My DS is 6 and in the first grade. He kept getting bad conduct reports and his teacher finally asked to meet with us. We went in and she said that he moves more than any child she had ever seen. He gets up from his desk, interrupts her when she�s teaching, blurts out the answers before she can finish the questions, etc. We agreed to investigate further and his teacher and I filled out questionnaires. The school social worker reviewed them with one of the school system�s psychologists and came back to us saying they felt he had ADHD-PI. She advised at that time that if we were able to increase his attentiveness to 80% she thought the teacher would recommend him for additional testing to get into the CLUE program at school because �he�s very bright.� I�ve always thought so but I�m not around many children and it didn�t occur to me that he was significantly different.
What would you do in this situation? I�ve been doing some research but I�m not sure where to go next. One of the websites I ran across suggested that if a child is diagnosed with ADHD-PI they should be tested for giftedness. I know there are several tests but I worry that if he finds them boring he won�t score well even if he knows the information.
Thanks in advance!
Welcome!
You son might be gifted, he might have ADHD, he might be gifted with ADHD, or he might be 'bright but underchallenged' with a 'little bit of ADHD.'
Is it possible for you to afford testing with a private tester who understand gifted kids? If so, I would stongly reccomend it. It might even be covered by your insurance. Your pediatrician might be a place to go and explain your concerns.
If you decide to get testing the next step is to figure out how much traveling you had better do to find a tester. If you son is like most gifted (MG, moderately gifted)kids then any tester with experience with gifted children is likely to be helpful. If you son is rather more like the kids we talk about here, then we say he has a higer LOG (level of giftedness) and may be HG or PG. If this is the case, you won't get much help from your typcial local tester, unless you live in a major metropolitan area - these kids are just too rare, and you get lucky.
How are you supposed to know what you son's LOG is? This is a chicken and egg question.
I would start by reading the book, 5 levels of Giftedness by Dr. Deb Ruf.
Then I would spend some time 'Afterschooling' to find your child's readiness level. You can check his bookshelf and see what 'lexile' level the books he prefers are. You can go to singapore math website and take a placement test as if you were homeschooling, or if he prefers to work from the computer, try a free trial of Aleks.com The trick is to get to know your child as a learner. This is have the added benifit of giving him something intellectually challenging while you wait for the school and the testing, etc. Plus it's fun.
Or, it will be fun, once you dust off whatever 'underachievement' he has already collected. I'm talking 10 minutes a day, more if you both want, but 5 days a week so he gets into the habit of doing some challenging work every school day.
Once you've gotten to know your son as a learner, even just a week or two, see if you can get into his classroom to observe. Once you get used to how your son learns, you may be quite shocked to see how much 'waiting around' he has to do, and although some of our little female gifites have the Emotional Quotient developed at age 6 to self-sooth through hours of bordome, it's pretty rare for a male 6 year old to have this strenth that well developed.
It may be litterally frightening for your son to be surrounded by kids who learn so differently than himself for that many hours a day. At 6, my son thought he was in a special class for slow learners, and felt humiliated by his placement. Now he is 13 and has learned to value every person for the wide variety of strengths that are out there, but it took some years for him to get there.
What do you think?
Grinity
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