Hello,

Our son is in pre-K in a bilingual French-American school in the Bay Area. A couple of days ago, we had a parent-teacher conference during which his teacher strongly suggested we have our 4.10 year old tested for his unusual development.
We knew he was advanced but we only have one child and have no way to truly compare. After all we all feel our kids are the brightest, right?
On one hand he displays advanced skills for his age: he reads almost fluently in English, reads the time like any adult (was told that's a measure of development?), he understands a lot of French and reads a pretty good number of Chinese characters (he goes to an after school Montessori Chinese school. On the other hand, he is emotionally unsettled and cries easily at the least frustration and is pretty headstrong although he is generally a very well adapted kid who enjoys the company of others and participates eagerly in class. He also is spontaneously drawn to older kids (7-8 years old) and seems to look at younger kids (his age or younger) like oddities.
Anyway, the question put to me is, does he go to Kindergarten or skips to 1st grade? Do we hold back his intellectual development until his emotional development catches up to his age? or is his emotional state tied to his intellectual advancement and we should instead nurture the latter?
I'm not too comfortable about branding my son a "gifted child". I don't even know if he is particularly gifted but I do want to better understand what we are dealing with so I can be better prepared to help him grow. Who should I meet with first? a pediatrician? a psychologist? another specialist? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A concerned dad

Hi vicbee.

Welcome to the board and it sounds like you found the right place. Everything you described are characteristics of the gifted. Gifted children tend to develop in asynchronous development. http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=1211 might be a good place to start researching it.

Not knowing your child and just going off of the understanding of asynchronous development; I would argue the point of not holding him back. But my daughter is 4.5 and I don't feel comfortable advising you on this. I'm sure someone who has been through it all will be more valuable with their opinion. I will say that my child still has some socialization issues but I expect this and know it is part of her uneven development. She is doing better with her agemates but even this weekend when given the chance to be with a kid that was her age she chose to play with the older sister who is in 1st grade. My DD goes to a Spanish Immersion program which is academically 2 years ahead of public schools, which still isn't enough for her but we have had the buffer of learning Spanish. The buffer is no longer there and we are concerned she isn't challenged anymore. Her school will accelerate her if we need to and when the time comes I really don't think I would hesitate because I know she is happier with older kids. If you put yourself in their shoes it can be daunting to be in an environment where the others just don't get them.

Where to start? I would look into getting him tested for IQ level and there are specialist that deal with the gifted population. http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/psychologists.htm is a link to some professionals who work with gifted kids. Why test? It gives you a better picture of what you are dealing with. Is your child moderately gifted to highly gifted? These kids are more in line with some subject accelerations but if you child is in the higher range of exceptionally or profoundly gifted then you are talking about the need for even more. Best to see what you are dealing with.

I hope that helps and I'm sure others will be commenting.

Welcome Concerned Dad VicB - How did you find us? Anyway we are glad you are here!

I think testing is a very good idea - here's the bottom line for testing a 4.10 year old:
At age 6 the WISC IV becomes an option,which is the most common useable test for a gifted, possibly gifted+ kid.
SB-5 is an option right now if you can find someone to do it for you.

I think testing is a great idea if you don't end up paying out of pocket for a WPPSI-III. It's fine if the school wants to do one, but I would rather wait than pay for one - the ceilings are just too low for an advanced 4.10 year old. Public schools will sometime do testing 'for free' if you can get the preschool teacher to call a friend in the public school and explain that he needs it.

Get a copy of the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual and study it. 'Early Entrance' is a beautiful thing for an academically advanced child who gravitates towards older children. Being with the older kids tends to help him get enough 'healthy frustration' that he has an opportunity to become more skilled at facing it. Waiting for the rest of the kindy kids to catch up just exposes him to the unhealthy kind of frustration that convinces him that he is an out of control kid. What's the difference? With healthy frustration one is facing a task that can be overcome. With unhealthy frustration, one is facing a situation that is just wrong for them and can not be solved. ((Remember the rats in the maze and the electroshock? OK now I am definitely getting carried away!))

I totally get that you don't want a label stuck on your kid. Given what you say about him in the post, I think that there is a very real possibility that he isn't developing on the normal path enough that the best way to camouflage him an make him get as normal a childhood as possible is to slide him in with the older kids next year so everyone can go back to pretending he's 'just bright' ASAP. With a little luck that will work just fine.

Does the bi-lingual preschool have a 1st grade program, or does he have to change schools for 1st grade anyway?

you may also want to call Mika Gustavson, LMFT Campbell CA 308 375 9635

Smiles,
Grinity

Also consider other IQ tests that don't have such annoying discontinuities in the norms -- I personally love the DAS-II and like the SB-5 and K-ABC-II, none of which are going to make you wait or have such low ceilings as the WPPSI.

But we don't make educational placement decisions purely on the basis of scores. Take a calm and thoughtful look at the various aspects of the kid and the school -- think less about "should we skip him?" and more about, "Given the various placement options, which is most likely to be a good fit for him? Where there are problems we can predict, which are most likely to be tractable?" Realize that placing him in the "normal" place for his age is just as much a decision, with attendant potential problems, as placing him in a different classroom.

With respect to the "branding" issue, I have two comments.

(1) Kids are always getting branded -- we want the labels to be *accurate* and *compassionate*. Because the kids who don't get identified as gifted are often getting identified instead as "pain in the neck," "wiseacre," "bossy," "immature," and other such labels.

(2) In general, we don't think it's psychologically healthy to conceal important aspects of self from self or other. I don't think giftedness should be an exception to that. I'd rather see us be open with kids about all aspects of self, which can include thinking about how they might want to present themselves to others. But the point is that we shouldn't be telling them that being gifted means anything shameful or anything that belongs in the closet.

Welcome! Your story sounds similar to mine, where a preschool teacher told us that our DS would likely need to accelerate a grade in the future. We ended up getting our DS tested when he was 4 by a gifted specialist, to help us decide whether to go to early K. He is a January birthday. Although he tested HG+, we went with the tester's recommendation to go to K with age-mates and play another year, since we'd likely have lots of school advocacy and change (acceleration/differentiation) in the future. The recommendation was go to K, where it's more fun, but seek differentiation, and skip 1st, which is a "learn-to-read" year in our district.

Also, for our DS, K was the first all-day school experience, and he didn't want to learn to write. So kinder was a better option than starting in 1st. Since we had this info before school started, we were able to bring it to the prinicipal and gifted coordinator and ask for help. The prinicpal hand-picked a teacher who was good at differentiation, and DS ended up basically getting tutored for math at the 2nd grade level. He then skipped 1st.

Just sharing our experience, since there are a lot of different options (skipping first, going to K and skipping second). If we had gone straight to 1st, DS would still have needed differentiation, and since kindy was more fun, and he got the differentiation there, it all worked out well. Plus he learned how to do school. Depends a lot on each particular kid and the flexibility of the school.

Good luck!

Hi! We are in the Bay Area too, and I think language immersion is a FANTASTIC option for advanced kids here. My son was reading fluently at 3-4 and we chose a Spanish Immersion program for him (public school) and he has done well and enjoyed it so far. I would not recommend skipping K - its so much fun! They sing, do silly crafts, go on field trips and have enormous amounts of playtime, all of which DS loves. 1st grade seems way more grim, in our school at least.

Also, not sure which district you are in, but ours is vehemently opposed to early entry and grade skipping. Its much easier to get into the system and then have the teachers and principal working for you. A new parent coming into K registration claiming their child is too advanced for K would be rudely brushed off in our district (with some justification - they see too many cases of this every year)

My son went to a French-American school, too. I thought I'd offer some advice specific to the French system, if that helps.

1. French students learn cursive writing in first grade. Because of this, if there's going to be a skip of a very early grade, I'd recommend Kindergarten/Grande Section over First/CP any day of the week, especially if your son has good fine motor skills. They spend a lot of time on writing, and it may prove to be a good challenge.

2. They also start the rules of letter sounds in 1st/CP, so again, it's a good year to attend.

A boy in my son's school skipped 1st, and his father told me that they had to do a lot of work to prepare him for it.

3. The first grade will also be better able to give your son work that's appropriate for him. The kindergartens are mostly geared toward learning letters, sitting still in circle time, writing your name, and very basic mathematics.

I understand about the emotional maturity aspects of the skip, too. It's hard. My son was labelled as being behind that curve, but looking back on it, I think he was frustrated because the work was too easy for him. Plus, at my son's school at least, the administration was understanding about little kids (defined as 2nd grade and under) and how they behave.

Another advantage of a very early skip is that younger kids accept big changes like this more easily than older ones. Plus the kids in the new class will still be very little and also more likely to accept it immediately because teacher and big guy in the principal's office said it's a good idea. My daughter skipped kindergarten; I'm not sure anyone noticed. We took her to a new school recently for an interview, and THEY didn't even notice. I had to tell them afterwards.

Are you or your wife native or reasonably fluent French speakers? If so, this would make a 1st grade skip easier.

A skip seems like a strange idea when it's first brought up. At least, it did to us. But after it had happened, it became clear pretty quickly that it was the right thing to do. Obviously, not every skip works out perfectly, but nothing in life is guaranteed. So I'd advise you to read information you find here and perhaps at Hoagies gifted education.

HTH,

Val

Ms. Yermish,

I have a question about the above point. There has been some discussion on this board about test scores and when or if you should reveal that information to the child. I, for some reason, lump the idea of telling my DD she is gifted into that same argument. My DD is 4.5 in age and I have stayed away from the term gifted because I don't want her to use it against her age mates. She already understands she is different and makes comments referencing these differences but I still hesitate to fill in the gap of understanding why. So my question is when do you think parents should have this conversation with their kids?

Wow! Thank you all so much for your thorough and instructive replies. I hadn't realized there were so many tests to assess a child's development! I will look into all those mentioned and at least get one done for peace of mind.

My son happens to be tall for his age (46.5") so he'd fit right in with 1st graders if that's the road we decide to take. I really wouldn't want to change school because it's important to me that he learns French (my mother tongue) and this is a French immersion school (4 out of 5 days in French only).

Since he also writes relatively well (in English and block letters) I can't see him greatly challenged in 1st grade either, except for his unexpected crying outbursts which other kids his age already look at him strangely for.

Thank you again for the warm welcome...
Vic

ps: I found this website through a Google search.

Should have said "bienvenue"... I wanted to add that there are several threads over the last couple of years if you search for "language immersion" that touch upon the experience of GT kids in a language immersion environment. For example, see HG kid, language immersion in K

But I see Val has already found you, and she's given valuable insight on this topic in many of those threads.

I'm going in circles searching the web for someone in the Bay Area to administer the SB5 test to my son. Can anyone point me to the right direction? Thanks... merci!

Here is a list of psychologists in Santa Clara County that I found from the Lyceum organization. They are not endorsed by Lyceum, but it may give you a place to start:
https://www.lyceum-online.com/?page_id=15
Good luck!

This is a list of psychologists available for testing in San Mateo county.

Psychologist Phone City
Dr. Stephen Chou 650-652-9174 Millbrae
Dr. Sarida Paley 650-367-4996 Redwood City
Dr. Donna Douglas Griffith 415-929-8086 San Francisco
Dr. Elizabeth Santana
Morrissey-Compton Educational Center
(Also Taylor Stilwell, M.S., CAO can assist)
650-322-5910 Palo Alto
Children�s Health Council 650-326-5530 Stanford
Dr. Barbara Brandt 650-941-1535 Los Altos
Dr. Bradley Manning 650-704-1343 Los Altos
Dr. Lin Cerles 415-665-2810 San Francisco
Dr. Brendan Pratt 650-949-2997 Los Altos
Dr. Rebecca Murray Metzger 650-949-2997 Los Altos

Thank you!

Hello everyone. After my initial inquiries on this board, I've gone ahead and had my 5 year old son tested using the SB5. The result came out quite uneven which leaves us more uncertain about what to do next than it did before he took the test. His NVIQ was 137 while his VIQ was "only" 117 (FSIQ 128). Per the psychologist, this can be explained by the fact that he is learning 3 languages (English, French and Chinese) although his Quantitative Reasoning (QR) is also "only" 116.
We will be speaking with the school admin in the coming days to see if it is possible to accommodate his unique, uneven development by mixing his playful K year with a more structured 1st grade...

Would you mind sharing who you had test your son with the Stanford Binet 5? We live in Marin County and I am hoping to find someone nearby. My son is 10 years old. Thank you very much.

Hello everyone. Wow, it's been over 2.5 years since I last posted! I just found this link on my favorites and..here I am again. You were all very helpful and friendly...great forum at a time of some confusion with my son's path, thank you.
Alexandre is now 7 years old. While we discussed with the French-American school having him skip 1st grade, ultimately he did go through with it because they felt he just wasn't emotionally mature enough. At the end of 1st year his teacher encouraged us to address the skipping grade issue again because she felt he would be bored in 2nd grade. The school tested his reading comprehension (5th grade level) and agreed to have him attend 3rd grade. It helped that his math skills are very good too and whizzed through 2nd grade math over the summer.
While he is the youngest (will be 8 in April) he is one of the taller kids and doesn't seem to have adaptation issues. His scholastic level is high although we see (particularly from girls) that his creative writing isn't as well developed or even that his writing is not as well formed as other kids in his class.
In some way the challenge has been for us parents to adjust to this new reality. We've caught ourselves a few times getting impatient with errors of attention that we were not accustomed to in the past when everything seemed super easy for him. We started pressuring him in ways we didn't even realize because we'd only known him to breeze through school work. We're now more patient and available to work with him than before. Next week will be our first teach/parents conference and, while I expect the congratulatory statements for his achievements so far, I also really hope to learn about his areas for improvements to guide me through what I can do at home... Anyway, sorry for going on and on about my son. I'm just excited to have found this website again!

Hi. Always nice to get an update.

Hello everyone, it has again been a long time since I've logged in to this board and reading this thread has brought back lots of memories. I thought I'd update you on my son's growth, if only so concerned parents can get my hindsight, particularly those parents with a single child.
Alexandre is now 12 and just entered 8th grade in Oakland Public Schools where he has been since 6th grade. The move from a bilingual private school to a less than stellar public school was a little challenging during the first 6 months but he eventually settled in and has come to really like his environment (we parents a bit less...). While the social integration has been a fantastic adventure for him, the academic level is mediocre and our son is an A student with little effort. Being an April kid and having skipped 2nd grade, he nonetheless struggles with a lack of maturity. His lower attention span has frustrated some of his teachers who, as a whole, have told us that he is quite bright but needs focus. Ironically, when I mentioned that he is nearly a year and half younger than his peers, they all rolled their eyes in a "now I get it" moment. Our concern however is that compared to California's State average, his scores are just in the top 25%. He isn't taught what he needs to know and it shows on State tests. We supplement his school curriculum with French, piano and Kumon math classes (highly recommended if you don't know what Kumon is!). His French teacher recently gave him a sample SAT French exam on which he had a perfect score.
Looking back at my early posts, I see that Alexandre continues to display the traits that brought me to this forum. He learns and retains very quickly, yet he doesn't show the inquisitive mind to push himself to learn more, which is probably what sets really bright kids apart. Like most parents, we compete with screens and struggle to motivate him but we are relieved that he raises to the challenges he is faced with, even if this school's are not high. Next year is high school and a whole new world awaits him because we are going to raise the bar way higher than he is used to...

Hi vicbee. I wasn't on the boards the last time you posted here. Nice to meet you!

I'm curious if you've ever gone back and had your DS evaluated again, where he presented early with diverse cognitive skills, and has a consistent history of attentional and "motivational" (in quotes because almost everyone is motivated--it's just a question of what the motive is, and how one can harness it for those tasks valued by our society or personal culture) challenges, and because you are describing some possible areas of underachievement. Have you considered the possibility of a second exceptionality? (E.g., a subtle learning disability, ADHD, etc.) It is, of course, also possible (even likely), as you say, that he is simply under challenged in school, and so has no particular impetus to exert himself, but if there is an additional learning difference, it might be nice to know before he hits the new high bar in high school.

And FWIW, we also had the experience of our DC, then 2 years young for grade, being perceived as immature and distractible until teachers reminded themselves of the age gap. But in our case, that particular child really could meet most of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, with the critical exception of impairments in actual function. (No formal diagnosis, but this is my field, and I can tick off the relevant symptoms.) The age difference seems to have resulted in teachers giving more allowance than was perhaps strictly justified...if your DC is in a similar situation, that works too.

Hi aeh and thank you for your feedback. At the point I think A. is a well adjusted 12 year old mixing with 13 and soon to be 14 year olds. This year he appears far more motivated to do well in school than he has ever shown. We are looking to move to Singapore next year where he will go a French school through the end of high school. I suggested to him to repeat 8th grade next year, to ease the pressure of French speaking in all subjects and adjust to a more stringent curriculum as well as giving him the chance to mix with kids his own age as opposed to being with kids 1-2 years older. To my surprise he doesn't want to... although, he will have to test for his French level comprehension as well as his mastering of various subjects. At least he knows the pressure won't come from us!