Hi, I'm brand new here. My DS has recently been tested with the WIPPSI and WIAT, and the psychologist's report says that he is gifted. I don't know a lot about the information I've been given though and when I asked I was told to come over here and ask because you people understand the numbers.

I hope that's right, because we'd really like to know what all this means for him.

There are a lot of numbers here, and I'm not sure which ones I need to give you, the main ones are Verbal 155, Performance 155, Processing Speed 123, Full 155 and General Language Composite 151. Then on the WIAT it has percentiles: Word Reading >99.9, Reading Comprehension >99.9, Pseudoword Decoding >99.9, Numerical Operations 99.9, Maths Reasoning >99.9, Spelling 99 and Listening Comprehension >99.9. The psychologist said he hit the roof on the tests, I'm not sure what that means, I think he could have kept going?

Any interpretation would be greatly appreciated, we're at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, we've taken him out of preschool (before the testing) because he was so bored, but don't know what else to do.

You've certainly been sent to the right place. Hopefully someone more knowledgable than me will come along soon with more advice. But in the mean time start reading about the DYS (davidson young scholar) program. Those are VERY high scores!

Hi! Welcome~ this is a good place to find folks with kids whose 'level of giftedness' or 'log' are super high, which is what is indicated by the numbers you have there.
A simple congrats to your ds would not suffice, as I am sure you already know your child is a challenge to parent!

Sorry to hear preschool did not work out, sometimes if it is just a play oriented situation with a broad range of ages, it can work ok even for a highly-gifted child. But often there is such a different level of play, language and interest that a child like this does not fit and finds it very boring.
My daughter also got pretty bored in preschool at 3.5 so I lobbied to have her in K the next year. We had the wppsi done and that was really helpful to be able to show the scores to the director. Gave them something concrete to point to when other 'pushy' parents come around asking for the same exceptions
-- they needed this piece of paper even though in her own words the director said my dd 'is obviously highly verbally gifted'.

Are there other issues you are trying to sort out for your child at this point? Questions from the report, etc.?

Best of luck finding the info you need!

Gosh, yes, VERY challenging!

Um... we have lots of questions! The psychologist said he needs to be accelerated by two or more years, I'd love to hear from anyone who's got experience with that sort of thing, because I can't even begin to work out how it could work. We're wondering if we should be thinking about home schooling because how can school work for him? About the report, I don't really understand the numbers - I get that they're high but what does it mean? And any advice anyone has who has gone this way before would be great, because we're out of our depth!

Thanks Dottie, I'll try and give you the info. He's nearly 4 and a half. We're not in the US so I don't think we can use DYS. He'd be due to start school at the end of this year but the suggestion was that we look at starting sooner, which I'm not sure about. The WIAT scores have age equivalents but not grades? They are Word Reading 9:0, Reading Comprehension 11:8, Pseudoword Decoding 14:0, Numerical Operations 7:8, Maths Reasoning 8:8, Spelling 7:0 and Listening Comprehension 10:0. Only three of them have a score with 3 digit numbers (the others are blank) all three are 160 (that column is headed STD). That's for the word reading, Maths reasoning and Listening comprehension.

I'd love to hear about some of those options - as far as I see it our options are start school early now, start when he turns 5 (end of the year) - in either of those cases I guess we have to think about what level he starts, or not start him at all and keep him home for at least a while.

Thank you so much for the info, it's just so hard to know what to do. He's totally driven to learn, never without a book and sending him out "to play" is his idea of a punishment. He's utterly exhausting and not always a very happy boy because he gets so frustrated sometimes. He's best when busy, and that's often a real challenge to maintain, because he starts out enjoying something but then he masters where they're at and it doesn't move on, which means he gets bored again. Since taking him out of preschool he's slowly returning to a much happier state of mind, but he's just so different to his wee friends that he doesn't really belong anywhere. We're also getting a fairly constant barrage from one set of grandparents that we have to "let him be a child" and stop "making him do things"... when we're not making him do anything at all.

[Pricks up ears] Are you in Scotland by any chance? (PM me if you are and if it would be helpful to have a same-country contact!)

Welcome Trina! Congratulations and sympathies as well lol.

I have a DS8 who has been accelerated 5 years for math and about 7-8 years in biology and chemistry. He will be taking high school math and science full time for the coming school year. We homeschool, using an eclectic method--partial unschooling (conceptual math and science), partial structure (mostly for online math homework and his high school science labs via our non-brick-and-mortar charter school). I say this just to present to you one option to quench the thirst of your obviously brilliant child when you think he is ready.

When my son was 4 many people told me to let him be a child and I did...but I wasn't prepared for a child who devoured books the way he did and I was constantly searching, searching...for something that would help me balance the hunger of a child who was extremely asynchronous in ability vs development. It was SO difficult, to make anyone understand that this is who he was. That learning was what this child wanted. It got so difficult to explain to people that I started focusing on his inabilities instead just to deflect questions and disapproving looks.

It all finally fell in place when we had him tested recently. I sent his scores to a psych recommended by a friend and she interpreted his scores for me (in addition to the wonderful help Dottie gave calculating his extended norms). She gave me the appropriate percentiles (earlier tester didn't) and suggested I just let him "go" as far as he wants to. It was very helpful to hear her say that. I used to keep holding him back and it wasn't helpful to him. My son isn't extremely driven to learn, I've seen kids who are and mine pales in comparison. But I now see and hear the sigh of relief from him. Besides, our homeschooling lifestyle gives us the flexibility to slow down later if needed.

I say all this because I believe, like Dottie, that given your child's scores, he may be ahead of mine. I wish someone had told me when my son was 4 what to expect. I had to make many mistakes before realizing all that I know today. I would have worried a lot less and stopped focusing on his inabilites and would have been so much more confident facing the naysayers.

I hope it is helpful to you in some way to know that 3, 4, 5 or more years later we're still figuring things out, but it's okay, and that our children are doing well and thriving when the right accommodations are in place. We tried finding other accommodations but nothing worked...learning at home and via custom-built classes and workshops with other homeschooled children has been the only thing that's been obviously successful for my kid. Finding other kids like him wasn't easy either. Took about 3 years of trial-and-error before we stumbled upon a group of great, kindred-spirit families.

I am not advocating homeschooling as the only way...just giving you confidence that you can do it and that some kids really thrive in such an environment. But that if you take this step, to be mindful that it may take a while and be more difficult to find a peer group for him.

Oops, I'm in a bit of a rambling mood today! Sorry! I wish you all the very best...it's not a journey we choose lightly...but it's wonderful, humbling and very, very educational, at least for this often clueless mom.

Trina, congrats on your decision to take your son out of the bad-fit preschool. Preschool was terrible for our son, especially due to an inflexible teacher that essentially pegged him as having behavior problems, which were really due to extreme boredom. Welcome, and please keep us posted on your progress. (BTW I'd gratefully take the chance to hang out with ColinsMum any day, even if you can't qualify for DYS. )

lol, no I'm a bit further away - New Zealand.

LDmom, thank you. it really does help to hear from people who've "gone before us" so to speak, and to talk to people who really understand how scary and overwhelming this all is... most people say "wow, how cool" or something similar, because they really can't see all of the 'issues'.

I really like the sound of the way you're managing things, it sounds like a good mix. The idea of homeschooling both excites and scares me - I can't imagine managing without some kind of break from the intensity that is my darling son sometimes. I also worry that he'll miss out on some things if we keep him home - I'm not sure what, just "something" lol! I'd love to find some way of having part time school / home balance, but I'm not sure how or if we could find a place where school would fit him for anything. I love him so much, but he really is an oddball when you put him with other 4 y.o's.

Thank you for the welcome. We've tried three preschools now, from a traditional free play 3 year old kindergarten (I think we use the name differently to how it's used in the USA), to Montessori to a preschool with a highly recommended gifted programme. None of them fit, and none lasted for more than 6 months or so. He's never a problem there, but his behaviour at home becomes awful as he gets more and more stressed and miserable. He's happy at home now, and I'm scared to try school or another preschool in case it ruins the peace! We'd started trying a few science / nature activities with a local homeschooling group but we're a little limited in 'other' activities just now because so many things are closed / gone due to the earthquake.

Trina,

When my son was 4, I was in the same place you are. Completely unable to keep up! I spent a month or two teaching my son independent study skills. This included "google" so that I didn't have to answer 4000 questions everyday and a couple of on-line learning sights including time4learning.com and Aleks.com.

Our school district refused early admission to K so I had to do the best I could. Now DS is 8. Last year we found a prep style charter school that go 6th-12th grade that was willing to accept my son as a part time student. He went for math, science and language arts, then we homeschooled history and various other strange subjects.

It worked out so well that this year he will be a full time student with classes that run from 7-9th grade. Partial schooling is another option for you to consider.

It's good to hear you've managed to make part time work and I hope the transfer to full time goes well. I taught DS to use google too, for the same reasons. Now I get "did you know" instead of "why?" most of the time <lol!> I haven't seen time4learning (I'll check it out), he loved the free trial we did on Aleks (finished 3rd grade and most of 4th grade before it ran out). He loves Kahn Academy and he also enjoyed the trial we did of Dreambox. There seem to be lots of those sorts of things out there to explore - so many that I worry he spends too much time on the computer sometimes.

Officially here it's not possible to part time school but there is provision for a student enrolled in a school to attend an "acceptable educational alternative" for some of the time they are meant to be at school. It's meant to cover things like music lessons, tutoring and the like, but I'm wondering if we could make use of that somehow.

Do many of you have other children? Are they the same as their older siblings? We have a little girl too... is she likely to be like this too?

I don't easily relate to the test numbers as we've done no testing, but that's a measure I have a comparison point on - my DS did those courses about a year older, and not quite so fast if your trial was 48hrs. Wow. You have my deepest sympathy! Have you found Alcumus already? If not, check it out - free online maths which is problem-solving based rather than based on speeding through syllabus. Solving hard problems is really important, and the danger for mathy children is that the problems presented in ordinary places are never hard for them so they never get a chance to learn to think hard. Alcumus helps fill that gap for us, along with various maths competition past papers, Olympiad qs etc.

Statistically most siblings are within about 10 points of each other. Though they might present differently chances are that yes your daughter is most likely also gifted and highly so. If she had a FSIQ of say 145, or even 140 for that matter, that is still unusually highly gifted, but might present quite differently to your son, particularly if she has a different personality and areas of strength.

From a group of children with the same measured potential not all will necessarily have the same voracious hunger for learning.

Thanks for that, I haven't seen Alcumus, I'll check it out.

Hi Trina,
Welcome - I'd love to know 'who' pointed you in this direction - a fellow mom, a professional? A school-connected person.

Having a friend for you and for your son is going to make a huge difference. So go back to that person and ask them for ideas of how to find playmates.

I also like 2 books -
'Friends Forever' by Fred Frankel,about how to train you kids to grow close friendships,
and
'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Lisa Bravo.

Friends forever is pitched to kids in 1st through 6th grade, but since your son may well be having playdates with kids in this agegroup, I'm suggesting that you read it now and start adapting.

There is this thing called 'asynchronous development' that might bite you from time to time. I remember the joke-
'Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...it's a duck'
That will never apply to your son - and it can be disorrienting.

So glad you are here! Pull up a chair and delve in. You can use the search key to read chronologically what Shari and LD when through right from the start. Dottie and I are Dinosaurs and did most of our work before this site opened.

Smiles,
Grinity

Google saved us, too! DD8.5 is often directed to ask 'Magic Google', so named because it seems to have all the answers as if by magic. Between google and her kids almanac, our kid is a walking Cliff Claven of interesting facts.

We tell the girls to ask the "Magic Box," also named because it *magically* has all the answers. Google is our internet home page, and HowStuffWorks is one of our first bookmarks.