Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Problems with preschool

My highly verbal and smart 3.8 yo daughter had some issues in part-time preschool. I think it is a quality preschool program but maybe not a good fit. Mostly issues with being overly sensitive about other children not following rules, other children saying mean things, too much noise, not wanting to play with peers in centers. She plays well with older children and some girls her agee. She has a high level of empathy for her age and is very sensitive. Her pediatrician noticed she was very advanced for her age. We decided to get her tested to see if it would help us determine how to better meet her needs.

I have attached a picture of her test scores. Any insight you can share would be appreciated. Would she be considered to be gifted with these scores? Are her scores advanced enough to cause these difficulties in preschool? Since she is only 3.8 could we expect her to receive similar scores if retested in a couple of years? I'm wondering how stable scores are at this age. Also, any suggestions on the type of preschool and kinder would meet her needs? Scores listed below

WPPSI IV
Verbal Comprehension Index 135
Visual-Spatial Index 115
Working memory Index 124
Full-Scale IQ 140

Welcome!

These are strong scores, especially in language. I'm guessing there are some comparably strong subtest scores outside of language, to generate a FSIQ that's a bit higher than you might expect from the other index scores.

In answer to your specific questions: yes, these would be consistent with intellectual giftedness. High cognition alone is not sufficient to cause difficulties in preschool, but it would certainly be unsurprising if they were a significant contributor. Scores at this age are not considered to be stable over a lifetime--but they do tell you something about what her intellectual/academic needs are at this time. And though they may change in a few years, either up or down, they are unlikely to plummet to the average range.

The question of appropriate placement is more complex, and depends on many factors beyond her IQ, especially as preschool and kindergarten are not principally about academics.

Fireweed25 - preschool is a tough age to tease out the reason for issues as there's a lot going on and children often aren't able to express what's at the root of an issue. You mentioned sensitivity to too much noise. One of our children was extremely sensitive to noise when she was young - we had no idea at the time but it was related to vision challenges (she had 20/20 eyesight, but her eyes didn't track together at all, so when she used her eyes she either had double vision or the vision in one eye shut off completely leaving her with extremely limited peripheral vision). I noticed that the Visual-Spatial Index on your dd's WISC is a relatively low score - you might want to look at the subtests, review what specific skill sets each requires, and see if there's a pattern that's discernible such as lower scores on subtests requiring visual skills.

Another thing to think through - is she having the same kind of challenges at home and in other places that she's having in preschool? If not, it's possible that the preschool simply isn't a good fit regardless of her intellectual abilities. She might rather be in a school that is more play-based, has a different philosophy or schedule, or quite possibly has a different personality type of adults who spend time with the children. Hope that makes sense!

Best wishes,

polarbear

We "hit the wall" in a high quality pre-school when DS was about the same age. He was acting out, not making friends etc. We were able accelerate him to the 4s class as a short term workaround but ended up moving full time to a gifted private school a few months later which pretty much fixed everything.