I've been wanting to have my 8 year old son tested to see if he qualifies for DYS. He has moved so quickly through math and is about to pass me by, so I wanted Davidson assistance to figure out how to keep him challenged.

It took me 6 months to save my pennies for the WISC IV, and I got my results today. I was absolutely floored-- his score was totally average. I had prepared myself for the probability that his scores would be high but not Davidson high. It never even occurred to me that the scores would be average. I just don't even know what to do now. I listed his scores at the end of this message.

It didn't occur to me they would be average for a few reasons:

-- He hit his developmental milestones very early (head control almost from birth, sitting by 4 months, pincer grasp and self-feeding at 6 months, walking and pushing chairs across the kitchen to get food out of the cabinets at 9 months, etc)

-- He could read shortly before his 4th birthday

-- All his friends are 2-3 years older than him.

-- In 2nd grade he made straight 100s in 5th grade math. In 3rd grade (current grade), he buzzed through pre-algebra in 2 months, then mastered the first half of Algebra 1 in a week. Right now he's working geometry problems pretty successfully out of an SAT prep book.

-- I was in the g/t program as a kid and his two older siblings have been identified as g/t (his older sister is due to graduate at 15). I've always through he was the smartest of my kids.

-- I'm an administrator at a small private school. About 1/3 of the kids have been identified as g/t (several with 145+ IQ scores). He seems to be at their level, and when we group kids he's always put with the g/t kids.

So, he seems g/t to me, but his scores are dead average. Now I'm just wondering if I'm seriously deluding myself. I have no reason to mistrust his scores. He isn't shy or anxious (he's actually very outgoing). He wasn't sick or hungry. The tester didn't see any signs of learning disabilities or focus issues (and I've never suspected them). It just doesn't make sense. It's just so weird for me to think that his intelligence is just dead-average.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps he over thought some answers. For example, on the "Cancellation" test, he only scored a 7 and the tester said when the test was over he told her was was trying to figure out the best way to do the test. When I asked him about it this morning, he said he was trying to decide if it would be best to work horizontally or vertically or should he search for one type of animal first. He said then he wondered if there could be a pattern to help him find all the animals faster, but he couldn't find a pattern.

I don't know what the other tests are like, but I wonder if he wasted time creating strategies for the other tests. He's definitely a strategic thinker-- he doesn't do *anything* without formulating a plan for how the job can be done most efficiently.

Even then, it doesn't seem like over-thinking could lower the scores *that* much. Take his vocabulary score, for example. He scored a 7. But, a couple days before the test we thumbing through the "Building Thinking Skills". I have no idea what's on the WISC, but I wanted to familiarize him with analogies just in case they were on there. In the verbal analogy section of the book, he got 100% correct answers and understood the meaning of words such as commemorate, restrain, perceive, vigor, detest, scorn, assessment, authorization, etc. I could be wrong, but those words seem above 3rd grade level and if he had no problem with words like those then it doesn't make sense to me that he scored below average.

Oh well. It is what it is. Fretting about it doesn't change it.

Here were his scores:

VCI:
Similarities 14
Vocabulary 7
Comprehension 11
Information 8
Word Reasoning 9

PRI:
Block Design: 11
Picture Concepts: 8
Matrix Reasoning: 8
Picture Completion: 7

WMI:
Digit Span: 7
Letters-Numbers: 10
Arithmetic: 10

PSI:
Coding: 12
Symbol Search: 7
Cancellation: 7

FSIQ: 98
GAI: 104