Hi, We have finally decided to have our dd (almost 8) tested. We live in Phoenix, AZ area but are willing to travel to nearby states if need be. We know a family that travelled to Colorado to have their kids tested and although we hope to avoid that, it is possible.
Some background (long!):
Dd has been raised bilingually so can speak and understand 2 languages though she can just read and write in English. She's learning to read and write the other language but it comes much more slowly since she's not exposed to it enough.
She has always been verbally advanced, although we didn't recognize it till she was 4. She started reading at 4 and progressed to chapter books like Magic Tree House by age 5. At age 4, she seemed quite advanced with numbers too, could count up and down from any number under 1000, could do simple single-digit addition / subtraction in her head, could skip count by 2, 5, 10, could do ordinal numbers, etc.
Then she went to a Montessori kindergarten. The teacher was wonderful with gifted kids. The class was for k/1st so dd has some (1st grade) friends she could associate with. Her reading was still progressing well. By the end of K year, she was reading at almost 3rd grade. However, she didn't make much progress in math. They taught place values and addition / subtration of 4-digit numbers right away. Dd never understood borrowing and regrouping concepts and thus could not reliably do these math correctly. She often made mistakes. At the end of the year, she still could not do it well.
For 1st and 2nd grade we have decided to homeschool her for various reasons, thinking that she developed fear for math is one of them. I have tried numerous times to work with her on math but she is not at all interested. After 2 years, I think she is now somewhat behind the public school kids in her grade. She could now do multiple digit addition but not so well with subtraction when there's borrowing involved, could multiply by 2, 3, and maybe 5, but the rest will be difficult.
What's interesting is when she was in K, the gifted tester in her school tested her individually with k-level CogAt and found her to be at 98 percentile in quantitative and only 86 in language. I heard CogAt is notoriously inaccurate but I don't know whether it's inaccurate in both directions, ie can it overestimate her quantitative understanding? Then at the end of 1st grade, she was tested again with another tester in our public school. This time they used CogAt at a year ahead (end of 2nd grade level) to test her. She was 93 percentile in language and 73 in quantitative. The tester said she had all the concepts down but could not do the arithmetic part of it. I'm wondering, Can scores get reversed within a year?
Anyway, I start to feel that I need help in figuring out why math hasn't seemed to kick in for her, both in terms of interest and in terms of understanding it. She is self-driven and self-taught in all other areas: reading, writing, spelling, drawing, learning about animals, plants, dinosaurs, etc etc. She just learned by asking me questions after questions. She has learned everything else very well. Not to say that I need her to be great in every single area. It is ok if math is not her strength, but with all those earlier advanced understandings and confusing test scores, I just want to make sure we are not somehow making it worse for her.
We also need help helping her manage her emotional intensity. She tends to get very explosive when she's frustrated. She's highly sensitive to noise and crowd.
Bottom line is: I know she's gifted. I know she's not PG. I don't think she has 2e issue. We need help understanding how to work with her on math and emotional explosiveness.
Does anyone have a good recommendation for a tester?
