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Welcome, Lizz! (Even though I'm a dark roast person myself!)

If you've been lurking for a bit, you've probably seen some of my old posts, in which case you may know that we have homeschooled. While not formally identified, some of ours are almost certainly 2e (I'm a professional evaluator). One stayed in schools through a series of tiny private schools who were flexible and willing to collaborate with us, ultimately homeschooling during the secondary years. Others were homeschooled from the start, but have gone on to the public high school where I am employed.

Different families find that different schooling arrangements work better for them. If I were to give you any advice, I would say to observe your children closely, and stay flexible. Each child may need different things. The same child may need different things at different times. Prioritize your child's growth and development as a whole person. With every child, but especially with 2e learners, there will be moments when something besides academic development is a more urgent need. Actually, becoming a healthy human is always a more urgent need! Academics and intellectual development are just one component of health. If you need to put academics on the back burner because something else is currently more critical, it's okay--you can get back to it at some point. There's more than one way to do nearly everything. Finally, a child who knows they are loved, knows how to love, is growing, is healthy, is happy--is enough. Look at what helps your children to be this version of themselves, and what are impediments, and that will tell you what you need to address.

Welcome Vagee!

The most important piece of perspective is that this test is a screening measure. It's not intended to diagnose giftedness or delay--just to sort out who might benefit from further evaluation with a more comprehensive assessment. Note that the cutoff for GT at this age is >92, but the max score is only 100. So the space in which to spread everyone from 120 to 220 is only 8 points. This is by design, since the primary purpose of the instrument is to identify young children at risk, so they can have access to early intervention and remediation. The at-risk cut-off is 71--so almost 3/4 of the range is reserved for possible delays.

So in answer to your three questions:

1. Neither. The screening score and the behaviors simply suggest watching and possibly future evaluation.
2. Extremely common. Young children experience a wide range of growth trajectories across different domains of development, and further, are notoriously difficult to assess with any consistency. The usual rule of thumb is to consider cognitive measures more stable only beginning around age 9 or so.
3. Depends. My bias is always to start from observation in a very young child. Until you have a more nuanced read on when her skills are most accessible to her, evaluation will have a less promising return on investment, since there is a high likelihood that an unfamiliar examiner will not get optimal performance from her. TBH, none of the areas of inconsistency you've described seem out of the range for a child of her age. The level of support I would think appropriate is just that of attentive parenting.

Is there a time to evaluate? Of course there can be. (I'm a professional evaluator, so naturally I would think so!) I typically say that evaluations are warranted when
a) there is a question to be answered/problem to be solved (e.g., is there an obstacle to learning or development that appears to be present? are we questioning a disability of some kind?); or,
b) when it will aid in access to a necessary resource (e.g., higher-level classes, GT programming, specialized summer camps).

A few more thoughts on the "inconsistencies":
-One of my sibs habitually said, "I don't know" as a young child despite knowing answers that most would consider quite sophisticated, apparently because knowledge that is not comprehensive of all possibilities (in the universe! throughout all time!) is inadequate knowing. That sib was reading at 2.
-It may be that your DC is more socially-aware than some age-peers, and consequently more vulnerable to peer pressure at an age when many others are still just emerging from parallel play.
-The nature of variable engagement you describe is not uncommon in high cognitive and inquisitive learners, who typically have high intellectual stimulation needs. But it's also pretty typical of all small children. Keep in mind that kindergarten standards in most states expect students to manage 5-10 minutes of sustained listening.
-She is describing relatively slow retrieval fluency. At this age, I hesitate to ascribe it to any actual concerns, but it's probably worth keeping an eye on it.

You’re not wrong to be concerned—but you don’t need to panic or overhaul everything.

Right now, home enrichment is enough, especially since he’s happy and engaged. That’s a strong foundation. But the school is likely underestimating him because they’re equating ability with written output, which doesn’t work for kids with profiles like his (especially if Developmental Coordination Disorder is confirmed).

The key isn’t pushing for a “gifted label”—it’s pushing for small, practical adjustments:

Let him show knowledge verbally or digitally.
Reduce time pressure on writing.
Give access to more challenging thinking, even if output is limited. Space Waves

If he stays happy and stimulated, you’re in a good place. If he starts getting bored or frustrated, that’s when to push harder.

I was amazed by my child's concentration! Instead of the initial goal of 10 questions, they managed to answer a whopping 278. What I liked most was that they are building confidence from the most basic knowledge before tackling more difficult challenges.

Hello everyone,

I came across this thread while researching Brigance results and was hoping to get some guidance from those with more experience.

I’m trying to better understand my daughter’s development rather than label her. She is currently 5 years old. On her most recent Brigance III screening (at 4 years 9 months), she scored 98, with a gifted cutoff of 92. Her breakdown was:

* Cognitive: 130
* Language: 121
* Physical: 111

At 3 years 9 months, she previously scored around 83%.

What I’m trying to understand is how to interpret this alongside her current behavior, which feels somewhat asynchronous.

**Strengths:**

* Advanced vocabulary and grammar for her age
* Can hold complex conversations and ask thoughtful, sometimes abstract “what if” questions
* Strong interest-driven learning (e.g., animals—she can go very deep and retain a lot of information)
* Shows good reasoning and curiosity when engaged

**Areas of inconsistency:**

* In structured settings, she may say “I don’t know,” even when she later demonstrates that she does know the answer
* Can be influenced by peers and sometimes follows behavior she knows is not appropriate
* Engagement depends heavily on interest—she may disengage if something feels repetitive or not challenging
* At times seems to struggle with retrieving information on demand (she once described it as her “brain being full and not knowing what to take out”)

Because of this, her performance can appear inconsistent depending on the situation.

I’m trying to understand:

* Does this pattern align more with high ability or emerging giftedness?
* How common is this type of inconsistency at this age?
* What should I be focusing on as a parent right now (evaluation, support, or observation)?

I’m happy to share more details if helpful, and any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Yeah. The funding environment is very different from past generations. Back in the day, you applied to a program, and if accepted, funding was taken care of by the department for your first year, while you had the time to sample and get to know PIs in the department (some programs have historically done rotations the first year). It wasn't critical to have studied up on the potential PIs (which DC actually did--read through each one's most recent half-dozen publications, and then specifically referenced their research interests in the admissions essays).

I agree that there are pros and cons either way with the name school vs just-respectable school path. In our case, I think DC benefited from being a big fish in a small pond, because every recommender had a lot of specific and in-depth knowledge as a result of the opportunities that were not just available, but for which DC was actively recruited. (One mentor kept tossing scholarship opportunities this way, to the point that DC felt embarrassed about having to somehow bring up that between living at home and a full scholarship, there really wasn't anything to use the scholarships on--and there were other kids who needed them a lot more.) This amount of personal attention and faculty investment would have been pretty hard to come by at a larger and more competitive school.

But for some students, the name school is the first time they have an environment that fits them intellectually, not so much because of the level of instruction, but because of the peer group. That alone can be invaluable. Different situation and level, but I can remember students at my work who came from significantly disadvantaged backgrounds (on multiple levels) for whom a big plus about coming to our school with its mixture of very diverse communities was meeting peers for whom college and financial responsibility (let alone many other aspects of life) were viewed not aspirationally, but as a given. Never having encountered any adults who had successfully traveled those paths, it was not only hard for them to imagine living that life themselves, it was hard to even voice these as goals when many of the peers from their home communities actually ridiculed or discouraged them from pursuing them.

Persevering in your goals and dreams is hard enough for young adults without having to do it alone, or even with opposition. I think the college environment is sometimes as critical in that respect as it is in the educational content and experiences conveyed.

Good to hear of your child's success in this environment. My daughter did her undergrad in 3 and then another year for your Masters. And she is writing a thesis paper. I think that is becoming more common. If you leave then your masters takes 2. If you stay, then 1 more year. Getting the opportunities is key. Big trade off, top school, very competitive to get those opportunities, sometimes being the bigger fish in a smaller pond is better.

But funding now for doctoral programs is really tight. One of her professors that wrote her a reference letter said that when she applied for a PhD, she did not bother to connect with potential PIs, she just applied and it was taken care of.

There have definitely been changes over the decades in institutional attitudes regarding early entry and grade skipping. Back in the 60s and early 70s, most districts had an established system for determining who could early enter K/1 or whole-grade skip, with no particular obstacles to using it. But then, most districts also routinely retained students who were learning disabled. So obviously social skills and developmental level were not highly prioritized in either direction at the time.

(And I also effectively skipped fourth on a school change, into a school that placed students by low-mid-high across two grade level clusters--so effectively four-plus possible placement levels for any student in the cluster.) One of the unintended consequences of mandated state-wide testing has been flattening these different options, as schools focus more on making sure as many students as possible meet expectations on the state test. Allowing double-promotion takes high scoring students out of that grade's pool, and potentially lowers their scores in the receiving grade from advanced to grade-level, which is disadvantageous to the building's accountability numbers.

So social skills are not the only factor even now.

Frameist, the data indicate you are not alone. Research on grade acceleration overwhelmingly finds that most who were accelerated would do it again, despite any negative sequelae, and that most matched peers who were not accelerated regret that they were not. (Of course, there are always exceptions, whose experiences are just as valid for them, but these are the group data.)

Wren, nice to hear an update, and especially that she is where she should be.

We have one in a very well-funded STEM PhD program as well, and even there the funding cuts impacted many students in the program. Fortunately, the PI in DC's case had wisely diversified funding, so they were able to maintain all of their students and post-docs by spreading the belt-tightening around a little.

I would agree that admissions is tough. DC had already presented twice at the top national conference in this field as an undergraduate, including an actual oral presentation (not just poster), in addition to presenting at smaller conferences, and had been mentored by a pretty well-connected professor in the undergraduate institution (which otherwise is basically an average regional state uni). TA'd as an undergrad and actually developed some curricula for those classes. Earned dual bachelor's. But out of the top 3 programs applied to, #2 and #3 said no, and #1 was an acceptance, which probably reflects both the competitiveness of applications and maybe some vibe that may have come across in DC's application essays (one of the programs had some question marks regarding cultural fit, based on conversations with current and past graduate students there, and the other was not as well-matched on research interests).

I do think the undergraduate research projects were key, as were the recommendations from faculty with reputations and relationships in their niche fields. Sadly, not everyone has access to these kinds of undergraduate research opportunities, for various reasons, but I think that your DC's pathway has some generailizability, in terms of gaining that research cred through a master's program first. A fair number of unis have plus-one 5th-year master's programs, which I think is likely going to become a more frequent pathway to doctoral programs. It's also a good way to test the waters before committing to a lengthy and intense graduate research experience.

As it happens, I agree that trading off GPA for appropriate instructional challenge is quite reasonable and even preferable. Learning that natural giftings plus effort equals growth is a pretty critical lesson that many GT learners do not experience until much later in life, if at all.

And my point regarding child responsibility is simply that one need not take ownership of decisions that were taken out of one's hands. In my opinion, decisions that involve minors are ultimately the responsibility of the adults, both by statute and morally.

My own experience with acceleration was much as you propose, although not so much for the purpose of getting out earlier, but simply to be in the zone of proximal development with regard to academic placement and rate of learning. I did not actually reach the point where instructional challenge required learning EF skills until graduate school, and did not actually learn to exercise those EF skills until my third round of graduate studies, with assistance from motivation and frontal lobe development (which continues well into one's 20s).

I went through grades 3 through 5 with a skip of 4, with a group of 8. It was standard back in the 60s. Then it stopped. I also was able to do a skip through high school, because you can. I don't think social skills were an issue, it was probably more the times. Drinking age was 18, so there was a lot of drinking in high schools then. So the exposure wasn't good.

I just put my kid in private school for gifted kids, 7 through 12

Haven't been on the board for a while, but now my daughter, 21, is graduating with her masters and going on for a PhD, I thought I would make a post about the current environment for graduate studies with all the funding cuts.

First, I thought my daughter would go to Harvard, since her father was class of 80. But he died when she turned 8, stopped donating and that counts when you are not donating. She ended up at USC and it was the best thing. She is into ocean stuff. So right off the bat, she gets a job at the Museum of Natural History, across the street from USC, doing marine classification. And she gets a work study job in a chemical oceanography, working for a top oceanographer. She does both for 2 years. She dives so then dives and does research for a professor at Wrigley. Publishes a first author paper on kelp bass in her 3rd year. She actually graduates in 3. But stays another year for her masters. She attends COP30 virtually, she publishes more papers. She has a TA job and was a guest lecturer. It takes all of that to be competitive for a PhD. And she wouldn't have had that without USC. Which was great for her program. And I think particurlarly great for aerospace engineering. These kinds of opportunities were specific to USC and when choosing a college, it is important to align what your kid wants to do with a school and extracurricular options that enhance the educational CV.

Had a soft admit for PhD from MIT last year, then the DOGE cuts. The professor that had funding for a PhD student, suddenly did not. So USC allows her to stay another year and gets her masters -- which she finds out is critical for overseas PhD applications. She is also a dual citizen, Canada and US. She applied to China, Australia, Taiwan, Europe, here and Canada. Professors here said that they did not know if they had funding for themselves, let alone a PhD student. Australia funding was difficult. I made her take Mandarin since she was 5, so China and Taiwan were options, but not first choices. She got into UBC, which is tops for her ocean stuff.


But it was really difficult. Funding is tight everywhere. Europe is tightening. And because of increased military spending in Europe, they have tightened up. Getting into a PhD program now is like winning the lottery. You have to build a connection with a professor who can get funding.

In addition, she got a summer internship with WWF in DC. Highly competitive. So Harvard was not her best option. And if her father had not died, she might have gone there. But it wasn't the right place.

And I am glad she has a field that is not business (i worked on Wall St for over 25 years) and in school while the world is going crazy. She is using Claude for her masters thesis, saying it saves her over 100 man hours in statistical and economic research. Her PhD will use AI in the same way, building a system for fisheries data. I think of all the business jobs that will disappear within a few years. She integrated AI into her thesis since I said that is the only way to get a job when she finishes in 4 years.

Anyway, I just wanted to post her experience with college and PhD applications in the current environment.

In my experience, perhaps there may be other methods other than litigation, but ... would it be possible that sometimes one needs a large deterrent in order to either:
1) keep the student in, accelerated
2) transfer them elsewhere?

Also, as per being prepared to change them... perhaps they should not be changed too easily lest the temptation of procrastination? But in hindsight I do not really regret my past, simply wished for an earlier grade skip even if my social/EF skills weren't the best and that is what I would stand on.

I hope that the child matter is not emphasized too deeply because I believe there is partial responsibility for such decisions... but honestly?

It's a bit unpopular, but I'm honestly fine with trading off some GPA in exchange for being accelerated because sometimes life has to move on and sometimes the kid's goal is to get out earlier. In that case would it be possible to look at their not great EF and say OK take him to full time university?

Frameist, it is hard when children do not receive what they need educationally or otherwise. While there might be truth to the thought that you could have done better by taking your own initiative, I hope you remember that you were a child then, and many (if not all) of these decisions were not within your control, so you cannot own the responsibility for those decisions. What I particularly appreciate about your thoughtful posts here is that you are trying to transform the hard lessons learned from your own experience into better proactive decision-making on behalf of the potential future children to which you have alluded (as well as other people's children that you might encounter along the way).

And on the original topic: I too strongly prefer that all options are considered, including but not restricted to grade acceleration. "No" change is still a choice, and not always the do-no-harm one people may think it is. One should also consider that the complications that institutions often claim are reasons not to accelerate are sometimes actually symptoms of the problems that might be solved by acceleration.

Welcome, ardenwood! (And apologies, lepa, that no one responded to your original post.)

I very much hope the VMI did not cost as much as $1000 per administration, even in your pricey area! Depending on how many components were administered and how quickly the student worked, 30 minutes might be generous. But I'm glad it was helpful for your DC's evaluation.

There are other types of dysgraphia, some of which would be better served by other instruments or more comprehensive evaluations, such as by an occupational therapist (if the concern is mainly fine-motor), or in academics, in various aspects of written expression (various types of professionals can do this). Executive functions--which are often impacted in the diagnoses reported by the OP--are also a factor for both mechanics and expressive aspects of writing. For example, self-monitoring errors and dysregulated attention both can explain inconsistent use of punctuation and capitalization, as well as spelling errors. Planning/organizing weaknesses can generate the difference between strong brief writing products and weaker extended writing products. EF would be best evaluated by a psychologist. Communication disorders can also impact written expression, at the level of the actual language being generated, even before it reaches the page, and would best be evaluated by a speech language pathologist.

Bottom line, there are many possible causes of writing weaknesses, some of which are in the category of dysgraphia proper. Among those, there are multiple types of dysgraphia. Appropriate remediation depends on accurate identification of the cause of writing weakness--which also requires an appropriately comprehensive evaluation of all suspected areas of challenge. Sometimes you just happen to pick the right area on the first try, but not always. (Your evaluator probably identified it more quickly because they also had WISC data and the accompanying clinical observations.)

Welcome NT! So sorry no one seems to have seen this earlier.

We do not have a child with this exact profile, but several other posters here do. And yes, this is pretty common.

If diagnosis is of specific value in your situation, have Ehlers-Danlos or other ligament laxity syndromes been discussed? Those are often overlapping with the symptoms you've described. In any case, good to hear that you have access to therapies with or without a diagnosis.

As to why? Many schools view significant impact on function entirely through the lens of grade-level expectations, so a student whose intellectual potential is well above average is still not viewed as underperforming, because they are keeping up with ... grade-level expectations. In some regions, this is actually codified in regulations regarding educational disabilities.

As much as mediation or legal action are things to keep in mind as options for age discrimination at the university level, it is as well to remember that much of the concerning behavior experienced may not originate from the institution itself, but from other members of the university community--which one cannot realistically control with litigation (certainly not without incurring other unintended consequences). In any case, my experience with early entrance/radical acceleration with university students as young as nine has been that not nearly as much age-based discriminatory behavior occurs as one might fear. The more important questions typically are within-student, and focus on social maturity and executive functions, some of which can be scaffolded by thoughtful adults around the student.

For our children, we took advantage of relatively generous access to dual enrollment classes (especially online), as a reasonable compromise between full in-person university enrollment as a matriculated student and adolescent (or younger)-level social/EF skills. I would also agree that AP exams are a viable option both for accumulating college credit and for scheduling more challenging course syllabi in your homeschool instruction. We have also used them.

The child I mentioned upthread was multiply grade-advanced, but then requested a one-year retention back to grade 11 as we were preparing to enter grade 12, because they felt they were not ready for college--but then of course, ended up with a full schedule of dual enrollment classes, entering university as a sophomore the following year--putting them in the same position in the end. My point in this latter anecdote is that flexibility is key, and careful attention to the bursts of development that any children--but especially GT kiddos--tend to have. Make plans, but be prepared to change them, and don't let your anxieties run too far ahead of reality.

First, the updated norms:

2025 NWEA MAP norms update, with data from 2022-2024. This is the mass of data, with practically everything you could possibly want to know--but you might have to dig for it:

https://www.nwea.org/resource-center/white-paper/88182/MAP-Growth-Norms_NWEA_Technical-Manual.pdf/

Quick reference/cut sheet:

https://www.nwea.org/resource-cente...norms-quick-reference_NWEA_onesheet.pdf/

Secondly, to your specific question: it is possible that this is reflects the updated norms. It is possible that it reflects the reduction in support. It is also possible that it simply reflects standard error and/or regression to the mean, and his ordinal position in the right-most tail of the norms, where a very tiny change in raw score can result in a relatively large change in percentile. I would suspect, based on the absence of significant test accommodations for most high-cognitive EF-weak learners, that this is not a reflection of lower support, since his test conditions probably did not change, and the material on the test is very likely below his level of optimal instruction (hence less affected by his instructional environment).

Thirdly, to your not-a-question-more-like-a-comment: that, sadly, is a common aggravation encountered by many learners with EF challenges, gifted or not gifted. So sorry to hear this.

And finally, did they move your DC to a 504 accommodation plan for ADHD? Even if he no longer demonstrates a need for specialized instruction, specialized accommodations are a separate question. The disability is still present and probably still acknowledged. If you can get a 504 in place, one of the options we've used in our building is essential assignments only, with EF-forward or repetitious skills reinforcement tasks excused.

Hi. Thank you for letting me creep on these forums and read a lot of old posts. I may not say a whole lot, but I wanted to introduce myself.

I'm a church administrator/women's pastor living in the Martinsville, VA area of the USA. My husband is an elementary art teacher. We have two children, a boy aged 7 in 2nd grade and girl aged 5 in preschool. (My son is insisted I type all that out exactly. lol) We have a 6-7 acre homestead in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.

I'm here to read up and learn as much as I can. My son recently tested gifted at the moderate level. We have some decisions to make about his education, and I'm trying to figure out the best path forward for him. He is 2E spicy, and things have been pretty rough for him ever since he entered school. I was also a gifted kid (back in the 90s) and um, well school for me wasn't great either, at least until upper high school. There has to be a better way than what we've been doing.

I am reading some books and going out sometime to visit some family members who can also give me more advice. (My cousins are ahead of me on this.) I also tried another forum, but that one didn't have high quality information like this one seems to have. I appreciate this Davidson community. Thanks for letting me hang out!
-Lizz

Many gifted individuals experience intense mental activity throughout the day. Constant curiosity, deep thinking, and the tendency to analyze everything can be both a strength and a challenge. While this level of engagement often leads to creativity and innovation, it can also result in mental fatigue if the brain rarely gets a moment of rest.

One simple technique that has helped me is intentionally taking short “visual breaks.” Instead of checking social media or reading more information, I step away from stimulating content for a few minutes. Looking at a calm, empty screen or simply giving my eyes a rest can surprisingly help reset my focus.

Recently I found a minimalist tool that provides exactly that kind of pause: https://blackscreen.space
. It’s just a clean black screen, but it works well for brief meditation, eye relaxation, or even reducing light distraction when thinking through complex problems.

For people with highly active minds, these small breaks can make a big difference. Sometimes the best way to process complex ideas is to give the brain a quiet moment before returning to the challenge with fresh clarity.