Trying to make a decision about testing for my 4-year-old, or whether to wait and see. He seems bored with preschool, and we've tried a few, including a great montessori, and the only one he loves (and doesn't challenge authority at) is at our amazing science museum, which only meets daily in the summer.
So what pushed you to test for IQ. Did they also test for a disability, ADD, ADHD, etc?

We got our older ds tested during K, buthe had turned 6. I knew from being in the classroom that he was no learning anything. He verbalized being bored, progressed to "I feel sick" to "I want to die". The public school was unwilling to help, so we tested. The results were so valuable to us helping our ds.

Think about what you want/ can do with the results. Why you want to test. Also, will your dc cooperate for the testing?

Good luck. Keep us posted!

DD 7.5 was nearing the point of nervous breakdown as 1st grade ended. Her at-home and in-class behavior were very different but both were at adds with her previous behavior, her self concept had deteriorated, her friendships were harmful. We needed to know what was up and IQ testing was a logical start. Turns out her issues were explained by a bad educational mismatch so no further assessment was warranted.

Exhibit A was being told by preschool DD was ready for K, but was still a year away from going.

Exhibit B was Kindergarten being an academic waste of time. Thank goodness we put her in piano that year or she would have learned nothing.

Exhibit C - during K, the solution to her being ahead was to send her to the library for harder reading than the Dr. Seuss she was getting, coupled with her acing (computer tests after each book) the harder reading they were allowing. (BYW - I love Dr. Seuss, DD was just beyond this level by K).

At the end of K, we decided enough was enough and began exploring a grade skip. Testing soon followed.

For DD, there was no thought to testing for any disabilities or behavioral issues as it was pretty clear she has none.

--S.F.

We tested because our DD's K experience was a toxic mess, and testing was the way to open up other options beginning in 1st grade.

Testing is expensive, but we found it invaluable to have objective evidence of our dcs' capabilities. Every parent, I suppose, thinks their child is gifted, and the teachers just tune it out unless you can provide a copy of test scores. The scores don't guarantee any educational outcome, but at least they give you common ground for conversation about enrichment, acceleration, etc.

DD was tested at 4 because we thought the results may help in advocating in school - she was in a mixed age Montessori preschool and her behavior was starting to slide downhill FAST. The results were dismissed by the school, but I am very happy we made the decision to test at that time. DD has not been tested for anything 2E and I don't think she will be. The only bump we came across was finding someone who was willing to test DD at 4, all the psychologists in our area didn't test children under 6 unless it was for a disability.

The school did it by their own choice and gave us a couple of weeks notice that it was happening. It cost us nothing. They waited until after age 7, as is their practice, but I agree with the contention that testing is more reliable at that age than earlier, the downside of not testing earlier being that recognition may be delayed. In our case, acceleration was happening anyway, so the results just provided data to justify our accelerated plans.

We tested our DS5 at 4 years, 7 months old due to behavioral issues at preschool. I can't actually remember how I came to the conclusion that he should be tested, but I think it was something along the lines of searching out ADHD information and then stumbling on gifted being mistaken for ADHD.

We got a list of local testers from the Hoagies website, and entertained getting a battery of testing from a gifted center (including neuropsych), but decided to go to an individual LEP who was willing to do piecemeal testing. The IQ test cost $300, but besides IQ score, the LEP also provided her opinion on whether he had ADHD based upon her interaction with DS during the testing (she thought he did not). Admittedly, it's not the full picture, but we didn't want to commit to cost of the full testing in the $2,500 - $3,000 range with him being such a young age. And the IQ score alone did help us realize how much advocacy DS would need going forward.

DS thought IQ testing was fun, the tester had great rapport with him, and the cost was reasonable to us, so there was no downside to the testing from our perspective. But there are plenty of posts on this site about testing not going well, not being representative, etc. I would say that, if your DS is somewhat "difficult", make sure that you choose a tester that knows how to accommodate for that. Good luck with your decision.

Ds7 I tested because a friend and the preschool thought he was gifted. He was 5.10 and at the end of his first year at school. What the teachers were saying seemed at odds to what I saw. Now I know that this is the case with nearly all kids. I thought he might just be 95%ile so I was surprised by the result. I tested ds4 a month ago because I thought I might need it for school.

To mirror what others have said, we tested because there were two very different views of DS. His first grade teacher saw a "bright, but at grade level, and maybe below grade level" child. We saw a child who was understanding college level material and was rather quickly deteriorating. He was tested at 6 and half and came back as very clearly PG.

We were planning to have some testing done for DS6 (summer between kindergarten and first grade) because of our (parents) fine/gross motor concerns, and his kindergarten teacher suggested we do the IQ as well because she felt it explained a number of other behaviors she was seeing in the classroom-- some of which caused him difficulty and some which did not. We credit his kindergarten teacher for seeing things we didn't and understanding him in ways we did not. Six months later we decided to do testing for learning disabilities as well as achievement testing as we felt the school was not adequately challenging and accommodating him in first grade.

We heard this from DS7's pre-school and kindergarten teachers: "He has a hard time focusing on the task at hand, and sometimes he will sit and roll his pencil back and forth rather than do any work. Perhaps it's too much for him and/or he's not ready for this."

We saw a very different child at home -- one who could focus on areas of interest for more than an hour at a time and knew ALL of the kindergarten sight words by the age of 4. Having been a teacher, I knew that if he was gifted but we tested for any kind of learning disability first, the giftedness might never be recognized. So, I put my request for gifted testing in writing to his school at the beginning of first grade. We weren't surprised when the test score revealed that he was gifted, but we were surprised by his level of giftedness. I'm so glad I went with my gut. We've since changed schools and it's clear that we have a very gifted boy who was not going to "go along to get along" and be satisfied with being bored all day. He's also not one to willingly repeat work he's already done (hence the rolling of the pencil and not doing classwork).

We were concerned about ADHD. Although DD had great concentration at home she was drawing or reading when she was supposed to be listening at school. Test showed that she was very gifted with very high achievement. I was not willing to consider a diagnosis and possible medication without a full eval. I am glad we did it!

With DS we knew he was smart but thought it was in the range of "all parents think their kids are smart". Kindergarten was a disaster but everything new with him is so we waited (in hind sight we should have known). In October of Grade 1 the teacher told us to test him for ADHD-I. Like many have said above, he was a different kid at home than he was at school. We tested and he came out gifted/likely LD. He was not totally cooperative for testing and his scores were all over the place. We will retest sometime soon to hopefully get a better picture if it is a real LD or if it was just him being super asynchronous and maybe get a more accurate score to help make some educational choices. Testing was invaluable in his case.

DD is 5 and we're waiting until she is 6 to take the WISC-IV. School is going well even though she isn't learning much. She just loves the social side of things and her school is very much play based so it is working. Her teachers have already made comments and are differentiating as much as they can even without testing.

Decided to test DD when scouring the Internet looking for possible explanations/remedies to DD's explosive over reactions to transitions/disappointments and general brittleness.

An article suggested that all the above could be a symptom of Asynchronous Development seen in some gifted kids. DD's brightness had seemed normal to us up to then (although looking back we were silly not to notice her giftedness) and I was reluctant to believe all the hype but I desperately wanted to know to get her help.

DD was tested IQ (WISC IV) just before turning 8 and achievement (WJ III) a month or so afterwards. This led to taking DD to work with a cognitive therapist specialised in working with gifted children and working with her school to get 3rd grade skipped. Only needed 3 visits to the psych as the grade skip pretty well nailed her OEs.

Overall very glad we did test our DD.

We tested DS at 3.5 (just this year) - we started to question public schools due to DS's emotional sensitivity since he seems to feel things more intensely than his classmates and yet he is one of those "sweet calm boy" as all his teachers say about him... And we were seeing flashes here and there where he seemed to break way out of what we expected a 3 year old would say or worry about. DH and my families had history of giftedness (verified and unverified) along with LDs so we wanted to get an early idea of what issues we may be dealing with and whether we needed to look at other school options... Especially since we noticed that he seems bored with preschool and seems to be out of sync with his current peers. His motor skills are completely age level and he looks like such a typical little 3 year old including his articulation... and unless you catch him in an area that he is passionate about, we noticed that he already seems to be playing down his knowledge and abilities.

Although we are still struggling with what to do, we are glad we did it since we were still unsure he would fall into the gifted range and were surprised by the results especially with his verbal being so high (and it looks like we really have no idea what a 3 year old would be expected to know - makes me wonder if we accidentally gave presents esp books that were too advanced to his classmates at times).

DD was tested at 4.5 because we were thinking of applying for entrance for her into a private gifted school. (We didn't end up doing it because of 2E handling concerns.)

Her scores were used around age 6 as part of a comprehensive special needs evaluation. If she hadn't already had scores, they would've done them then.

She was tested again at age 8 because the school had done a test on her in the fall and produced the world's most bogus IQ score just so they could check off a checky box on a form. On a day when she had a fever. Then tried to use their bogus scores as a reason to not accommodate her. Then wouldn't test her again, even through their scores at a crazy discrepancy. It was really ridiculous and totally par for the course at school. So we had tested privately.

DS is 4.5 and may get tested this summer because he apparently needs some sort of "cognitive testing" to apply for early entrance for Kindergarten. They suggest the SB-IV or a couple other tests I've never heard of. I'm on the fence about whether to just do the SB-IV with the same tester who just tested DD, or go with some test I've never heard of. I dunno, I'm not super excited at the idea of testing a 4.5 year old again.

We tested for admission to a program which required it.

I would not test a four year old unless it's required for entry into something. They are so young, it's just not accurate/stable.

We had great success with 100% play based preschools because you can make a sand table as complicated and intellectually demanding as you like, but you can't make tracing the alphabet any more than tracing the alphabet. Most (but not all) of the preschool teachers in the play based preschools were very good at asking interesting open-ended questions to encourage exploration, and each child could take that question as far as was appropriate for them that day IYKWIM.