Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Still debating testing (relaxed) homeschooled 7 year old

My 7 year old has never attended school and we are pretty relaxed homeschoolers. I make sure she's at grade level standards for math and reading (which she's beyond...with pretty minimal instruction) and otherwise we just participate in a lot of local homeschool activities--writing and art classes, nature classes, etc.

With direct instruction I am met with a lot of perfectionism which typically leads to a complete unwillingness to try anything at all. I saw this in her math skills recently, and once I weaseled my way in she picked up a lot of stuff quickly. She has also pretty much given up on art projects and drawing because it doesn't turn out how she imagines them.

Her reading ability and comprehension is great, though I struggle with encouraging her to read more challenging books that are still interesting to her. While she *can* read things at a "5th grade level," she's typically not interested in it and keeps at the early chapter book level when we're in the library (Magic Fairies, Heidi Hecklebeck, Bindi Irwin Adventures, etc.).

Anyway, now I'm rambling.

Back to the point...I've been hemming and hawing with testing. She's the sensitive type--with clothing and how it feels, with loud noises, with big emotions, and she's quick to burst into tears. And I'm wondering if testing would then open the door for options for support for those things, as well as helping me with:

How does she best learn?
How can we get past perfectionism and encourage creativity?
How can we best help her to reach her full academic potential?
How can I not mess this all up???

It's all so expensive to consider, but if it means support for where I'm wavering it seems like it would be worth it...maybe?

fjzh, as Portia mentioned, an OT eval might be helpful with the sensory issues. Our dd had a sensory OT eval covered by insurance, with a referral from our ped.

The other resource that *might* be out there is educational testing through homeschool network connections. It doesn't sound like you need a full neuropsych eval (based on what you've written here - if you are concerned about academic challenges etc then definitely a neuropscyh eval is worth the expense). We had a situation with one of our children where we were looking for an idea of where they were at re ability and achievement, but didn't have a need for a full neuropsych, and we were able to find a tester who could administer the WJ-III cognitive and achievement tests at a relatively low cost - we found her though our local homeschool community. Having an ability and achievement test run gave us a lot of insight into our dd's strengths and relative weaknesses, and the evaluator gave us a great set of recommendations re what to focus on in her learning and also what to anticipate might be a challenge.

Re the reading - it's ok to read books that aren't at the level a child is capable of reading. At your dd's age, it's really important to just let kids read for the fun of it and let them enjoy and relish learning. The only thing I'd suggest is having her read aloud to you, so you can watch her progress and see if there's potentially a reason she's not specifically choosing higher level books. It *is* possible for high ability children who have reading challenges to be reading above grade level, but picking up content from context rather than reading every word, and one way to see if that's happening is to listen and watch as the child reads aloud.

Re perfectionism - this can be tricky, because sometimes what looks like perfectionism is actually a situation where a child can't do the task or is struggling with a task that you'd expect they should be able to do. Unless you see other signs indicating there's a challenge, I wouldn't expect that's what's up. For perfectionism specifically, I could be wrong about this, but I am guessing it will help in general just to have her see other people make mistakes. Maybe also help having her participate in group activities where children her age share their work so she'll see that other students aren't perfect either.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you for your responses, Portia and Polarbear. Who performs OT evaluations? Also, any ideas for terms to use for googling independent educational testing?

We're super relaxed homeschoolers, so trust me, she reads all for pleasure I just like to make suggestions or leave some options laying around that I know she'll like (such as the Bindin Irwin series that I got on an inter library loan).

The perfectionism thing is tricky. With drawing and painting and the like she typically won't even attempt to do it any more, or if she does it's just a quick doodle and she's done. With something like math, if she doesn't know the answer she immediately gives up and refuses to make an attempt or listen to some instruction. Perhaps there's a better word than "perfectionism" for that.

Thank you both. I'm still not sure what we'll end up doing, but I really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks Portia, I didn't realize an occupational therapist would be the one to perform the evaluation, so that's helpful