Hi thanks for the kind responses.
she took the scat in third grade. she is now in 4th grade.
if i remember correctly she was btween 90 and 96th compared to gifted 3rd grade girls in math and in the top quartile in language.
With the wisc scores and her other stuff i am at a loss about "how gifted" she is and what level of expectations we should aim for. I am kind of frustrated that these test numbrs seem so arbitrary yet they mean so much to the educational-industrial complex. how can verbal reasoning vary almost a standard deviation and mean anything. and some of individual subtests are 50%tile or more different.
She reads very well and ravenously now. She did an SRI last year that was over 1150, but the school didn't tell us about it because her teacher thought it was a fluke. She read on her own at about 4-5 but stopped reading at all when she started K. However in every other way she fits a classic dylexic profile. Kind of like the stealth dyslexics the Eides describe.
the Ruf level you guys talk about I guess she is mostly 4s with 3s and 5 sometimes.
She had existential interests at a very young age. At three she wanted to know why God let people be born with severe handicaps and birth defects and why if he was all powerful he couldn't end suffering and if he could and wouldn't what reason could God have to want handicapped people to suffer.
Dottie her situation at school is way better this year. She is in a small private school.She had pretty profound dysgraphia last year and couldn't keep up with the work. Her teacher thought she was lazy not very bright and made her do classwork during recess most days and put her in the lowest groups for reading and math. Since we were new to the area, this really interferred with her social integration into the class and her self esteem. she was miserable and hated school.
After last years evaluation and the SCAT, school is much more sympathetic and she does EPGY for math so no more endless work sheets,timed drills and two-hour homework sessions. her handwriting suddenly improved this year though we have started working with keyboarding. her physical skill acqusition has been behind her age peers but comes all at once. she didn't ride a two wheel bike until 8. but immediately after she got the training wheels off,she just got on and rode off without another thought about it. Her handwriting is not as good as her bike riding but she can keep up in class most days, and if she trys, it is as legible as the other kids now - but slower.
the social things are more pressing this year. There are alot of group projects and her perfectionism runs over into the other kids work in her group. she can't understand why they don't want to correct their mistakes and do their best. the other kids sometimes think she is bossy and picking on them. She wants to get more in detail with science and social studies projects but this also puts her in conflict with the other kids.
that's why i looked into our local gifted program in public school. They do magnets and pullouts but she doesn't qualify for magnent. regular school with pullouts wouldn't help much - if they even let her have it. She'd just be in a bigger class and still not fit in and not get the EPGY math. Basically they don't want her in the gifted magnet because they don't want to deal with her LDs and they can use her average IQ as an excluder. there are way more kids than spaces and they can be choosy.
We are doing an og based program to remediate her spelling/dylexia issues. now that she is in a better classroom situation she doesn't really have ADD symptoms much any more so I doubt that diagnosis, but still keep it in mind.
As she gets older will her scores change? Are there other tests that might better show her intellectual abilities.
I just wish she could be around kids that want to talk about the complex kinds of things she likes to talk and think about. she lacks the maturity(sometimes) for gradeskip and i don't think shes academically ready either with her spelling and writing issues.
Her chosen companions are mostly younger and older and like complex fantasy and history stuff. but its hard to fit in play dates. Kriston I envy your homeschooling.
She knows she's smart but also feels "stupid" We've explained the LD stuff to her and she's read up on it on her own some too i think. but she says shes too smart and too stupid to fit in anywhere. I hate that she feels this way at her age--at any age.
other than telling her she does not have to completely fit in to enjoy and benifit from something or someplace and that sometimes you have to make your own place or make a place your own, I don't know how to help her in this.
So how gifted am i looking at? what can i do to help my dd not feel so alone in who she is? ie how do i find a peer group. Is she as unusual as i seem to be finding?
