Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Help getting started with profoundly gifted

I am brand new here today and in search of help. Hopefully there are allies who may have been there in the past!

DS10 has always been precocious. He started showing a rabid interest in science at age 2. He started reading novels by 6yrs after he was treated for a vision disorder. Subjects of interest include mythology, mycology, greek/latin word roots, science fiction, physics, biology, chemistry and insects. He was given a diagnosis of Asperger�s at age 3 but shows very little issues of social problems these days. Our school never allowed him to participate in the REACH program as they did not believe in dual diagnosis and they have since gotten rid of the program entirely. As a student he views school as a place to go for the day. Home is a place where he learns on his own time. DS has requested numerous times, starting in the first grade, to go to a different school. He has requested to skip grades but as parents, despite our belief that our child was bright, we always assumed the school knew what they were talking about when they kept insisting that he wasn�t a candidate for REACH or any other acceleration. This year his classroom teacher is a former gifted teacher. Based on her recommendation, and that of several others, we had DS tested. He achieved the following scores:
WISCV-IV
VCI 170
PRI 119
WMI 113
PSI 83
FSIQ 132
GAI 154
He was also given the SBL-M and achieved a score of 182. Mental age was calculated at 19yrs, 1 month.
We were shocked to say the least and left with more questions than answers. Most frustrating is our public school which continues to express that they are meeting his needs. It is clear that we need to do something different but have missed the cut off to apply for the local public charter school that does ability grouping. In addition, there is a long wait list for this school and it could be years before DS gets in. My questions are as follows:
Are there other parents of exceptionally or profoundly gifted kids on this board that would be willing to share their experiences and advice? I have an application in for Davidson�s but am beginning to feel that the only success we are going to get is through homeschooling. Even if not for the long term I am beginning to think it will be the best measure for now. Additionally, there are some huge gaps in DS�s processing speeds. I believe this to be due to his visual processing issues. Is anyone out there familiar with this sort of scatter or visual processing issues? Also, thoughts/ideas on how the heck do you do all this on a shoe-string budget with two parents working? It has only been in the past 6 months that we have finally paid off all of DS�s medical bills from 2010.
Many thanks in advance.

AthenasMasters

Welcome to the board - as mon mentioned, you'll find a wealth of advice here. I'm also curious what the school had to say if you shared the scores?

Re visual processing issues, we have a dd who had severe double vision and tracking issues when she was young, and it impacted two of the subtests on the WISC - but I can't remember which ones! When her scores on those two subtests came out very very low relative to her other subtest scores, our neuropsych gave her a follow-up visual test, I think it was the Beery VMI. Our dd went through a year of vision therapy which helped tremendously, but that was two years ago and lately we've started thinking we're seeing signs of her vision issues re-emerging, although she won't admit it.

Re school - it's really tough finding a good fit for kids who are so out there on the far end of the bell curve. My advice is to not panic - there may be more options out there. One you might not have thought of is private school - we have two of our kiddos in private school and I've also served on the board of a third school - all three schools offer financial aid to families who have a need. In our ds' case, homeschooling would probably be the best fit solution for his academics, but ds wouldn't like it - he prefers to be with other kids, even if the class he's in is beyond boring to him. He's also a kid who doesn't want to be grade-accelerated across the board, that's just his personality, plus he's got a good dose of 2e mixed in. So one thing I've found helps us is for me to not get caught up in what I think he should be achieving based on ability and instead just focus on where he is naturally inclined to be. We've definitely had our share of challenges with school though! DS' elementary school also fought putting him into our district's GT program but we kept advocating and advocating until finally he was given a chance, and once he wa in the program he soared. Yet even that wasn't enough - it was more aimed at MG kids who are high-achieving in a traditional sense. What we found worked for us (and it's still a work in progress, and it's complicated for our ds due to his being 2e)... is that schools that looked good in theory didn't necessarily meet the expectation in practice, and other schools which we might not have thought would work were actually better fits - ultimately it largely comes down to the willingness of staff at any given school to respect what parents and students want/need and also to be able to be flexible and think outside the box. And of course that ideal school doesn't really exist, so we have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the non-ideal work!

So I'll stop rambling now, but welcome! If you have a chance, you might consider posting your ds' subtest scores and also let us know more about his visual processing issues.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I am not sure of the exact nature of his processing issue. I have always been told that he processes slowly. In addition he did have vision therapy due to the fact that he did not use his eyes together. Rather each took in a separate picture. He also had issues with tracking and teaming.

Here are the subtest scores.
Verbal Comprehension
Similiarities 21
Vocabulary 21
Comprehension 22

Perceptual Reasoning
Block Design13
Picture Concepts 14
Matrix Reasoning 12

Working Memory
Digit Span 13
Arithmitic 12

Processing Speed
Coding 5
Symbol Search 9
(Cancellation) 7

I can't help you much with the US education system, but until someone more helpful comes along I wanted to pipe up that this is a very typical profile of a child with Aspergers - far higher VCI, lower PRI and low PSI. If you look around these boards you will find a whole thread dedicated to the PG kids with coding = 5.

This is my first post but I came on here for the same reason as you did. Our 6 year old (kindergarten) daughter was just assessed and is in the "Profoundly Gifted"range --we were also very shocked in some ways. We are working with her private school to come up with a plan. I am also applying for Davidson. I just read "Genius Denied" (which I highly recommend) and although I feel like I finally "get it", the more I know about this the more terrified I am of trying to get her what I need. I don't feel like I could homeschool her effectively. She is already in the process of a grade skip but is bored with some of the material if not all in the grade ahead of her. I just want to know that she is going to be ok. Why is this such an uphill battle with schools and educators? She clearly is highly capable.

I can't give advice, but I can let you know that I am right there with you. I don't feel like there are any parents going through what I am going through right now. 3 months ago I didn't know "Gifted" existed. Now I am scared to talk about my daughter with other parents because our situation is so different than anyone else. So this message board seems like a good place for moms in our situation....

Welcome AthenasMasters and alliesebas! This is indeed a good place to talk about GT kiddos. Many of us have experience with several types of schooling situations so we can share stories about what worked/what didn't work for our kiddos. Each family will have very different experiences based on the education options available to you and your child's personality and particularities.

Some things to think about. Make a list of things that you would like at your child's current school (dream list). E.g., full-grade acceleration, subject acceleration, curriculum compacting, specific accommodations, etc. Then you'll have to find out if any of these things are possible, which can be tricky. I recommend the advocacy resources on the Davidson Institute's resource list. We had success approaching the local school's GT coordinator, who did understand that our child's scores meant something very different from most kids she's taught. She acted as a liaison between us and the principal. We worked as a team, with parents initiaing it by saying "we've got these crazy scores, and we've been advised that the normal school path may not work, but we really need some help figuring out what to do." Even though the school was very flexible and willing to try to help, it ended up being pretty much constant advocacy to get more challenging work, and we came across roadblocks like "no, he can't join the 3rd graders for math as a grade-skipped 2nd grader because his handwriting is too poor, even though he already did the exact same curriculum before he skipped as a kindergartner." So after 1.5 years in the local school, we ended up finding a school for HG kids that as a baseline was one year accelerated, and they also went at a faster pace, and we transferred our kiddo there. So far, 1.5 years into it, we love the school, but are wondering what will happen next year as our son seems like he's taking another big leap in what he knows, pulling ahead of many of his classmates. We are hopeful that the school can still accommodate him, as they've been awesome so far.

I'm mentioning all this to say that there is hope that you can work with your current school, but even their best efforts might not be quite enough. And even if you find a better fit school, you may find that it only fits for a while. But then again, there are many here who have successfully worked with their local schools to get appropriate work for their kids all the way through high school.

Another thing to think about that was a foregin concept to me before I came to this board: allow homeschooling to be your backup plan (or your first plan if you're ready and willing). This will save you the stress of thinking that your only hope is whatever school option you are advocating for at the moment, and it will help you advocate with a clearer head. There may be a strong GT homeschooling community in your area too. I had never considered homeschooling an option, and didn't know any homeschoolers, but really you can give a most wonderful individualized education for your child, especially if they have any 2E issues.

Alliesbas - since you're new, I recommend starting a new intro thread, where you can introduce yourself and your situation more fully and not get lost in this thread. Also list any specific questions you might have.

Good luck!