Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Confused about results. Is my child gifted or not?

Hi

I would love some input on the following results for my DD we got end of last year when she was 6 years 7 months old.She is in Year 2 now in Australia turned 7 in January and will turn 8 when she goes to year 3 next year.

The results are below. She is currently stressed out at school, frustrated reading readers she could read in prep, her processing speed is average and this causes stress for her with regards to Maths as she is in top maths group but panics when her peers know the answers before her then melts down and can't do it getting flustered. Some social issues due to perceived bossiness but when with older children or those in the gifted programmes this isn't an issue.

She is very intense but very interesting and enjoyable albeit hard work :-) She gravitates to adults and older children. She talked in sentences by 10 months old and walked at 10.5 months. She has an insatiable desire to learn and be doing something or discovering something - always has. She would cry at 2.5 years old because she wanted to read herself. By 4.5 she was reading words and we sent her to school a year earlier than the norm because of this.

I feel very confused by the results and with her current school situation I am doubting myself, what the psychologists said and what I read. Am I reading too much into the tests and she is just 'an average kid' as the teacher says - teacher said she isn't convinced about the report and that she has other really gifted kids in the class, thereby saying she isnt the brightest so why am i hounding her type of response.Please help me get some perspective as I am not sure how to cope with and handle the meltdowns and not sure she is being challenged at school, or perhaps she is just a normal kid who has ups and downs? Sooooo confused !! I have asked for a meeting with class teacher and gifted ed leader but now I am doubting everything.

Full Scale IQ 123 94% 116-128
General Ability Index (GAI) 129 97%122-133
Cognitive Proficiency Index (CPI) 112 79% 104-118
Crystallised Knowledge ​Verbal Comprehension Index 119 90% 109-125
Fluid Reasoning ​Perceptual Reasoning Index 131 98% 120-136
Short Term Memory ​Working Memory Index 110 75% 101-117
​Processing Speed Index106 66% 95-115
WJ-III
Long Term Retrieval 118 88% 108-127
Auditory Processing 155 >99.9% 140-169 Exceptional
Phonemic Awareness 150 >[b]99.9% 136-164 Exceptional

WIAT-II
Reading Ability (Grw-R) 139 99.5% Exceptional
Writing Ability 128 97%
Oral Language160 >99.9% Exceptional

I'm no expert in the least (not even a novice) on interpreting test scores (and I am new to this forum) but, I wanted to comment on the teacher saying she had other/more gifted kids in her classroom. To that I say to the teacher SO WHAT? Those kids are not your concern here, so why does she mention them?! Does your kid (with what looks like many 'exceptional' scores above) deserve a specific amount LESS attention if there are kids who score higher on some areas? There are obviously some areas your kid COULDN'T score higher in (like 99.9) If your kid was just average, wouldn't she be scoring in the 50th percentile? You are looking for what is best for your kid, let other moms advocate for their kids! It really bothers me that the teacher points to other kids.... there is always someone smarter, better, faster. That's no reason to ignore THIS kids talent. (was that a rant?)

Rant away lol, I got my nickers in a knot with this and yes there are definitely more gifted clever able children ( not even to mention the profoundly gifted with massive IQ scores) but I am suddenly feeling so unsure. After doing some reading on a research study on an Australian website they explained that with some gifted children with slower processing speeds the FSIQ is unreliable and shouldn't be used as a measuring tool. The little boy she is constantly measured up against is a full year older and his sting gifted ness is specifically in maths. He also gets tutoring etc. my DD's psych report stated she is already underachieving in maths and now says she 'hates' it and can't do it all due to this pressure to do it quicker ' like xyz' does. Her perfectionism and self criticism then goes crazy and a downward spiral - she cannot see that she is doing great only that she isn't doing enough or as well as due to the comparison. I feel so so nervous going to see the teachers because I am prone to being bullied by them and I find it hard not to let them turn it around and not focus on what she really needs. Feel like I need a lawyer to go with me!

Please anyone with advice on this?

I don't know that much about scores yet either but I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will chime in. I do see some BIG differences in the scores! And she most definitely seems gifted in some areas!

As for the teacher, no comment . Just like no kids in general are alike, same goes for gifted kids! Every gifted child can be very different and she shouldn't be judging the rest based solely on experience with a few individuals.

"Gifted" is such a fluid term. It is usually defined with specific criteria and cutoffs that vary a bit depending on whom you are asking. From a strict cutoff point some might say your child falls just slightly short... but really it is not a YES or NO question but a how much and what might your child need question.

If you use the popular 130 cutoff for "gifted" it would be important to consider that the difference between a child with a GAI of 129 vs 130 is negligible. However and more importantly, the difference between a 129 and the average 100 is quite large and certainly a child with a GAI of 129 would benefit from differentiation and might be bored in a tradition classroom setting.

Does the teacher have many like your child? It is statistically unlikely. Your daughter is like 3/100 children. It is possible to have a couple of these children in a general class but how likely to have many?

Hope that helps! Best wishes in your quest to figure out what works best for your child.

In general, I'd say that teachers are not very good at identifying who is and isn't the "really gifted" among their students. Teachers, and this is a generalization, tend to view the most compliant, convergent, high achieving kids as the most gifted when they may not be gifted at all but rather simply high achievers who fit the bill of what school has to offer. Have you ever read this article on the difference btwn high achievers and gifted kids, the latter of whom may not fit into school well at all: http://www.giftededucation.org.nz/documents/high-achievers-pdf.pdf ?

We were taught (in my EA program) that teachers are correct only 50% of the time but parents are correct 80% of the time. Kids who achieve well and behave themselves in a regular class are one who are having their needs met and therefor are likely bright, or less gifted than the kids with the bad marks and behaviour problems... many teachers don't understand this though and miss it entirely.

Ther seems to be a lot of talk about how girls need to be encouraged in the stem subjects because there's a general generational attitude that those are stereotypically boy subjects, and also that many school teachers are more language arts oriented and uncomfortable with math themselves due to their own upbringing. The homeschoolers (and those who homeschool afterschool) talk about a couple of math books that teach mathmatical thinking to young kids, "Life of Fred" series (the young kids version is called cats, dogs, apples, butterflies). That series is kind of story based to teach mathmatical thinking to the language arts oriented mind. Beast academy (starts at a 3rd grade level and leads into Art of Problem solving). That series is to teach the skills for difficult problem solving, mainly stick-to- itveness and patience. The problems should not be obvious in that series and the kid should have to spend some tome thinking about it, maybe days, maybe get stuck and come back. That's the point of that series.
This is just by what I've read about those books, I haven't seen those books in person.
For calculation speed sign her up for SumDog, you can use the free part. It's online. For conceptual part you can use Khan Academy, also free online, but it's not as cartoony.

Great observations!!

The gifted children that teachers identify are motivated to demonstrate what they are capable of. I'd say that teachers identify gifted students in a sliding-scale fashion in two dimensions-- motivation to do the tasks demanded, and awareness of normative development.

I think that PG kids are very hard to miss (barring 2e issues) unless they are deliberately hiding (and good at doing so). They just tend to do things that are jaw-dropping-- now, if you have a teacher who doesn't understand "that's not supposed to be possible" or thinks "no way-- didn't happen" then maybe.

HG kids easier to miss, and MG kids easiest of all to be overlooked by teachers.

IMO.

My own mom (a primary teacher) thought-- loudly, I might add, and at some length-- that my DD was "completely normal" when she was 1-4yo, and it's pretty darned clear that she's at least HG, probably PG. Frankly, when she cared to show you, it was crystal clear even THEN. Most 2yo's are not asking questions about God and theory of mind.