Recently my daughter changed schools, and is now attending a great school with lots of gifted kids. This is many ways is wonderful, but it also adds a different twist to advocacy because while these guys are genuinely knowledgeable about giftedness it does mean they think they've seen and dealt with it all so they take some convincing.
We had had our daughter tested on the SBV when she was 4 with scores >99.9%and because of her age, the fact that she refused to complete all of some of the subtests and her amazing abilities as a shape-shifter - able to fly under the radar wherever she goes - there were always some doubts raised about her scores. I suspected them to be accurate based on what she does at home, but to be sure we had her rested at 6.5yo, this time on the WISC and, in fact, she scored higher than the previous test. So we know now, for sure, that the kid is pretty smart.
The tester did some achievement testing on her too, which put her 3 years ahead in spelling, comfortably 5 years ahead in reading fluency and comprehension (she didn't test dd higher than that, figuring 5 years ahead was enough to point to the need for extension), 9 years ahead in decoding. Her teacher has tested her as being 4 years ahead in maths, despite so far being largely self taught. At the moment she is grade skipped in to grade 2 and is being extended about a year ahead again in class.
Dd wants harder work, but she is also extremely social and wants to be part of the group. She has a couple of gifted girls in her class that she is working with and she is friends with and I suspect she is benchmarking herself against them despite being able to do more (as well they might be able to too - I just mean she's not stretched beyond the work that group is doing).
She is extremely happy at school for the first time ever. While she feels she'd like to do more she finds the work 'ok' and class time fun. This is her third school and our last two experiences were dreadful. Now I have a kid who says on Saturday 'I can't wait for Monday' because she is so excited about getting back to school. So on that front, I am also reluctant to rock the boat.
But on the other hand, I know this kid has NEVER been tested at her challenge level in an academic sense, other than during her testing. She was elated for the rest of the day after doing the WISC, it was like stretching herself had set her brain alight. But at school her cruising is enough to be impressive, keeps her not ahead of her friendship group but still in it and so on.
I know from my lurking others have been through similar things and I am just wondering if anyone had any tips?
I'm not really willing to skip her again at this point (for now) - she has been in 3 schools and 5 different classes in 18 months and socially I think she's in a good setting with an older gifted cohort (she would have been young for her 'proper' grade and her best friend is already close to 2 years older).
Last edited by Kvmum; 08/09/12 04:51 PM.
