Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing Siblings

I say go for the talent search testing, especially once they are old enough to take the SAT. D15 has gotten all kinds of benefits from it that we never would have imagined (one particular super duper test score that was a top 3 finisher in her age group in 8th grade has translated into all kinds of opportunities, and they are continuing to build on each other).

While both our dds present as gifted in many ways, their interests, personalities, and styles are very different from each other. Our oldest was very ahead academically by the time she started K, and our younger one, in K this year is not.

We had both girls tested and in paper they are not that different. Their verbal IQs are similar and the oldest has higher performance /non-verbal.

I think it was important that we got a sense of our youngest. We will not be surprised if academically she takes off suddenly. OTOH, if she does not, given her IQ we would investigate possible 2E issues.

My answer is ABSOLUTELY. I could have written a nearly indentical post about my two...last year. We did have our younger one tested, but only for admittance to a gifted charter school that required it. We had NO issues at all with him in school, and he was happy, happy, happy in every setting he had been in. He was bright, but not the kind of bright that has folks asking "How OLD is he?" One reason for that is because he was rarely around adults, preferring playing with buddies to the "academic" stuff that his brother clearly preferred from a very young age.

Imagine our surprise when he tested extremely close to his very PG brother (both are now DYS)...we became extremely thankful that we had done the testing when we started to see a completely different "flavor" of symptoms from him not too long after. We could use the "PG lens" and came up with possibly different diagnoses/solution sets than we might have otherwise. And we were so happy that we had done his testing when he was in a "happy place" and not in a crisis situation (our older son's first testing - the WPPSI - is what we refer to in our house as "the emergency test." We can now laugh at some of the things he pulled during that test, but it was NOT funny at the time!!).

If there's no reason NOT to test (money, anxiety on the part of the child you, etc.), I'd say go ahead and do it.

Thanks for all the thoughts so far. To add a little more... I was the younger sibling of a precociously gifted older brother, so not wanting to compete with that (and not being similarly or identifiably as precocious) I defined myself against that. He was the "smart" one so I chose to tbe the "sporty one". It wasn't until I was studying at postgrad level that I realised I was reasonably bright also. I guess I don't want DS2 to do that. We've already had a bit of a wake-up call in that we thought DS1 was the "mathy" one until DS2 just spontaneously over one summer took huge leaps with his interest in and knowledge of maths.

The other thing is that whilst DS2's needs are being met now, we've learnt from experience that things can and do change. We've already changed schools for DS1 and whilst that's not on the cards again at the moment, who knows if it will again be necessary in the future. I also know that having the piece of paper (DS1's testing) gave us the confidence to really advocate on his behalf. The new school we'd chosen were realising he was pretty bright but until we could verify that we kept doubting ourselves. Having the testing results gave us confidence and also made us realise his profile was more even than we'd realised.

Sounds like I'm talking myself into this now doesn't it?

Trouble is it doesn't stop there as we also have a DD(4), so I guess if we test DS2 we'll likely test her too.

Any opinions on the optimal age to test?
Thanks again.
abra

Is your older one a DYS? You mention scores in the >99.9th.

I think now that ds2 is 6 is a good age.

We are not in the USA otherwise we would definitely apply to DYS. Unfortunately there is nothing like it where we are.

Yes, in terms of age I was thinking sometime within this next year would be good. He has some separation/anxiety issues so not sure if he will go off with a tester without getting upset so was hoping that would resolve before we thought about testing.