Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy IQ test/Assesment: What was most helpful?

What tests: WISC IV (9y 10mo) and SB5 (10y 8mo) and ACT (12y)

What questions you had in your mind: We wanted to know how gifted he was. We had a good school situation and hadn't felt that we needed testing, but then I thought it would be good to have for later, should problems develop. I had heard that testing should be done before 10 if you think your child is HG. Since DS was almost 10 when I read this, I rushed to get him in before the window closed. As it was the tester felt that DS's scores were already an underestimate because of ceilings (and I think fatigue). His VPI came in just under 145 and his GAI just over 145, but his FSIQ was under 130! He had two 19's in the VPI subtests.

So in a year we did the SB5--the tester thought it would be good because if its higher ceilings. He hit ceilings on half the subtests and again had a score that the tester thought was an underestimate (between 140 and 145).

By this time I began to realize that we really were too late to be doing IQ tests, that we had really already missed the window.

So we waited and had DS take the ACT. I think this gave us a much more accurate sense of what DS could do because we no longer had to worry about ceilings. His scores are higher than we would have predicted based on his SB5 and WISC scores and are certainly not the result of hothousing.


What you learned: We knew DS was highly gifted. Our interactions with the psych definitately confirmed this and were part of our process of realizing that DS was way above MG. But, given the price and the scores that the psych said were probably not accurate, I am not sure it was totally worth it. Since we waited so long to start the testing process, I wish we had cut right to the talent search testing and skipped all the expensive testing.

The nice thing, though, is that DS loves any test he gets to take.

I guess that other thing that was nice, was that the psych told us that he had never seen a HG kid this happy and well-adjusted. That has been very encouraging, because having heard this I do worry less about the choices we had made.