Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Trying to figure out DS5

Hello, I am new to the forum. Please forgive any mistakes as I am not a native English speaker.

I found this forum trying to figure out what's going on with DS5 so I can help him and I would be thankful for any insights.

My son was a precocious little boy who learnt a lot of things by himself aged 2, but suddenly stopped showing interest about anything after he begun preschool at 3.

Still, last year, aged 4, he could read and write (he basically taught himself) and he learnt in a couple of weeks how to add and substract two digit numbers in his head, and also, during the following months, some multiplication, operations with negative numbers, etc, all by himself.

As he's due to begin formal school next year and I knew he had already mastered many of the contents he's supposed to learn in first grade, I had him tested. I thought he might be gifted in maths, and I knew he wouldn't be able to access any enrichment program without an IQ test.

His WPPSI IV results were:
FSIQ 131, 98th percentile
GAI 149, 99,9th percentile.

The subtest results seem quite scattered, though. He had high overall results in the subtests related to verbal comprehension, very uneven results in the visual spatial index (block design 19, object assembly 11)and somewhat uneven results in the fluid reasoning index (matrix reasoning 18, picture concepts 13). The working memory index is high average, whereas the processing speed index is just average.

With this information, I would like to know:
-Is he likely to perform well in a standard school, provided he gets some enrichment activities, or will he be too far ahead and become bored?
-Do you think that the test results help to explain his current disengagement and lack of curiosity? He's a very social child who loves playing with his mates (which I encourage) but he consistently hides what he can do, refuses to read or to be read to and becomes angry and inmediately shuts down if he suspects we are trying to teach him something. Right now, it seems like he only wants to watch TV.

He currently attends a play based school. They don't do worksheets and they aren't supposed to learn anything they are not interested in. We also try not to put pressure on him, but I am a little concerned because he really seems too young to be so apathetic.

I would really appreciate some help!

Welcome!

It is not particularly unusual for very young children to have some scatter in testing, as they tend to be inconsistently testable for perfectly unremarkable developmental reasons. So the substantial scatter in VS and FR tasks may or may not be meaningful. In any case, the scatter didn't end up affecting his global composites much, as neither of the low subtests is included in the FSIQ or GAI. He does have a qualifying score for DYS, btw, as the GAI is sufficiently high. (Assuming he is a US person. If not, there may be resources in your community that use similar qualification criteria.) The substantial difference between FSIQ and GAI would also suggest that the GAI is a better representation of his learning potential than the FSIQ is; I would view the GAI as currently more important to his educational planning.

His lower WMI and PSI (relatively) are also not particularly unusual, either for GT or for very young children, again for unremarkable developmental reasons.

To your questions:
1. I believe your existing data suggests that he is already so far ahead that he finds school-based academic disengaging. This gap is likely to widen over time, rather than diminish, given his assessed ability.

2. Yes, at least in part. If he has spent two years realizing that his age peers are working on the rudiments of skills that he has already mastered long ago, he may have developed masking behaviors, so that he won't appear different from his peers. This is especially likely in a socially-oriented child. This also answers some of your first question--if he continues to be in settings where his academic and cognitive abilities are far outside the norm, he will likely continue to experience internal or external pressure to hide his natural curiosity for the sake of fitting social norms.

Despite placement in a play-based school, I expect he has noticed that his interests are far different academically from those of his classmates. So even though academics are all interest-led, there is plenty of feedback (intentional or unintentional) that his academic interests are not normative, which he may be interpreting as "bad". Hence, the hiding and resistance to being taught.

Far from being apathetic, he would appear to be deeply motivated to find common ground with his age-peers, and seems to be working very hard to feel accepted by them.

Thank you very much for your answer. What you say really makes sense. In fact, it had already crossed my mind that something like this might be going on, but I thought I was probably exagerating since my son doesn't even look gifted right now.

Unfortunately, our options are limited. We live in Europe and there are not gifted schools in our country. Our choices are basically enrichment or grade skipping within a normal school, and I think DS is still too inmature for acceleration (he can be adding hundreds in his head one minute, then the next minute throw a tantrum because his balloon popped).

I don't really know how we will cope, but after reading your message I will make finding intellectual peers for my son my top priority, so he can understand he's not alone.

Meanwhile, I will continue in the forum reading your messages and learning from you and all the others!