Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Worth testing further?

Hi everyone! I'm new here. We just had our 6-year-old son evaluated and he hit the ceiling for the verbal portion of the WISC-IV (getting a 17, 18, and 19), with a subsequent score of 142. We're in Massachusetts, which has no gifted programs per se, and the neuropsych was quite cynical about the school doing anything about his giftedness in a sustained way (sad, since back a few years my brother and I were both grade-skipped without any problem and with great success). Her recommendations to the school focused on help with his executive function deficit, attentional issues and slower processing skills and basically glossed over his giftedness. I'm trying to decide if it would be helpful to have him tested further, say with the WISC-IV extended norms, to see if he would qualify for Davidson's Young Scholars or just to really document how much more support he does need. Anyone have any views on this???? Help!!!! Is the WISC-IV extended norms test long/expensive? How much does the Davidson Institute really help for people like us? My poor son is terribly bored in school. At least he likes gym and recess. Thanks for your help!

Hi!

The extended norms can be calculated from the test he already took. Our tester was not aware of those extended norms, so when I saw some high subtest scores (I took a peek before she gave us the full report) I told her about them. I emailed her the link to the REport, and that was enough.

If he does hit the 145 with the extended norms, then you'd have two options for applying to YSP. One would be to get achievement testing, and the other to apply with a portfolio. I am really glad we did achievement testing in addition to the WISC for our DD6 (1st grade). It gave us very good perspective and made us realize she is much further ahead than what we thought she'd be.

I am not sure whether Dottie checks this board regularly or not. You can repost this in the "Identification, Testing...." board. FWIW, our Dd's verbal score went from 140 to 145 with the extended norms. Shy of the magic 145, but her GAI did surpass that mark.

My son is 13 now, but back when he was 7 almost the same thing happened to our family. Sadly, this forum wasn't around, and there was no one to shake me! Sorry if this comes across a bit strong, but I still haven't fully recovered. Here goes:


Is it too late to stop payment on the check? Sounds like your psychologist has no idea about LOG, (level of giftedness) and deserves a wake up call.

Have you asked the school for a skip? It isn't ok for your son to be 'terribly bored' at school at age 6. Go ahead and talk to the teacher, and then make a formal written request!

With scores like your son's, most 'gifted programs' aren't going to met his needs anyway, so stop feeling sad that there is no gifted program and get to work on figuring out how to keep your son from loosing the spark of love of learning. In the meantime, start some 'emergency afterschooling.' Let your son know that for 10 minutes every day after school, he is going to do some actual learning, not doubt about it! You can let him pick the first topic.


If you do more testing, switch professionals and find someone who 'really' knows HG and PG kids. Davidson has helped my family tremendously, but they can't do magic, or 'make' a school system behave right. However, here or there, you can get tons of ideas about how to advocate and get your son what he, as an individual, needs. You can go ahead and apply to YSP with what you have, just be sure to send them as much of the raw data from the IQ test as possible.

You son may truly have EF deficits, attentional issues and slower processing skills - BUT, if the class room is boring, how can you tell if there are attentional issues? If the work is unchallenging, what's the motivation to grow in EF? Is it really slower processing or is it perfectionism from being left for too long in poor fit classroom situations? (Being given 'too easy' task after 'too easy' task can really mess with a kid's mind, and make him doubt his sanity and feel the anxious need to be 'super correct.'

Do you really expect a 6 year old boy to sit for 6 hours learning almost nothing and have perfect behavior? That wouldn't happen at my house!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thank you both so much! You certainly are the right people to ask! Unfortunately, I do not have the raw scores. You're right, Dottie--the 18 was for Information. The 19 was for Vocabulary. The rest of his scores varied quite widely--11,12, and 13 for Perceptual Reasoning, 12, 14, and 15 for Working Memory, and 10 and 11 for Processing Speed. (Honestly, I'm not sure what happens with arithmetic on this test. I overheard the neuropsychologist testing him on it and he didn't get to demonstrate what he's capable of. She commented that he probably would do very well on the Binet quantitative section, whatever that means.) I haven't had him achievement tested, but since he doesn't really read that well and he has his own idiosyncratic ways of doing math, I'm not sure how he'd do. If he could take a science achievement test, he would probably do extremely well on that!

Grinity, we were writing our posts at the same time so I didn't see yours last night. Thank you so much for your support! If my son were more even I'd definitely think about grade skipping him, but as you can see, he's unusually uneven, and he actually gets along very well socially with his age peers, so I don't think putting him ahead is a viable option for him. What should our neuropsych have done or recommended? In her defense, we did go to her with mainly behavioral complaints, because our son has always had a terrible temper and extremely low frustration tolerance, so that's probably why she concentrated on the learning disability aspect. It's possible I was underplaying his giftedness in the initial interview, too.

I have no doubt that some of the executive function issues are real and some of them from his being gifted.

It's funny, but I actually made up a schedule with him last night for our own "afterschool program" at home, and he was pretty excited about it, so we'll see if that helps. What kinds of things did you and/or your school do for your son? I had talked before our assessment with the school guidance counselor about whether or not my son could at least sit in on other classes that would interest him, and she seemed to think that was a completely wild and unprecedented idea. It made me think I'm being overly demanding, especially as we live in an affluent school district with a lot of very smart Harvard and MIT faculty kids who seem perfectly happy with school. But I guess I need to go by how my son's doing, not how everyone else is doing.