I know my score-- found out accidentally late elementary/early junior high. A teacher let the cat out of the bag, let's just say.
That number did a lot more to make me unhappy as an adolescent than anything else. It didn't prevent me from underachieving, from self-handicapping and self-destructive behaviors. If anything, it CONTRIBUTED to them as I tried to "live down" the number with both peers and teachers.
Yes, it meant that I was very different. But here's something I know-- kids want reassurance that they are not that different, by and large-- not the incontrovertible proof that it's not the case and never will be. KWIM?
Knowing that number did nothing to make my dad's life any better, either. So I think "it depends."
If you're 99th, then maybe. If you're 99.9th, I think there is a dark side.
By the time it occurred to us that it might be of value in DD's case, when she was about 4-5yo, I was frankly too afraid to get that number. I know that it would be high, probably in that latter territory and maybe into ~1:100000 territory, which basically just says "good luck ever meeting peers in your day to day life, and by the way, everyone you'll actually meet thinks you're a space alien."
Not the message that most children or adolescents (driven to seek connections with peers) wants to hear.
"You're a lot 'smarter' than most of your peers" is sufficient, I think, unless there is a more specific reason to seek the number itself. By the time they are old enough to have the social skills not to misuse the information, they're old enough that it is hardly going to come as a revelation to start with. My DD lives this reality every day. She has only ever met other people who are "sort of" as smart as she is.
