Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment LOG - what would you call DD and DS?

I have several meetings with administration and teachers coming up at which my children will or may be discussed. Will you all help me to use the right terminology to describe them? Are they highly gifted? Just generally gifted with high giftedness in one area?

I don't want to 'overstate' what they are in any way, but also need to make it clear that their needs are not the same as a smart but non gifted high achiever (and I don't want to downplay them either, likewise a disservice). I'm pretty sure they get it, but just in case....

Here are their profiles -- what do you make of them, and what would you call them? Clearly I'm a little confused :-)

My DS10 was tested two years ago (2nd grade, 8 yo), my DD was just tested this year (2nd grade, 8 yo). Their scores are as follows:

WISC iv:
DS
VCI 158
PRI 115
WM 120
PSI 97
GAI: 148

DD
VCI 158
PRI 129
WM 123
PSI 103
GAI: 153

I would call them highly gifted, yes. (My DS is right there in the same GAI range but with more even scores).

That said, I don't know that talking to schools directly about levels of giftedness is going to get you anywhere. You're better off discussing needs of your individual kiddos and keeping them engaged. The scores are rare enough that they should speak for themselves (I know they startled our gifted coordinator when we first met with her). The WISC is pretty well known do it probably doesn't need interpretation on your part to signal that your kids may have some extraordinary needs.

Agreed. And double for Portia's comment that most people think they know what gifted means, but really don't have a clue about the kinds of giftedness that drive people to this board (heck, until DS came along, neither did I).

What might be more effective than discussing LOGs, if you are not sure they are getting the point, is to gently note that the infrequency of such scores. Your children have scores in the 1 in 10,000 frequency, with VCIs perhaps closer to 1 in 20,000. A teacher with 30 kids a year would see such a child once every 300 years, 600 years or so...

ETA: Specific data, according to http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx, is that an IQ of 158 is at the 99.9944812644 percentile, representing about 1 in 18,120

Thank you all. This is so helpful. I have a number of meetings coming up to discuss my kids and a couple of folks at the school interested in learning more about all this. I just want to be sure I'm clear (in my own mind) what we're looking at so that any gentle steering I do is in the correct direction :-). Truly a lot of the clarification is for myself, so I can feel confident in picking articles that discuss that HG profile rather than ones that fits a G/MG profile. Does that make sense?

And thank you MichelleC for the info on the 1 in 10,000 or 20,000 numbers. Its useful for me to hear, and also may be for some of the educators. Helps to drive the point home that my kids really might need something different.

I do believe that the GAI can be used as an overall IQ score, if any administrators care about that "overall IQ" number. It's particularly important in your case to not use the FSIQ (in fact, it wasn't even reported it looks like).

Even so, you're talking about a rarity of 1 in 1,500 (maybe two or three of these kids in the entire school district across all grades) and 1 in 5,000 (two or three of these kids across all grades from several school districts). That should get you some sort of acknowledgment from the district that they don't see very many kids at these levels at all, so that they inherently might not be as equipped to meet their needs.

I think that, as others have noted, understanding rarity is the key to accepting how much "different" an educational plan may need to look.

This was shocking/hard to accept for us, even though DD was 12 at the time-- but one local school counselor who had been in the same building for two decades in a district with 30% of the students ID'ed as "gifted" by the state benchmarks-- he'd seen one other student "sort of like that." He has seen half of the students in this district (and there isn't a local private school with better academics-- so he does see the top students)-- and that adds up to about 16,000 kids over that period of time.

The students that he sees are usually those with FSIQ 105 (my state's estimated average) to about 140. That is the center of the local distribution-- and DD is still apparently an outlier in that group-- enough to really be a novelty among educators she has encountered.

That was a real wake-up for us as parents, but it has been useful in that it has given us the courage to ignore what "everyone knows" that one does-- or does not-- do with kids.

Courage. That's it. This is why I will never, ever regret the time and money we spent get a full evaluation by gifted-experienced pros. When my courage falters, I recall that stark report to remind myself that I do, in fact, know better.

It helps me withstand my impulse to cave to peer pressure, do something dramatically, typically disciplinary just to show, "Hey - look I really am a good mom and I really do work on this stuff with DS."

Do you see the average processing speed scores in everyday life?

Puffin -- With DS, yes. I think. Hard to tell. He has some other issues that slow him down (fine motor issues/hand strength that make writing extra frustrating) but I notice it with speaking as well - he starts to tell you a story or something he's excited about, and he stumbles over it, re-starting several times. Almost sounds like a stutter (but multi word stutter) at times. Part of it is thinking as he goes, and part of it is trying to perfect his thoughts, I"m sure. It can be hard to tell how much is processing speed vs. trying to say things "just so" (but maybe that's all one and the same?). He also has some organizational/exec function issues... he can't do multi step directions well, and I wonder if some of that isn't the weakness there too. He also has a distinct issue with timed skill tests. Things like 1+1 (you know, stuff he's known forever) he seemingly has to think about when timed (and occasionally when not, so not all timer anxiety).

With DD not at all. She's quick. The tester - with whom I just spoke the other day - wasn't entirely sure that was accurate for her; she thought some of the slowness may have been perfectionism (which resonates for DD).

All that said - I am never entirely sure what to look at for the processing issue, or what it truly means for them. I'd love help with that angle, if anyone has ideas :-)

Just to clarify something.

GAI (General Ability Index) is derived from the sum of the subtests that go into calculating the VCI and PRI. It is not, in and of itself, a set of subtests (meaning it doesn't have its own "private" subtests). It's essentially used as a replacement for a full-scale IQ score that cuts out working memory and processing speed results (because these tests have much lower levels of 'g'). From what I understand, you can always calculate a GAI from WISC-IV subtests, but it isn't always explicitly calculated because it often doesn't differ wildly from full-scale IQ (which is a summary of all of the subtests).

It's believed by most professionals that GAI is actually a better indicator of IQ than FSIQ, as the WMI and PSI are often areas of relative weakness, particularly for 2e individuals.