Thanks so much for your replies. They were both very helpful.

DeeDee, our original diagnostic work was all done at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. When I brought up IQ testing with them at his last follow up at 4.5 they indicated that we would generally go through the school system for IQ testing. They also didn't seem to think it was necessary at this point. It seems no one thinks there is any need to test until 7 or 8.

I am concerned that he is already very bored in preschool. We can't rule that out as a possible reason for acting out unless we determine if he does in fact have different educational needs. They would be all over a suspected case of low IQ, but in the other direction it's all let's just wait and see what happens in 2nd or 3rd grade. Which is probably when they actually have gifted program.

I'm not in this for the gifted program. I don't even intend to use the public schools. I just want to get a good idea of how to help my son by understanding every aspect of him and anything that could be a factor in the behaviors we are seeing. It's very frustrating for me that the people involved in my sons treatment don't see it that way. Others do. Teachers and outpatient therapists we see and many others, including complete strangers, ask if we have had his IQ tested. So far I just tell them, no, they don't test this young.

The private tester I have been in contact with says he is not too young for testing. She is listed on the Hoagies website, only about an hour or so from us, and has experience with testing kids on the spectrum. I don't even want to know how much she costs!

My son does receive 30 minutes a week of speech to work on social language. That therapist is the one who completed the celf test. I don't actually get to talk to him other than IEP meetings because he sees my son at school. He seems like a great therapist though and everyone really likes him. I'm hopeful we will be able to continue speech as we move into the transition thing. I'm not sure what is involved since we will be either homeschooling, using a private K program, or keeping my son in preschool for an extra year to work on social skills. Oddly I think that the lower amount of academics may be better for him than a ton of academics that is way below his level like they would have in public K.

aeh, the link to the differences between the tests was very helpful. Reading more about the test it seems a little less direct in it's approach and I wonder if my son just wasn't certain what to do sometimes and just said he didn't know. He does best with very direct instructions.

Plus reading more about how the test works it seems to depend a lot on interpreting pictures, which my son isn't nearly as good at as understanding descriptive text.

I looked up a sample report from the test and saw some of the types of vocab used and it was stuff DS would not know. Telescope, binoculars, veterinarian, audience, newspaper, trophy, and scale are all things I doubt he would know. We don't have any of those things about the house and have no stories about vets or audiences. We haven't been to any performances, not even to the theater, so audience was probably a new concept.

My son might eat dinner and say "I would describe this meal as mild, which is appropriate, because the weather today is mild as well." The kids in his class might say "I like this. Taste yummy." Guess this type of test just didn't capture what my son is capable of because it wasn't meant to test that sort of language.

The school is convinced I have been using flashcards since the day my son was born. Never mind that we don't even own flashcards.

I wanted to use Waldorf education and they don't even teach reading until 7. They don't do grades. They emphasize imagination and wonder and play. None of that was to be because that's not my son.

I've adapted, but I'm sick of dealing with professionals who think I've over-educated my child. Early Intervention actually told me my son didn't have ASD, that he had social deficits because I pushed academics too much. They passed their opinions of me on to the IU and I still get a lot of crap from them about how he shouldn't be reading and we shouldn't encourage all of this stuff that makes him different from other kids. Like I'm going to be able to stop my son from reading and learning? When they said his language was above age appropriate, I heard, inappropriate. And that never sounds good. I feel like there are plenty of ways they could have said that to not make it sound like a problem.

Thank you everyone for your time. It's so hard to understand all of this stuff and know what to do. Just like any other parent, what's important to me is my son and I just want the best for him. It's very hard sometimes to know what that is.