - most schools don't actually administer IQ tests for admissions, but instead either a type of test which is categorized as "learned ability" or an achievement test. IQ tests are referred to as "innate ability" tests - they assess skills/abilities you are essentially "born with", whereas "learned ability" tests depend to a certain extent on the environment a student has been in and learning they've been exposed to. One example of a "learned ability" test is the CogAT (I doubt that's the test your ds had for kindergarten admissions, but just using it here as an example). One of the questions my ds was asked on the CogAT referred to determining what a metric measure was based on a different metric measure. At the time he took the test, ds hadn't learned anything at all about metric measurement. He made a very intelligent guess about what the answer was using logic and reason, but it was the wrong answer. A less "higher ability" kid might not have had the ability to use logic and reasoning in the same way, and might have guessed at the answer and gotten it correct. Again, this is just one example question on one example test, but the idea in general is, an innate ability test should, in theory, give you the better estimate of your child's true intellectual ability.

The other thing to think through - you've mentioned your ds isn't very interested in conversational language. When a child is "interviewed" for school admissions (granted, young children aren't directly interviewed, but if there was a situation where he was in the room with a person from the school etc)... some people will make inferences from conversation re whether or not a child is gifted. Not talking or talking too much or talking too deep or talking about fluff - none of that is really a reliable indicator of true giftedness (outside of conversations that reveal depth of thought). All children are different and children also behave differently in different situations. So - it's perhaps possible that there was an element of the previous school assuming your ds wasn't gifted based on conversation with him.

The third thing you need to do is gather evidence of the work he's capable of doing - math problems, lists of what he's reading, whatever you can briefly use to show someone else his current academic levels.

If you haven't already done so, I'd research all the options available for education in your area - and that includes schools that aren't necessarily labelled "gifted". Oftentimes the best solution is a school that is willing to work with you and your ds, irrespective of whether or not the school is public/private/charter and whether or not it is specifically set up as a school for gifted students.

Last thing, I'll second/third the recommendations for IQ testing. You might be able to get the testing through your public school - but again, I'd check first to be sure what type of test they administer. If you can't get a full IQ test through the school district, then I'd seek one out privately. If you have to go private for an eval, find out what types of tests your school district and/or other schools you are interested in will accept for admissions to gifted programming.

And get ready to advocate. Chances are you'll be doing a bit of that, particularly in the early elementary years. One thing that kept me going a long time ago was running into a young person working at the kids' area in the health club I was working out at. When I went in to pick up my children I had a book about gifted kids in my hand, and she asked me why I was reading it. I mentioned something to her, and she responded to keep on advocating and stand up for my kids at school - she said she'd been a gifted kid herself and that the school she was in was not providing what she needed, but her mom fought fought fought for her to get an appropriate education - and that not only helped get her what she needed at school, it also gave her a tremendous respect for her mom seeing her advocate for her to other adults who were in a position of power. It can be tough in the trenches, but definitely worth hanging in there!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I'm sorry, whats a DS?

i didn't think so, (about the twice exceptional part). the thing is he's been a bit behind in language since he was little but he was always developing and when i ask his doctor about it when he was really little (like 2) his doctor said he has a lot of vocabulary it's just that most of it doesn't contribute to a conversation. like he knew a million identifiers - its hard to have a conversation with only identifiers. his doctor at the time said kids don't get points for these words but not those words, as long as he's talking and continuing to develop that there wasn't anything to worry about. then all the crazy smart stuff came up - the reading and what not and we thought OH yea, no there isn't anything to worry about cuz look he's cocoo smart. PLUS he has two older cousins who both lagged in the same way (speech) and by like 2nd - 3rd grade everything evened out. one of them was even miss diagnosed as an autistic and by 3rd they said oh no whoopsie he's not autism he just needed a minute. Both of those cousins are super smart kids, probably somewhat gifted. this 2E thing is new to me, i only just heard of it for the first time about 6 months ago. honestly i feel like i'm a little lost with all this. i'm reading all these posts on here and it seems like everyone is so well educated in this and i'm wondering if there are things i was supposed to have been doing all this time that i didn't even know about. he's practically had to hand walk me thru all of this - everything he's learned he pushes for, i feel like i'm constantly holding him back because i think oh you can't do this you're too little and then he figures it out and is doing it on hi own.

i do not have the test results and no i have no clue what kind of test it was =\ didn't even know there were different kinds. i know the first day he went it was in a group and he flatly refused to test and the second day was one on one with a grad student that lasted about 45 mins - thats all i know. i did speak to them prior to, to tell them i didn't think group testing was the best situation for seeing our son (basically at all but) at his best. ill call them but it was last November so i don't know if they keep test information regarding a child who didn't qualify. this is all very confusing right now. we knew he was smart when he was little but they Math that has come out of him in the last 8 months has been astonishing and now i feel like i'm way behind the 8 ball. i just didn't know A. how much he was going to need a truly specialized program and B. that it was this hard to do.

i'm a little nervous about the IQ test, i don't really know what that involves. i guess that'll be my step one, research IQ administrators in the area and what the difference is in the different tests. if i see a test that i think fits him best, can I request that test be given to him?

ill call the charter school too, thank you for responding - its such a relief to have some people who've been there to talk to. BTW whats DS?

If you are in Colorado, you might consider contacting the Gifted Development Center near Denver.

PG Retreat is another organization that may have resources near you.