Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What tests are offered (if any) for young kids?

I'm waiting on testing until closer to school since I can't imagine my DS2.5 being even remotely compliant now. I just finished Deborah Ruf's 5 Levels of Giftedness and found it helpful, especially for ideas about what types of things I should notice/write down (sort of like starting a portfolio as polarbear suggested). You are not alone in feeling overwhelmed. If you do test, I'd love to hear how it went.

IF you have a gifted child and put him in a regular preschool you are pretty much asking for problems. The typical preschool is going to subject him/her to an environment where often the teachers do nothing except babysit or if they do try to teach things they often teach for the dumbest and that is going to upset a gifted child. So if you do it be ready to have him/her start hating school or worse still picking up very ad habits. With our oldest child we avoided schools as long as possible, with the youngest we decided to try them... the youngest scored higher on the same tests but her language usage fell dramatically, mostly in picking up very poor grammar that we now have to push her to avoid. If we could redo it we would have kept our youngest out of schools as long as we did her older sister.

Interesting. My DD is 2.11 and has been enjoying her play-based preschool a lot. She is a very social only kid, so I think that she loves the "dramatic play" aspect of things and is good at getting older kids to go along with her elaborate story lines. She also loves the range of sensorial materials available at the preschool and the music and art. She doesn't seem bothered by the fact that she can read and the other kids can't or is the only fluent bilingual kid in the class.

Maybe I'm missing something (and we haven't tested her, obviously) but I do suspect that she's quite gifted (spoke well by 8 mos, good sentences at 12 mos, hundreds of words vocab by 15 mos-- and with bilingual input), speaks like a much older kid in two languages, and can read now. Maybe my DD is happy because she doesn't have a sibling to play with at home and she's very social? Maybe it depends on the kid?

I re-read your posts, Jai, and it sounded like you were doing everything I suggested already. I would trust your instincts!

Berkeleymom, I sent you a message last night, did you get it?

Okay, now I am nervous. This is what my husband fears. The preschool class is ages 2.5 to 4.5/5 ( the older kids don't meet the age requirements to start kindergarten). I purposefully looked for a school that didnt group by age. The lead teacher told me that some of the children in the classroom are reading. It's a Montessori/Reggio inspired curriculum. Do you still think its a bad idea?

Just saw your post and sent you a message, Jai!