Hello. I have a four-year-old who will be five in July, and I would like to get him tested. I want this not so much to see whether he is a good candidate for a Davidson gifted program, but more to find out extra information that would be helpful in his growing and learning process at home, as well as perhaps in the local school system.
Here are some of his traits:
1. He has what I consider to be a high level of artistic ability. He often combines objects and symbols in striking ways. At the age of two he basically discovered the form of Felix the Cat on his own, and his designs often show a great whimsy. He also shows more imagination than I would've thought a four-year-old capable, in terms of imaginative play and storytelling.
2. He has a fantastic verbal linguistic ability. He is constantly whipping out newly learned idioms with relish, and his grammar and syntax are impeccable. I can't estimate how many words and phrases he knows, and I am often amazed that he has been able to learn so many in such a short time.
3. He's reading at about a normal eight-year-old level, as far as I can tell, maybe more. About this, I admit to teaching him to read somewhat (although I dunno if it would qualify as hothousing by your standards here), but he does like to sit and read on his own and can do so for extended periods.
4. He's at least interested in math, although I doubt he is a great math genius. He can write and recognize arbitrarily large numbers (although he doesn't know the names of anything above millions), and is starting algebra. Now again, I have taught him math-- but it was partly to see how fast he could pick it up, and he is doing it very quickly. I basically postponed math teaching until quite recently, focusing on problem-solving skills instead. Until about two months ago, the extent of his math ability was counting to twenty or so, and doing small math in his head (keeping track o scores in simple counting games, etc.).
Right now, with sporadic and quite short ad-hoc lessons, basically whatever I can think of to throw at him at odd times during the week, he has a thorough grasp of the base-ten number system. I taught him the concept of a variable within several minutes one night, the next night built a simple scale with him to help teach the concept of an equation, and the next night he was able to do a simple system of equations (just basic substitution stuff with three variables) within several seconds. I had done this mostly because I wanted to gauge his aptitude at this point, as I had heard that children of this age generally are incapable of understanding abstract concepts such as variables.
He can also do integer math including negative numbers, which I taught him pretty quickly the other night using some Cuisenaire rods and a simple foldover paper widget I made. I am no math genius, but I do think I have a knack for teaching simple concepts-- so I don't know how much of this is considered to be hothousing, or how much of his ability is due just to the teaching. But I feel like the speed with which he learns abstract things must mean something, even if it is due to teaching in part.
5. He has pretty good game playing skills, which I guess are a special set of general reasoning abilities. He can beat his mother at Texas Hold 'Em handily (although she is pretty sucky at that game), and has picked up the mechanics of chess fairly easily recently, although he is not great at it yet. At games of what I would call medium complexity, such as different flavors of Blokus, Carcassonne, Risk, etc., he is capable of beating adults what I would guess is a large portion if not a majority of the time. He can't beat me so often, but does sometimes. We have a closet full of games he enjoys playing, including the ThinkFun solitaire games that he plays up to expert level and some of which he has finished.
6. He has great concentration. I have intentionally developed this as well as his memory, unfortunately for the ability to get a true assessment of genetic potential, perhaps... At the age of two he was able to sit through a feature film with sustained interest, and would often even at that age play with certain toys for hours. In fact some games, especially computer games like Warcraft III or Zoo Tycoon 2, he will play obsessively, to the point that I have to force him to stop. If he is doing something he enjoys, and I don't send him to bed, he will easily stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. until he falls asleep, exhausted.
7. In addition, he has one heck of a reasoning and argumentation ability. He is like a little lawyer, and will often make a compelling argument to get what he wants or to escape a punishment. He's also incredibly manipulative, although not in an evil way.
So...
He has just finished preschool, and we have to decide what to do with him. For financial reasons we will probably be sending him to public school at least for kindergarten. The thing is, in New Hampshire they apparently don't do a bang-up job of detecting bright children or making need-based services available to them; in fact the local educational philosophy seems to be based on "no child left behind", to the point that children are intentionally mixed together so that the bright children are in with the not-so-bright. Then, though they supposedly espouse the "habits of mind" approach, each class is taught to the same lesson plan.
I'm not so worried about this stunting my kid's development, as I can see that he will probably self-develop-- in fact I think I could stop teaching him and he would be fine. Still, I do want to give him the best chance at realizing his potential I can, so I would like to investigate documenting his level of need so I can push the school system to give him a little more in the way of specialized services, whatever might be available. My questions:
1. How likely is it that I am just a proud dad, and/or have hothoused him? (If I have been unintentionally hothousing him, I might not stop what I've been doing, since he has fun with it, but I may back off on thinking of him as having fantastic potential.)
2. Would you test my child, if you had to pay and money was tight? Or would you just let him develop naturally and not worry about it?
3. How do I find out what testing centers are available in Massachusetts and New Hampshire? Do I need to look for local psychologists instead of centers? I found one place in Philadelphia, but it would be inconvenient to travel so far.
Thanks a lot.
