Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Is my quirky little boy gifted?

Hi!

I am new to this forum and to the idea that my child may be "gifted." My almost 6yo son has just completed his kindergarten year at home with me. He has a strong interest in numbers and seems to be far above his grade level without much help from me. I even feel like I hold him back a bit by not challenging him enough.

I would like to get some perspective on this. I don't know if his ability qualifies as "gifted" and would like to get some outside opinions.

Here is what I have observed:

1) At 3yo he was counting everything without mistakes at least up to 100.
2) Numbers were some of his first words.
3) He started adding in his head two-digit numbers at 4/5 years old. Sometimes he makes mistakes when he has to carry but he gets the easy ones without carrying right almost always.
4) He taught himself multiplication--not by memorization, but by repeated addition of the same number.
5) He converts hours to minutes and adds large numbers together without me teaching him this. If I say I will be gone for 4 hours he says that I will be gone 240 minutes.
6) He saw roman numerals the other day and I explained how they work and he caught on immediately and was able to figure them all out with very little help from me.
7) He was tested at the charter school by the school psychologist when he was being evaluated for autism for his IEP and the she said she had never seen a math score as high as his.

Is he gifted?

Now, he also has many challenges. He was born with a significant visual impairment and is considered legally blind. He also was diagnosed with autism last December. He struggles with his attention span and I am concerned another diagnosis is on the horizon. Of course, a lot of that could be related to his vision and autism but I have not figured it all out yet.

I am grateful for any input you have for me. Thank you.

Giftedness alone offers much challenge, so I encourage you to have a professional assessment for giftedness in your child. If he is indeed gifted, I suggest further optimizing his environment for his developmental benefit. I suggest you learn about each identified characteristic, so that you can improve your parenting and remain critical about any advice, expert or otherwise.

If you don't want to rely on a professional assessment, you can make your own determination of his giftedness based on your future understanding (because your current understanding appears minimal at best). You would also be able to provide this forum with more telling information for us to ponder your question.

You could start learning about autism and giftedness together, and how it is expressed, assessed, and managed.

You probably feel otherwise, but I hope your son is not truly gifted, because I feel that would add to his needs burden, or at least increase the complexity of developmental issues you both face.

He definitely sounds like he's gifted.

Seeing as how you already have 2 diagnoses and are concerned about a 3rd, I'd recommend trying to find a Neuropsychologist who can do a full battery of tests, including IQ.

Our NeuroPsych likes to see the kids and re-test them every couple of years to make sure they are making expected progress as well. I'm going to schedule DS9 for next year for his second go-round.

Whether or not he's technically "gifted" - it sounds like he has some very real strengths combined with some challenges. As the parent of children with challenges, I think it's really important to be sure we help them have opportunities to build on their strengths when they are young because the time devoted to therapies etc to deal with their challenges can too easily take over and become "everything" in their day. While it's so very very important to provide the time put into therapies/remediation/etc focused on challenges, just a small amount of time spent on building in areas that are stengths and passions at the same time will pay off many times over in sefl-esteem.

Like Amy, I'd recommend a neuropsych eval - having the full picture of intellectual abilities isn't so important in terms of the actual numbers as it is in terms of where are the weak spots and where are the strengths. The benefit of going through a full neuropsych eval is that they will look at the whole picture - which includes detailed parent interview and development history - as well as following up on any apparetnly low ability areas with further testing to determine what might be up. You've noted your ds struggles with attention - two of my 2e children also have struggled with attention - and neither one has ADHD - the things that looked like difficulty focusing were due to other types of challenges. You've asked your question here in terms of "is he gifted" and a neuropsych eval will help give you #s to quantify that, but I think more importantly, it might also help you evaluate *why* he seems to have difficulties with attention.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you for your responses, Amy and Polarbear.

Is the neuropsych eval something that is covered by insurance? He was recently evaluated for autism and had a long list of tests. Are those tests different from what you are recommending? I would hate to have to repeat anything.

Also, can anyone point me in the right direction as to where to start looking for a good neuropsychologist?

Sorry for all the questions and thank you ahead of time for your help.

QuirkyKid,
You might be interested in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1843107155
Good luck sorting out what's going with your son! You will get there--and it might take some time.

If insurance covered your other testing related to Autism is very likely you can get a Neuropsych eval covered as well (we went that route and were successful.) As for what tests - that kind of depends on which Dr you go to, but the Weschler tests are pretty much standard (WISC & WIAT).

I would personally recommend starting with your insurance company. There are few neuropsychs to start with, and if you are luck you might have more than one within a 50mile radius to choose between. We had only one in our county that took our insurance, so that's who we went to see.

Neuropsychologists all go through so much training and education to get that title I think it's pretty unlikely to get a "bad" one.

Thank you for the recommendation--it looks interesting. I will see if I can find it at the library. Thanks again!