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Hi there...

I am so very grateful to discover this forum. I have been reading old threads for some time now and have found those posts incredibly helpful in some of the deciscion-making we are doing with my DS5.

The short of my story is that I am what I would describe as a pretty-smart over-achiever professional/mother who was most-likely 'gifted' in the creative realm with art and writing as a chld. I always had to try in math/science as that did not come naturally. Subsequently, I learned that hard work lead to success, praise and achievement - and that formula helped me perservere throughout my higher education.

My husband is quite the opposite. I'm sure he would've been considered gifted as a child and truly did not have to crack a book his entire pre-college education. He was bored in school, super-disorganized and not really motivated in the least. College was a terrible experience initially as he had never developed any study/organizational skills to succeed. After a break to mature somewhat and some crazy adventures as a young man, he want back to school and completed his business degree with straight-As. But he still struggles with motivation and organization (some of which we attribute to a nice dose of ADHD-inattentive type). But he does think he developed some distructive work-habits in those formative years.

So, my DS5 has been a joy to parent. He was not the artist-child that I expected (as he carried my left-handed trait)...but instead he demonstrated a lust for knowledge even as a young two-year old. He did not speak terribly early, but learned all the prepositions before he even began naming objects. We first noticed he seemed advanced when he learned his letters by two (despite the fact we hadn't taught him). He quickly picked up reading sight words and then simple books. By 3, he was driving us crazy with his incessant questions about anything and everything. He was obsessed with synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, word riddles and the like. He also loved to discuss math concepts and loved to do multple number problems in his head (5+2+1-4=). He LOVED the idea of the zero times-table and would tell what I can only describe as 'math jokes' with it.

As a 5 year-old, he continues to have a thirst for knowledge especially in the sciences. He reads fluently at about a third grade level, and loves to explore science books that are at a much higher-reading level. He reads mostly by sight-memorization (as he seems to remember nearly every word if he sees it once)...but he certainly gets tripped up on words that are phonetically tricky or uncommon. He has not learned full decoding by any means. I think what is the most interesting to me is that he is truly a mix of my drive/creativity and my husband's analytical aptitude. He just sees things in the most different and creative ways. I'll find him cross-referencing his globe (yep, nearly his favorite toy) with a U.S. altas and a book on weather environments...and then he makes his own map of an area with all the compiled information.

He just seems to apply knowledge easily and is always looking deeper into an issue. Any issue. His favorite phrase is, "Now let me get this straight...".

He has not been tested, and there are no gifted resources in the schools here until third grade. I'm not even sure if he would be considered 'gifted' versus 'smart'. Honestly, the label means nothing to us. But where we are concerned is finding ways to challenge him in the hopes it might deflect the issues my husband experienced.

He will be in Kindergarten this fall...there is no early admission. We do live in a highly-educated area so many kids will most likely be ahead of age-norms, but I'm thinking he's still going to be far ahead of his peers. Our pediatrician has prepared us to expect that the school may want to go ahead and advance him to first grade. We do worry that DS is sensitive, a follower, and not advanced socially in any way compared to his learning achievements.

Would testing be of any benefit to us? Any advice on how to keep him motivated to learn while in an maturity-appropriate but not academically-appropriate classroom would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for sticking with my long and circumvented tale. I pledge to be less windy in the future.

Welcome! You have the same concerns as many of us. A lot will depend on your DS's teacher's attitude when he starts school; I suppose at this point you've decided on a school, but you should definitely be open to looking at others if this one doesn't do sensible things with your DS.

You can also encourage things needing perseverance and good habits outside school - many people like instrument lessons for this reason, or gym, dance, swimming... whatever seems likely to be something your DS enjoys but doesn't effortlessly excel at!

Unless your pediatrician knows something about the particular school your DS is going to, it would be quite surprising if the advice that they may want to advance him to 1st is accurate; most people seem to find schools reluctant to do grade skips, and for a school to suggest it is almost (but not quite) unheard of.

Testing is not very likely to help IMO; you could consider it if the school isn't helpful and you get the impression that it's because they don't believe he's exceptional, but I'd wait till then, personally. It wouldn't do any harm to investigate suitable testers near you and find out what they cost and whether they have waiting lists, mind, so that if you do want to do it later you can move fast. Testing at 6 or 7 tends to be more reliable than testing at 5 (e.g. it's less dependent on rapport between your child and the tester, once the child is old enough to understand going along with something even if it isn't fun) so if you can leave it a bit, you may save yourself some angst as the results are more likely to be consistent with what you see.

Thank you so much for a nice welcome and quick response. I will clarify that our peditrician is a young father with kids in our school district (not sure what primary school though). The reason the grade-skipping even came up is because he happens to have a boy much like my own when he entered K a few years back, and they were recommended to grade-skip about 3 months into the school year (not sure by whom, as the teacher felt he was doing fine in K). At the time, I was seeking his advice on whether to enter DS private K last year (as he just missed age cut-off for public). I really have no intention of pushing DS5 ahead. If the learning gap is too a great an issue, I would much rather consider a skip after K. I strongly feel DS5 needs to get the semantics of school under his belt a bit (and also fill in the gaps that he hasn't learned: telling time, phonics, staying in his seat, cafeteria horseplay, etc).

I hear that the school DS will be attending is really great according to my friends whose kids attend (and many of them are teachers). I even had the opportunity to speak with DS' new principal this spring. I felt like I was maybe being too forthcoming with information about DS and his learning, but I decided I really didn't care. She said they often try to pair a the advanced learners together in a few of the classes (there are 5 Kindergarten classes at the new school)as a way to help those students and the teachers both with learning enrichment material.

I would not test -- your son is "showing" that he is gifted and unless you need a more exact number to categorize "how gifted he is" for some reason in terms of his IQ, it's not necessary right now.

I would keep the wait-and-see attitude about kindergarten. I think you're right that he may benefit quite a bit from "learning school" itself and how to play the kindergarten "game." Kindergarten is definitely much more academic in nature than it used to be when we were kids, but it's frequently still "loose" enough in style that there is quite a bit of room for enrichment if the teacher is prepared to do so. For example, while most kids in the class are doing a station on letter identification, the teacher can switch the "cards" to a WORD identification station where your son can work on words that are tricky for him when it's time for HIM to go to that station. Sometimes it's just about the logistics of letting him have "special permission" to check more than one book out of the school library a week and to get his books from whatever section he wants instead of from the "early reader" section of the school library that other kids may be limited to.

You may end up deciding that he's had enough "this is how we do school" by the end of the first semester and move him to a 1st grade classroom at that time, but you may not. It sounds like you've got a great school who is willing to work with gifted kids and allow you to advocate for him and that's 95% of the battle.

Thanks so much for your advice and encouragement. It's good to hear that my instincts are (hopefully) correct. I also appreciate the idea of waiting with testing. I'm a clinical counselor for kids/teens (but unable to be objective for my own kids), and see testing sometimes creating new issues instead of solving them. I guess, "If it ain't broke...".