Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How gifted is she?

We've known since Lauren was 6months old that she was different than the average baby. She started talking at 6mos old. By 9mos she was putting 2 words together and by 1 year she was talking in sentences. At 18mos old I was told by a Doctor that Lauren was a savant. At that age Lauren could memorize and entire movie after watching it twice and she could sing at least 10+ songs beginning to end, also memorizing them after a couple times of hearing them. Now, at 5 years old, she can make us speechless with her intellect and reason. She started Kindergarten this school year at 4yrs old. In January we moved from CA to NV and her teacher felt she needed to be assessed. The results came back that Lauren tested at a 2nd grade level in all subjects, and is at a 4th grade level in reading. She's passed Kindergarten now, is currently in mid first grade and by the end of the school year she'll be starting 2nd grade work. (we have no skipped her..she does accelerated work). I have a meeting with her teacher today to find out what tests she was actually given and to get the results. Lauren has never been professionally tested and so I honestly have no idea what level she is. How did all of you go about finding out?

Hi Tammiane - Welcome

My son was such a disturbance in his 2nd grade classroom, that we ended up taking him to a psychologist, who offered testing. I didn't realize that the scores were any big deal until I looked at the Davidson Website and saw that he qualified. I'm not sure how useful having a number is, in itself. Also, it was surprisingly unuseful in judging relative strengths because some areas are more open to "self-teaching" through reading, while some are skills that most kids need to be taught.

Thanks for the response. Nice to meet you

Is your son in the academy now? We're doing the application process for the Young Scholar program (4-6yr olds) right now. I'll be done with it this weekend and am anxious to see what happens. Like I said, I have no idea if Lauren is considered profoundly gifted but just judging from some of the examples/checklists that I've found, she sounds like she might be. I guess we'll see what they say. Anyway, its nice meeting someone who can relate. I don't know anyone that has a child like we have. I really don't have anyone to talk to about her and sometimes I feel like it sounds like Im bragging about the things she does, when really I just want to vent or to find someone who can really relate! Anyway, I hope we can chat some more!

We always knew our son was special. He was doing things the day he was born that the books said would come at 3 months. However, we also assumed that much of our pride was simple first parent stuff - so we didn't really assume that there was something big going on. (Although as we are both HG, we did assume gifted.)

Then kindergarten became a nightmare. When my husband confided that he was starting to wonder if our son was autistic - and when I was able to answer 'no' along with a list of all the reasons why (having researched it the week before) - we agreed we needed an evaluation.

As for the usefulness of the numbers, I would say that the full scale score isn't very useful or meaningful. However, we got a full report from the psych who did our testing and he explained the significance of some of the various subtests where our son hit the ceiling or didn't do as well and why. We ended up with a better understanding of why our son was going to have problems in a regular classroom.

We didn't really buy into the profoundly gifted label until a couple of months ago when a real expert in PG kids gave us almost the same analysis of DS's scores - ignore the full scale and concentrate on this one subtest. On the basis of that subtest, the conclusion was that our son was most definitely PG.

I used to tell stories about DS all the time, never realizing that they were that unusual. I figured all kids were learning to read at 2 or 3 now with all the educational shows and toys available.... LOL

I would love for him to be in the academy, but there are no jobs in my profession in the Reno area and we don't want to change professions and move away from all family in one whack. Too hard on the kids. So, we are doing the grade skipping thing in a very understanding and supportive private school....

Just a suggestion - Exceptionally Gifted Children by Miraca Gross. Boring book - but really interesting from the point of view of looking into the lives of a whole bunch of EG/PG kids from Australia. It helped me realize how normal my son is .... when compared to the right peer group.

Davidson is the best thing you can do right now... helps so much to have others who 'get it'.

Mary

Mary,
How old is you son and how is the grade skipping going? I have 11 year old who is doing accelerated math and LA and the school did ask as about a grade skip but I am so reluctant... for many reasons. One of them is being the younges/smalest/least mature boy about all those pre and puberty teenagers. For now I am thinking to wait another year, do six grade as usual (he is still going to do geometry and advance LA and he will love his six grade teacher who is a theater maniac and my son is a real thespian) and then skip seventh grade and go directly to 8th, or maybe skip 8th and go to HS, but this one might be more difficult.
Please share about grade skipping.

Dear Ania,
I know you asked Mary about grade skipping, but I'll offer my two cents as well. My son is 11 and skipped 5th grade last year to go to sixth. This year he's in 7th. He is also small, thin, and young (a late summer baby). He said skipping was the hardest thing he's had to do, probably because it coincided with a change in schools (from elementary to middle) and suddenly he's immersed in a whole new setting where everyone can see how little he is. I should have skipped him in elementary school (I read somewhere the younger the better). Both his younger brothers were skipped younger (2nd and 4th grades). BUT (big BUT), my son gets all A's and is clearly at the top of his 7th grade class. He is better challenged, although he still considers a possible additional grade skip. I asked him recently if he could imagine being a sixth grader this year, and he gasped, "NO!" Even if he is outsized, it is clearly a superior situation for him. He gets along with older kids better (I think his classmates are still too immature for him!). My advice--the sooner the better!

Hi Ania -
I think it's really hard to judge maturity in a gifted boy. As a parent of one, and don't have handfuls of other boys to compare him to. Honestly, I find myself comparing him to others who share his vocabulary and verbal expression - that is - adults! No wonder he comes up short.

His teachers see him as "immature and silly" but I know that has a lot to do with him being underchallenged and having way too much time on his hands, and also his frustration at being not being "gotten." DS9 also used to do that classic PG thing of wanting to interact exclusivly with the teacher during the elementary grades. Looks "dependent" from their perspective, but quite reasonable to want to interact with some one who understands the words you use and the ideas you are trying to explain.

Also, let's be honest about the "pg palor" that many, but not all, of our boys have: Large head, nearsightedness, asthma, allergies, and ADHD are all statistically more common among gifted kids.

I was so relieved to see meet another mom of PG boys in real life and see that our boys all looked a bit...well...how should I say it...
disco-ordinated!

They were sitting at lunch, trading deep adult level ideas with us, sputtering and wiggling and forgetting what they were going to say and full of intensity! Very lovable! But I could see where people's worries about maturity would kick in.

Then there was the recent brain scans that show that the cortical thickening that usually takes place at age 6 is delayed until age 11 in highly gifted kids and the scientists have no idea what that means. But as a mom, I don't mind being wrong, so I'll speculate that all the things that make our PGlet boys look "immature" have a physical basis right there in brain development, and are really just right for THEM, and not really a basis for what schoolroom they should be sitting in.

What if, I ask my son, the school decided to place all boys in classrooms by height? In some ways it would be wonderful! The short kids could excell at basketball for a change! But basically it's obvious that it arbitrary, and I think strict age grouping is arbitrary also.

Smile

Hi Cym,
We had a very similar experience with grade skipping and our now 12 year old. He started K at 4 making the cut off by 2 weeks. By 4th grade it was clear that he needed more acceleration. His elementary school went to 5th grade with the 6th grade in the middle school. We decided, after a lot of meetings with his principal and the principal of the Middle school, that he would skip 5th grade. Doing this made it a little easier since all of the 6th graders would be new to the school and comming from 4 different schools, there were alot of kids who didn't know each other. In hindsight I wish we had skipped him earlier in grade school so that he had a larger friend base. He is also on the small side although average for his age. Eighth grade has been very good for him socially. Overall the skip was good but still not enough. The school has been very stubborn about anymore advancement. We had to start homeschooling him this year. He will enter the High School next fall at 12 and will do dual-enrollment with a combination of High School, homeschool and College. It's been challenging for me; I feel as though I have spent the entire school year running behind him just trying to keep up. (I'm still not sure who got homeschooled?) Like your son, he is very positive about the grade skip. Since most of the kids his age are in 6th grade now, he sometimes socializes with them and he will come home and say that he can't imagine being in 6th grade.
Eileen

I've been out of town - sorry it took so long to respond.

Last fall, we did a single year grade skip coupled with another 2 years acceleration in math and science. It has worked very well.

It is now clear that he really needs to skip the additional 2 years. (Still waiting for the test report from the psych that will say that.... but she has had the flu and hasn't sent it yet.) He is bored and doesn't fit well with the younger kids partially because of that.

On the flip side, we have found that one of the older kids is 'grabbing him and hugging him' at school. My husband is starting to get concerned about this. Me too now that I know about it....

Anyway - It isn't easy, but when a kid is this advanced, there isn't any easy path. My mom insisted that I NOT skip grades as a kid and I felt isolated and alone until I got to college - where I promptly skipped 3 years. (CLEP, AP, summer school, etc).

I would suggest that you start with a complete evaluation by a qualified psych if you are thinking about a grade skip. We went with a neuropsych and I am starting to believe it was the best thing we have done for our son. Just wish we had done it a year ago. So many issues that we didn't understand all year....

Mary

My son sounds a lot like Tammiane's daughter or Trinity's son. Michael could memorize anything and was an early talker and reader. Since he was our first we chalked it up to just being advanced. At the end of first grade, when he was pleading every day not to go to school, but stay home and read, we finally decided to get him tested. Several doctors, pyschologists, grandparents, and teachers had suggested it before, but my husband and I didn't want a number associated with him. Finally one PhD said "Just test him and then you'll know exactly what you are working with". We ran the full battery of tests, 3 days worth, and it was eye-opening for my husband and me. Finally we knew where his strengths and weaknesses were, and got a good sense of HOW bored he was in school. His school let him skip 2nd grade and this year in 3rd has been great. He is not the ideal student, because he still wants to do what he wants, which is read all the time, but he has made friends and gets through the assignments he doesn't want to do. Could he have skipped another grade? Sure, but I think his particular class is really good for him, they have been very accepting and his teacher skipped a grade in grade school and really "gets" him and lets him do certain things at his own pace. He also happens to be very tall, and physically is probably the tallest kid in his class now, even though is 2 to 3 years younger than most other kids. I think looking at size is a big consideration because that is one thing the kids can't really pick on him about, and lots of kids in his old grade still give him a hard time about skipping.

All in all, I would definitely do a complete evaluation with a pyschologist for your kid. It can't hurt and would give you some valuable information about your child. We didn't even tell Michael what was going on. We just told him "You know how you can read and spell really well? Well, there are some people who want to figure out how your brain lets you do that. So you are going to see Dr. So and So and they are going to ask you questions and see if they can figure it out. You will be helping them." He has never been told his IQ or how well he did on the tests, and I am not sure if we will share that info anytime soon.