Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need guidance.

What are the pros and cons to having IQ tests done? My son has scored extremely high on tests given at school. He is 8 and to be honest this really came out of the blue. He is doing 5th grade math (and accelerating very quickly) as well as reading on a 10th grade level. He seems to just know the answers to questions. What does having him tested gain? Any guidance would be great.

Bumping so that someone with more experience re: testing will see it.

It does sound like you might want testing since it is quite probable that your child could qualify for DYS, and then you'd have help advocating with his school.

This:

He seems to just know the answers to questions

sounds very very familiar-- it's really typical of HG+ children. His reading level also sounds like it may be/become difficult to accommodate in an undifferentiated classroom setting.

A warm welcome, ST!

Hi SabrinaT - no professional experience here, but I also have an 8-year-old who was also scoring extremely high on school testing, who is a very advanced reader. Thanks to the advice of others on this list, this lead us to have DD8 take the ACT Explore test through a Talent Search (it sounds like this will be the last year for Explore, before Talent Searches switch to another test, so you may want to try this soon if you decide to go this route). Without any prep other than one practice test (the one suggested by and offered by the Talent Search), she scored extremely well on the Explore. This lead us to an IQ test, and then DYS. The school now might finally be seeing that she has some academic needs that are not met in its typical classrooms - time will tell, but things are looking up!

Testing gives you information which may be useful in advocacy. Some families don't need it, but we were feeling like DD's needs were not being met.

Welcome, SabrinaT!