Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment To test or not to test?

Hello! I'm hoping for a little advice. I'm not sure whether or not to test my son for giftedness. I'm a bit all over the place so please bear with me!

He is 4.5 and in preschool (a play-based preschool). He has given me and those around us reasons to believe he may be gifted. He has deep interests, incredible focus and attention span when he is interested in something, can do puzzles (jigsaw and logic) beyond his normal age (80 piece at 2.5, and at 3 found the game "Rush Hour" at my mom's and could correctly set up the game and get that little red car out for more than half of the level cards). He is extremely creative in his play and problem solving (according to his preschool teachers - He's my first so sometimes I'm not sure what is normal). He is very articulate in his feelings and thoughts, and says things that blow me away sometimes!

He can do quite complex legos on his own and loves building his own designs, quite detailed and usually with cool moving parts. He will listen to books longer than my throat can handle reading, haha! Wind in the Willows, Stuart Little, as well as lots of non-fiction about space (his favorite at the moment). He corrects us if we read the wrong word after reading a picture book once or twice. We also play a game he loves where I say a random, unimportant line from a book and he guesses which book it is from.

He seems to have a great number sense as well - can do basic addition and subtraction in his head, can count to 88 (not sure if he can go higher since he always wants to stop at his "favorite number"). And when introduced to what I think is a new concept for him, he just seems to already know a lot about it.

However, he doesn't have a huge interest in reading by himself, which always seems like the first thing people talk about when mentioning giftedness.

I would normally not do anything until he is tested in school (2nd grade, I believe?), and then go from there. However, we are currently renting and ready to settle down in one of the many towns in the area. The thing is, our state has no mandated gifted program, or funding for gifted programs. Some of the towns near us have private schools that could be good for gifted children (though the cost is a bit nauseating!), and one has a gifted program in their public schools.

However, I feel it's a little extreme to choose a town for a program that I have no idea if my child would even qualify for. It also seems a little premature to have him tested, as the program in that public school doesn't start until 2nd grade.

But sometimes searching for a house is so stressful for me because I have a feeling about him, but just don't know! And I know the future holds a whole lot that we don't know about, but I still feel stressed about it for some reason.

Do you think I need to just pick the regular district and then have our family move if we end up needing to go to the district with gifted services? The regular district is closer to work, and less expensive, so unless we were taking advantage of the gifted services, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for us to live there (though not a crazy commute, and not totally out of our budget).

Sometimes I feel like if we have him tested, and he's an average little boy, I can just relax and get on with life and forget about that stress! And if he did turn out to be gifted, then I would know better how to support him as he goes through school.

That was much longer than expected... so bottom line, is 4.5 too young to be tested?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I had one tested at a few months shy of five but I wouldn't do it again.

To be honest I would move somewhere you like not because he may not be gifted but because the programme may no longer exist when he needs it and/or there may be a better fit. Gifted programmes often don't work for gifted children and are very suspectible to the latest pet educational theory.

Yeah, I wish there was something that really drew us to one of the places - but so far nothing has really swayed us one way or another. I was thinking maybe what the schools offered would tip the scale, but I'm not sure which route to go.

Was the testing a bad experience for your child? Or was it unreliable/not useful?

Sounds like you have a wonderful child, and I'm very familiar with the difficulty of deciding about schooling while the kids are so young. My kids, both under six, haven't been tested, and everything I've read is that unless there is a need to test (possibility of disability or behavior problem), or a use for the test (such qualification for a specific program), testing is not necessary or indeed useful.

For your immediate schooling question, definitely don't assume that the district with gifted services is better. Our school has no gifted services, and I couldn't imagine a better fit for our ages. Do pick the better school, but base it on teacher quality, turnover, resources, and part of the discussion can include advanced kids -- but that's not the whole story of any school.

We tested at 6.5 because school was not going well at all and we needed help. For the most part DS enjoyed the testing but there were times where he wasn't the most cooperative. He spent some of the time sitting until the table and throwing things while I cringed thinking about how much money we were spending a minute. In the end I will say it was worth it for us because it pointed us in the right directions (gifted/probable LD). If we weren't having major issues with school, I would have loved to hold off until he was more cooperative/mature. We ended up having to retest him a little over 2 years later to confirm his LD diagnosis since the first round wasn't conclusive. He also tested considerably more gifted the second time around which seems to match our experience so I think this is more accurate. The first round kind of gave me a false sense of - oh he's not that out there so he'll be ok in a regular class with some enrichment... that didn't work out so well.

With DD we waited until things went off the rails at school and until she was 7.5 in the hopes of avoiding two rounds of testing. She was also much more cooperative/mature than DS was at that age but even she needed reminders to refocus and stay on task. I do think we got reasonably accurate scores for her though.

It can be challenging to get accurate results for young kids. I would also check the potential schools to see if they will accept outside WPPSI testing. We have some schools here that only accept WISC (starts at age 6) as well as some that only accept results less than 2 years old for example. If the school will pay for retesting that might be fine but if you have to pay for two rounds it adds up. I would also recommend checking what the schools use to test - some of the group screening style ones aren't always the most accurate especially for 2E or HG+ kiddos.

I would also recommend taking a deep look at what these schools mean by "gifted" programs. There are huge varieties out there. Some take the top 10%, 5%, 2% or 0.4%. There is a big difference between those ranges. Some gifted programs are also more geared towards the high achieving gifted kid which is great if that is what you have but not so great if you have a 2E highly asynchronous PG kid on your hands for example.

Testing is reliable with the right person, but w/o something that needs addressing or needing eligibility for something, I'd probably wait until later too. We had our daughter evaluated at 5.5 b/c 1) her school goes through kindergarten so we're deciding where to go next and 2) it was recommended by a dev pedi we saw initially b/c we wondered about ADHD

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences - I will be touring a few schools soon and will keep those thoughts in my head as I ask questions.

I don't think there was such thing as a "right person" for the 6.5 year old version of DS... he was (and in some ways still is) a fun one. We actually used the same tester for all 3 rounds of testing because she actually did do an amazing job with what he was throwing at her the first round (both literally and figuratively). I've watched many, many adults fail far worse

If you do test early, just go into it with the understanding that it may be recommended that re-testing be done between 8-10, due to the potential instability of earlier scores (lower or higher). Even when I had DD tested at 7, they recommended testing again later. But we're just going to see how the school testing turns out (achievement and CogAT) before seeing if we need to followup in order to access services.

I, personally, placed a high value on 'decent' school zone when we needed to move, when my DC were under school age, only knowing they were suspected GT. We didn't end up in the rumored 'best' districts, because of commute and cost, and that was okay. We weighed a lot of factors, not just schools (commute time, housing prices, taxes, flexibility for future employment changes, kids in the neighborhood, schools, etc). The real issue will come down to who is at the school when your child is there, and that can shift yearly, just as the child's needs can shift. Our district is a growing one, adding schools and shifting teachers around. Programs can be cut, you just can't count on that. What you can count on is your own involvement and knowledge, and that your awareness and feeding your child's interests, reading, all of that will contribute to a love of learning.

If the zone that has the gifted school is within your grasp, and fits your other desires and limitations, so that if the child doesn't 'fit' within a gifted school format, are the rest of the schools in that district decent enough to make the choice easier? If it's one program in one school in an otherwise less desirable area (too far from work, family, etc), it makes it tougher!

Being where you are now (like here, earlier than I was), you will be able to go in knowing what to advocate for, understanding your child's needs, and that will make a big difference.

Well said!