I'm fighting with myself over having a hard time accepting the GIA of 125. Knowing my boy and all that he self taught himself and his drive to learn and his amazing ability to quickly learn and forever know - I absolutely had him pegged as a much higher level of giftedness. This score puts him just barely entering the gifted range. His tester was a school psychologist intern and honestly knowing that she was an intern I think I wouldve doubted almost any result. Put that with a boy that hates the stress of anything timed, has slow fine motor skills and was on the tail end of a cold, and I lean towards not believing the results. But, then I wonder why I even care. Does any one know how accurate the WJ III cognitive results are? Should it change my plan of attack if he really is only mildly gifted? Hmmm... The more I think anoint it the more confused I get. Thanks for any help and insight.
I'm probably out of the majority here in that I don't as quickly jump to the "you know your kid best" spot, but in the instance you've described, I'd say that you have a more than MG child as well. I do know parents of bright but not gifted kids who think they have MG-HG kids and it is usually in an instance where the child is brighter than the parent or there is some parental ego issue going on.
However, unless you're totally making stuff up in regard to development, which I'm going to assume you are not (especially given the achievement scores), I'd just lean toward thinking that this wasn't the best test for him, his age or other factors got in the way, or it was an off day.
I have an older dd (12) who, too, does poorly on timed tests and tended to stress tremendously when she was younger when pressed on time. When we had her tested at age 7 on the WISC (also by an intern although with a center known for GT testing), she came out with an IQ in the lower 130s. Her WJ-III grade equivalents ranged from grade level to grade 18+ and the subtest scores w/in the WISC were all over the place as well (25th percentile to beyond the 99.9th even within one subtest). Overall, we felt that a combo of things likely depressed her scores including anxiety, lack of cooperation on her behalf, speed issues, asynchronous development, and maybe an inexperienced tester.
She later skipped a grade none the less and is still an outstanding student who is regularly in the 99th percentile as compared to kids 1-2 years older than herself. It is a much better fit socially as well. Even assuming that my dd's IQ score was accurate and your ds' is as well, perhaps there are some MG kids who, due to personal drive, need more than in grade GT programs.
