My DD was tested when she was 4.8 yrs and found to be profoundly gifted with 150+ score on the WPPSI. She is currently in 2nd grade at a school for gifted children.
Her brother was just tested yesterday at age 4.5 and his score came back 18 points lower!!

My gut is telling me that there is something wrong here. His personality is different than hers, but we still see many similarities in learning.
The Dr. who gave the test was running 20 min. late, was rushing, didn't get his background information, etc. When she was done she sent him back to the lobby with me. THEN she called him back in because she forgot to give him part of the test!!!!

My question:
Has anyone had experiences with siblings with THAT much of a gap where there wasn't a learning issue?

Has anyone had a DC take the WPPSI-III where the results were completely inaccurate?

I'm trying not to be the "I think my kid is brilliant" mom, but something just doesn't seem right. I had always heard that siblings are normally within 10 points when they share the same parents and background.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Here are my thoughts:

1. The WPPSI is sometimes described as not the best choice for HG+ children (although most often those statements are made with children closer to 6-7 years old).

2. IQ testing with younger children is a bit less accurate than with older ones.

3. I think that the tendency of children from the same family to have similar IQ scores has possibly been a bit overpromoted. I'm sure that children do cluster together that way, but it's not so uncommon for children to score more than 10 points apart either.

4. You're dealing with a lot of sources of variability: underlying variance in g; differences in test-taking skills; variability due to younger age (which may be the result of many factors including different academic exposure, even in the same household); different rapport with the tester; and differences in physical and emotional condition on test day. Kids are just different, and testing young children is less accurate than normal.

5. Even if rushing on the part of the tester may have been a factor, there's not much you can do about it now, except test in the future with a different person.

6. Your son's score likely meets whatever cutoff is used for your daughter's school. If so, what does it matter?

My sisters have to be at least 25 points lower than I am.
Possibly 30 to 35. They are just not that bright.

That's just life.

Note: I'm basing this on the difference of 500 points in SAT scores, which, given what I know about them seems right. Same with my father. He's not exactly the brightest bulb.

Same here, with my sister, though she is more of a traditional high achiever type than I am, with better organizational skills and ability to plow through boring material. My younger brother I'm uncertain about; he learns very quickly, but was never given much academic support, and is a bit of a jock and people-person.

that's just it, he doesn't with the score she said he tested with. You have to have an IQ of 140+ which this would put him shy of.

We are getting him tested with a different test and a different doctor in a few months. If she comes back with the same score then I'll feel better about the accuracy.

I just didn't feel like based on her comments we were talking about the same child.
But I was trying to find out if others had kids with this gap.

I mean, I can't even imagine how to handle two different schools and not making my DS feel like he goes to the "dumb" school even though he is still very very bright.

My two daughters have a difference of more than 20 points. I chalk it up to the fact that my highly gifted daughter was tested by a psychologist with the WISC who has 15+ years of experience working with gifted children. Whereas my older dd was tested by the school psychologist who tested her in a room right off the main hallway. DD was distracted to the point that some parts of the test were deemed invalid. I question the accuracy of this test. Also, she has dyslexia, possibly dyscalculia, and a weakness in receptive language that may have also affected her WISC results.

My kids do have a gap of a minimum of 15 points. But I can SEE that gap. It sounds like you did not have a good testing experience and a retest might not be unwarranted...

Yes, I would try to avoid that at all costs.

I read recently here that there is a GAI-like proxy for FSIQ on the WPPSI, but I can't find it by searching for some reason. I tried Google, but just couldn't pull it up.

My son tested at 5 with the SB-V and did well with it, even though he had before that had such a bad testing experience with the DAS-II that conclusive results couldn't be reported. The difference was a knowledgeable tester who took plenty of time to build up rapport with my son before the start of testing, vs. the school psychologist who understandably had experience mostly or exclusively in testing children on the other end of the bell curve, and for whom time was apparently not a luxury. His school-psych testing had him cowering under his chair, complaining of stomach pain, whereas he didn't have nearly the same amount of trouble with the outside tester.

My kids have FSIQs that are about 18 points apart. But their GAIs are only 8 points apart. The older one has dyslexia and ADHD. And remarkably, when you take the highest scores from the different times he's taken the WISC-IV, the older one's GAI is identical to the younger one's. I mean, I know you're not supposed to do that, but I think it's interesting, and it reinforces my belief (which is based on knowing them and having homeschooled both of them) that their underlying intelligence is the same.

My kids have siblings with IQs more than 18 points apart... but they aren't genetically related

Re different schools, it's pretty danged clear to my kids who the EG kid in our family is and who the uber-achieving kid with the HG+ IQ is in our family (and who the non-uber-achieving and MG-at-best IQ is). What we've always tried to do is simply to give each of our children all the opportunities we can to develop all their strengths, and with three kids with three different sets of gifts and three different personalities that at times has meant three different schools and means we spend a lot of time juggling schedules so that they can each participate in the schools and activities that they are interested in. At one point all three were in different schools - and it was great, because all three were in programs they enjoyed and were benefiting from.

In your situation, I'd do just what you're doing - get another test. If you don't *quite* have the scores to get into the school your dd is in, I'd appeal to the school - one point lower than the cutoff is certainly within the standard range of error on the test, and I'd use the sibling argument as reason to possibly suspect the test results (I have a friend who successfully argued this in our school district). Are there other criteria used for program entrance? Does your ds meet those? If it's just one test, one point below the line, that is an issue, I'd guess you could advocate his way into the program!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Just a quick example of not following the 10-point rule.

I have had all my children tested by the same tester.

Oldest son DYS- tested PG on the SB-V (age 5) and WISC-IV (age 8)
Daughter tested average on WISC-IV (age 7)
Youngest son - tested MG on the SB-V (age 5).

There were 40 points between the highest and lowest overall full scale IQ.
There are no major 2-e issues that I am aware (except a speech delay by the youngest son). My children are very different from one another and I do believe that their score are accurate.

I am fairly certain that my brother, sister and I have a gap in IQ range where I am more average and they are probably in the bright average range. Reason: my father is PG and my mother is average, so it's a genetic thing. My dd6 is the one blessed with Grandpa's brains, she isn't PG but she is probably in the "lower" end of HG especially in math and science (also what Grandpa excels in).

My brother-in-law is PG though my dh is not (gifted...but not PG). I suspect he has an undetected reading issue per his reports though. It was not easy on my dh to have a PG brother...I think he often felt defeated that he would never measure up. Luckily, dh was a talented athlete where his B was not.

My sister and I are pretty similar though we have different strengths and weaknesses. However, I can only imagine she would claim superiority over me as she is older (which makes her right about everything and more accomplished).

But I digress...

You all aren't making me feel better! lol.

I know it is what it is. So we will just have him retested as a second opinion incase he was having an off day or the test giver was off. I honestly think it's a combination of both.
I don't think he is as gifted as his older sister, but he is clearly more advanced than his peers in pre-school.
His pre-school director use to administer the test and she agreed that the report is not consistent with what she sees.
So "fingers crossed."

My only worry is that I've heard that the SBV is harder for young kids than the WPPSI in that it's longer.
Any advice on how to prepare him for a longer test.....other than maturity. ha!

Thanks for the responses.

My sister tested high average and grew up to be a medical doctor. My brother tested at low average, almost extremely low. I tested as profoundly gifted. My baby sister was never tested, and neither were her daughters, but the daughters were placed in the gifted class in school.

If the kid's in pre-school, a provisional result is the best you've got anyway.

I can provide another viewpoint. I've got two girls with identical IQs (same tester at same age on same test) but than present as being probably 10 points apart.

A few thoughts here:

I've seen both the scores be off due to a variety of thing and I've also seen families where there are very large differences in the intelligence of the members. I've more often seen some people be a lot lower than seen a gifted person who is born into a family where there are no other gifties. Actually, I'm not sure if I've ever seen the latter.

In regard to the part of your last quote that I pasted above, though, is he attending a preschool where most of the children are gifted? If not, it is likely that even a 98th percentile child is going to appear clearly more advanced than his classmates. In regard to the preschool director's comment, I really am less and less sure the longer I interact with my own kids and other gifted kids that one can differentiate btwn HG+ and MG with a driven personality solely by interacting with the kid. I do think that a knowledgeable person can often distinguish btwn bright/high achiever and gifted by interacting with the kid, but once you get into 98th percentile and up, pinpointing the actual IQ based on performance or interaction with the kid is a bit more iffy, IHMO of course.

From what I understand, the SB-V isn't that long of a test. Actually, I think that it may be less onerous for your ds in that it has routing tests at the beginning that help the tester move past questions that are too easy for the child and thus shorten the time of the test for a child who is likely to do well. I hope that you get the score he needs to be placed in the same school as his sister.

The sbv is actually shorter for a gifted child due to the routing questions eliminating all the too easy stuff. Both my children found it more fun and tested higher (only margin of error higher in verbal).

I think there are likely a lot more uber-high-achieving high-average ability people in our world than we would think there are hanging around on forums like this. My parents were both teachers, and they knew the IQs of many of the kids they taught when they recommended them for high-ability programs or when they had the kids placed provisionally in their high-ability classes, as well as knowing a lot of kids in their general-ed-ability classes who didn't qualify for the high-ability classes. They saw, as teachers, many kids who had high levels of motivation work hard and achieve more than the school thought they were capable of when simply looking at IQ scores.

polarbear

Just a clarity question: are you saying that there are more high achieving people of high-average ability hanging out on this forum than we'd suspect or that there are more of these people in the world than we'd suspect?

Yikes, I'm sorry about that lack of clarity - I am soooo not an English grammar geek lol! I meant "in the world", not on this forum!

polarbear

DC21 and DC18 are quite a few points apart but usually had similar achievement scores (DC21 has several 2E issues). Among my family, there's a very large range--about 50 points. Except for my younger brother, we were all mg-pg, but our achievement was always very different.

Scores can be off, though, especially with an inexperienced tester or a tired child.

My dd tested much lower than my other kids. I had her tested a year later (different tester), and her scores were almost identical to the others', which surprised me because I expected a little lower.