My DS4 took the SB-V last week. We wanted advice on whether he should go to kindergarten a year early, and in our district you need to show IQ of 130 to be considered. Sitting in another room while DS4 took the test, I wondered if maybe he's just a smart kid, and we were wrong to bring him in for testing. Well, here's what our report said: His full scale IQ on the SB-V is in the profoundly gifted range at >99.9th percentile.
My first reaction was "oh crap." I emailed a friend whose son is HG+, and she responded jokingly with, "I'll go out and find a hallmark card that says "so sorry to hear you kid is profoundly gifted..." Also, kimck was immediately available with support (thanks!).
After meeting with the psychologist and getting lots of information and resources, DH and I have sort of come to terms with the whole thing, and we think it might be kind of a fun adventure. We have lots of choices, which is nice. And we got one solid piece of advice that we plan to follow: Don't start kindergarten early, let him play another year. We don't know yet how our district will react to our son once he gets there, and we may end up half-homeschooling/public school for less educational stuff. We'll just have to wait and see. It seems like it won't matter which kind of school we choose while he's young, since he would need accommodations even if there were a gifted school near us. My DH said "I think taking a sabbatical and living in a different country during middle school would be great!"
But whatever we do, I just want to thank everyone here for support you have given us (even if you didn't know you did). Reading the posts here has been extremely helpful to me. Also, seeing how many different kinds of HG kids there are was an eye-opener. I always thought profoundly gifted were those kids that you read about in the paper (going to college as kids). Although I have a really early reader, my kid does not seem like the idea of profoundly gifted I had in my head. And learning that homeschooling is not just for "out-there" families has been a real plus!
Because the results were not what I expected (I thought moderately gifted), I am extremely happy that we found out so early. Now we can be a little more prepared for the obstacles ahead. So, after having a little cry over the fact that our son will not have a "normal" childhood, as I learn more about this whole giftedness issue, I will be happily returning to this great supportive online community to help me on my journey. Thanks!
And here's a funny from the day we got the news. When we were leaving my mom's house, DS insisted on running on her icy sidewalk. Of course he fell into a snowpile. He got up screaming "my pants got wet! my pants got wet!" [Whenever his clothes get the least bit wet, DS can't stand it and usually strips them off immediately.] My mom said, "Hmm. So that's what profoundly gifted looks like."
