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Based on the contents of your post, it seems you may be struggling with the concept that as an adult, life is about internal locus of control. You own your life. There is an old saying, "Bloom where you are planted."

"...forced people to give me better opportunities." YIKES! While this may just be the result of hurried writing, it seems to convey an air of superiority, lacking an interest in mutual benefit. Many people work hard to earn a tryout for an opportunity. When competing, many people with great talent and potential may not be chosen... yet... on that day... in that moment. If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

"... had the requisite amount of talent to be a prodigy, but were never given the chance, and discovered later on in college that you actually have something?" College is NOT late; many people did not have opportunities until they were in college. You may not be a "prodigy" but that does not mean that you cannot use your talents at your present age. Unless you prefer an identity of victimhood and resentment. The choice is yours.

My advice for PG adults may be in three parts:

1) Stop thinking along the lines of:
1a) comparing yourself with others ("I still present very differently than most of my peers." "I seem to retain far more from conversations I've had with people and things I've seen and read and synthesize it all differently than anyone I know")
1b) defining yourself ("unusually curious, quite unfocused..." etc)
1c) overreliance on guidance as to what society expects ("what one can or can not do at a certain age..." "make the kind of living that people expect from you once you're out in the world")
1d) thinking about thinking about thinking

2) Start to emphasize DOing ("...I have no idea what is possible or not possible for me specifically...") It is up to YOU to find out. Apply yourself. Set goals. Accomplish them. Maybe start today: List your degrees. For each degree, list SEVERAL jobs you COULD do. Research the salary range(s) of each. Write down your findings, including sources used. Ferret out growth opportunities for each job. Which of the jobs provide a wage which YOU can support yourself on? Which of the jobs might provide more than a self-supporting wage, and might allow you to afford a bit of lifestyle YOU would enjoy? And/or to position yourself for greater opportunities?

3) Consider whether you typically add positive or negative to each interaction.
Possibly of interest: Carol Dweck, "Mindset"... especially use of the word "...yet."
Possibly of interest: the concept of presenting yourself as a positive asset in an "elevator pitch" (typically winnowed down to 11 seconds). Related to this (but a longer exercise) is the concept of "rewrite your story for positivity and happiness."
Possibly of interest, related to "I have had a religious childhood where I was forced to believe so many stupid things...": the factual and evidence-based investigative work of cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace.

I'm probably EG/PG and in my 20s, and I've been really struggling with life. Most of the advice I see online or over here is for gifted children or relating to college. I still haven't settled into a career, although I've earned a couple of degrees. Basically, what I'm struggling with is this: There are popular conceptions of what one can or can not do at a certain age. "Children are sponges", etc. I have no idea what is possible or not possible for me specifically, and can't find advice that is meant for PG adults. I do feel like my neuroplasticity has gone down since I was a child, but I still present very differently than most of my peers. I would say I rely much more on "original seeing" in that far fewer of my opinions are taken from sources without a certain kind of synthesis. I seem to retain far more from conversations I've had with people and things I've seen and read and synthesize it all differently than anyone I know, but don't have any specific skill set that is incredibly in demand and can make the kind of living that people expect from you once you're out in the world. I feel like there is more far transfer in my learning, so learning new things tends to use similar patterns as things I've already learned. Every fact I know seems to have a probability associated with it, so my knowledge base and entire personality feels like it's constantly "in flux", in a way that I also believe is disorienting to people if I let them experience it. I've also been moderately depressed for the past 5 years, and it's very hard to tell what the effects of that depression on my cognition have been. I tend to probably falsely conflate depression effects with aging effects.

I'm unusually curious, although this has declined since childhood. My curiosity itself is quite unfocused, where I suspect ADHD-like tendencies. I find that most high average/low gifted working professionals I meet tend to be curious about things in their own domain but it is a very limited kind of curiosity that I find puzzling. It feels like my expertise in various things is a product of my mind-matrix generally being aware of a lot of topics instead of having a declarative knowledge base for one specific thing. There's a constant stream of new ideas going on in my head pretty much all day long, and the ideas are better in quality if I'm feeling better or if I'm feeling inspired (vs depressed). I used to think this was the case with anyone (Just spit out 3 working ideas for a novel, how hard could it be?) but have realized it really isn't. At the same time, I feel like I push up against my limitations almost every single day and it makes me feel like I'm not really all that intelligent, since then virtually everything would presumably be "easy". I have this tendency to minimize difficulty, and to talk to obviously very intelligent people with an air of "you're not that smart, nor am I". Some part of me thinks that if I can do it, it can't possibly be all that it's cracked up to be. For instance, when I learned relativity and realized it wasn't that hard, my first instinct was to think that people were gatekeeping this obviously fairly simple topic, as opposed to thinking that I'm unusually intelligent.

In some ways, my cognitive capacities have regressed. My memory, though still exceptional, seems to get worse every year. It might be in my imagination or it might not. How do I test this? Is it even that important -- is it useful to condition every decision you make on whether or not you estimate you have (or still have) the cognitive capacity to do it? Maybe it's a better way to live life to spontaneously decide what to do based on what you're interested in and then perhaps fall flat on your face? I think it is generally accepted that memory and neuroplasticity get worse every year, but how do I know how true that is for highly gifted people, or for people who keep them up, when psychological studies generally try to pretend that IQ does not exist?

I also don't trust experts all that much. I know that they are generally not as intelligent as me, I don't expect them to be rational or unbiased by default, and so I only agree with experts or with research if I agree with their line of reasoning and methodology. This is generally at odds with high average/vanilla gifted people who tend to have far more deference to intellectual authority. I know that I run the risk of being wrong, and it is probably a certain kind of hubris, but I have had a religious childhood where I was forced to believe so many stupid things that I don't truly trust anyone's judgment other than my own anymore. This must be balanced with a receptiveness to information that I'm still working on, since it can be incredibly easy to delude yourself into thinking you know more than you actually do. Teachers often get frustrated by me, although I'm usually one of their best students, because I can be anti-authority and march to the beat of my own drum.

One of the things I wonder about is how reasonable the amount of risk is to pursue long shot/dream careers that you are interested in, if you have a very high IQ. Say you want to be a professional novelist. People in your life tell you the likelihood of that happening is very low, like 0.01%. You might disagree, but even for someone EG/PG, it certainly isn't 100%. The amount of risk you're taking by making the decision is completely different if the likelihood is 1%, 10% or 90%. It's incredibly difficult to know in advance. Commonly accepted career advice, knowledge, all tends to break down. You feel alone in your decision making because you will make smarter decisions than just about anyone who isn't at an equivalent intelligence level, so it's useless to ask friends or counselors for advice unless they are also highly gifted. This is especially true if you are figuring things out starting later in life and didn't have opportunities to "spread your wings" as a child (which I didn't). Sometimes, there's the kind of grief where I wish I had realized just how capable I was as a child and forced people to give me better opportunities. I might have been famous, or done incredible things, and that will probably never happen now. What are you, if you had the requisite amount of talent to be a prodigy, but were never given the chance, and discovered later on in college that you actually have something?

Maybe there's a book or articles that address these specific concerns. I'm trying to figure out where I should look, since I'm really lost right now. I have seen books on PG children and prodigies, but they all seem to lead with the idea that one MUST give them opportunities as children. Does that mean that once you're an adult, it's all over? I'm still trying to figure it out, and wonder what your thoughts are.

Welcome, blueberry!

Appeals processes depend on the local educational authority in your area, as each one has different policies for identifying eligible students. Without knowing your specific LEA, only fairly general thoughts can be offered. (And please don't feel pressure to post any personal information you don't feel comfortable posting.)

But some general thoughts:

LEAs often use criteria such as cognitive screeners/measures (e.g., CogAT), achievement measures (e.g., iReady), grades (probably irrelevant at this grade level) and teacher nominations (often heavily weighted). In your DC's case, the cognitive measures are well above typical GT levels, but the achievement measures will depend on where they have decided to set the cutoff this year--which may not be a fixed number, as sometimes this has to do with the number of children/number of slots in program.

On the CogAT, 132 is +2 SD (98th %ile). It may be that the LEA has decided that students need to meet/exceed the 98th %ile on all measures to qualify, in which case the reading score would be the one measure that does not. Districts make different decisions on these cut scores. They are allowed to do so, as long as the criteria are applied equitably.

You certainly would be within your rights to inquire about the appeal process, and to request additional transparency regarding the selection process. If they use a holistic process (such as one including teacher comments or nominations), this might be met with less openness, mainly to protect the teacher from parent reprisals (which do happen, unfortunately).

Coddling removes the important benefit of students developing "internal locus of control" (or self-efficacy) from the college experience;
students who do not exercise their own ingenuity to solve dilemmas, avoid potentially detrimental situations, and advance their advocacy skills may instead learn a sense of dependence on the system which supported them.

The result may be a college system which is turning out adults who are not resilient, independent, capable, organized, self-reliant producers, contributors, schedulers, planners, leaders, negotiators, and problem solvers who value their self-discipline and ability to prioritize and budget their time, money, and talent, and seek or create opportunities to better themselves, increase their knowledge base through lifelong learning, and help others... but may instead remain stuck in an immature mindest of requiring and being dependent upon constant and continual assistance at others' expense of time, money, and talent.

Hello
I just received my child’s test scores. She just turned 6 and is in Kindergarten. She did the cogat in April. Verbal (139), quantitative (142), nonverbal (154), composite (153). They said the typical scores for identified kids was 132.

She did her iready in the winter and got reading 95 percentile, maths 98 percentile.

Got the letter that she was not in need of AL services. Why?? And can I appeal? How?

Thank you

Hi,
I'm a parent of two gifted kids, and have followed Davidson's resources for many years, as I'm also a school principal and a doctoral student. I'm currently looking for ways to connect to principals, assistant principals, and any school leader who has supervised teachers in the last three years- any state or US territory, any type of school, any grade levels, for an anonymous survey around student-centered, gifted, and general education practices.

If you know anyone? The link is here: https://surveyuccs.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5thBfGDD8oNnkTs

-Thanks.
S. Nikki Myers
University of Colorado Colorado Springs

This is wonderful news! I am so pleased to hear that he has had happy years in middle school, and has things to look forward to in high school. It sounds like he has really blossomed in multiple ways, and also found his people socially.

Since it’s been a few years, I thought I’d come back with an update:

My son just finished middle school. He was subject accelerated in math and science in 6th grade and has several high school credits on his transcript already. He was on the honor roll every year in middle school and finished 8th grade with above a 4.0 gpa. Even though writing is still a relative weakness for him, he has improved tremendously with intervention and accommodations. He’s had no behavior problems since he was in elementary, and he even started participating in clubs, sports and team activities. His current passions are DnD, swimming, violin/viola, video games, chess and riding his bike. He and his friends meet once a week to play DnD and other board games, and he’s planning on joining the high school chess club next year.

I just wanted to give an update to show how much everyone’s advice here helped. He has made tremendous progress since 3rd grade and I don’t know how to thank everyone who helped us when we were struggling with the school district.

Nice to hear from you again, perse! And also good to hear that your older one eventually did get what he needed in school.

As to #2: Her Lexile is indeed quite high for her age. It's also not crazy for a GT kiddo, hyperlexic or no. That's about where one of ours was at that age--reaching what Metametrics would consider college-ready around third or fourth grade. And that's starting from simple decodables just after the fourth birthday. The Lexile is about where the median entering-7th grader was in the MetaMetrics studies. the iReady score is about where the median entering-8th grader was in the relevant studies. So they match up reasonably well, all things considered. (iReady is more focused on decoding at this age, and Lexiles are about comprehension.)

And math being only a grade or two ahead is likely not only a function of the differential impact of instruction on math (vs reading, which is gated in a fluent decoder mainly by vocabulary and socio-cultural context), but also on the ceiling of the grade two tests. On top of that, there are differences between percentiles (ordinal performance versus age-peers) and grade-level expectations. Consider that the majority (69%) of USA fourth graders read below grade-level on the 2024 NAEP. Most programmatic standardized testing scores reported to parents are taken from tests designed to identify at-risk learners, so the spread below grade-level also is quite a bit more detailed than that above.

Regarding advocacy: If this is the same district, you have the advantage this time of your older child's experience. (I'm one of a sibling group of GT learners, and the younger sibs definitely benefited from parental advocacy for the older sibs.) (And btw, it actually speaks well of your district's commitment to at-risk learners that they are using Fundations as their tier 1 reading curriculum. It's relatively expensive, and labor-intensive training teachers, but it's also highly effective at catching and remediating readers at-risk of dyslexia early, when implemented correctly. This also suggests your district may have some resources to work with...) And on the advocacy front for Fundations, it does include unit assessments at the higher levels (grade 4 & 5), which might be one way to demonstrate to the district that she can move on from it.

And if it's a different district, then you can talk wistfully about what a struggle it was to get the past districts to support your son, and how happy you are to be working with this one instead, since they are so much more student-centered.

For our own children, we haven't had to deal with much of this, as we've homeschooled most of K-12. I have worked in schools for longer than I care to think about, though, and can say a few things, in no particular order:

1. Having a key school staff member as an ally is extremely helpful.
2. Come prepared with win-win solutions-- these respect teachers' time and expertise, and are also presented as strategies that will help them display their own strengths better.
3. If the conversation starts to slide toward how this may affect other students, respecfully but firmly re-focus the conversation on your child.
4. Consider and prioritize the functions and needs that are most impactful for your child, and be willing to compromise on lower-priority items as an act of good faith collaboration.

indigo has a rather comprehensive roundup of crowd-sourced advocacy tips from over the years. Search for "advocacy roundup" and I think it should come up. I know there are links connected to the "advocacy as a non-newtonian fluid" thread.

As it happens, the scoring program(s) that nearly everyone uses for the WISC-V (including in the UK) generates a GAI automatically along with the FSIQ. All of the subtests necessary for the GAI are included in the FSIQ, so no additional testing or even table-lookups are needed (since, unless the psych is in the tiny minority of professionals still hand-scoring, the publisher's software will have done all the work already). Formally, there are not VECI, EFI, EGAI or extended index scores for the UK norms, so those would have to be derived from US norms and interpreted with caution.

But I understand why she does not want to report an FSIQ, as her professional opinion is that it is not a good representation of your child's overall cognitive ability. (In those circumstances, I typically include it in the document somewhere for reference, asterisked, but deemphasize it in my analysis.)

With regard to the GAI, it may be that the spread across just those five subtests is also large enough that she does not judge it to be a good representation of overall cognition. You report that four of the five primary indices were in the Extremely High range. That is not incompatible with a large magnitude of intrasubtest scatter. As a back-of-the-napkin example, consider that a score in the EH range can result from two scaled scores of 16 in the same index. But what actually generates the index score is the sum of the two subtests. So instead of 16, 16, they could have been 13, 19, which is a pretty significant difference. Many evaluators would consider the resulting index score to be a poor representation of the domain, and choose not to report it.

Your child also has a marked relative weakness in processing speed, which may be motor-based, or may be cognitive-based. Or both. Consider that even the GAI includes two timed subtests, which means it can be subject to score-lowering effects in a child with significantly discrepant speed. Consequently, the only index-level score that may not be affected by his known area of weakness is the VCI, and possibly WMI, depending on how weak his fine-motor efficiency is.

Bottom line: there may well be an entirely legitimate professional reason that the evaluator, in her clinical judgement, does not choose to report a composite score (either the FSIQ or the GAI). Have you identiifed a key advocacy use for a formal composite number? If you have, you might try leading with that in your communications with the psych, possibly wrapped in, "I know this may not be the best indicator of his real ability, but it's what the (school, program, etc.) demands in order for him to access this opportunity". It may also be that some resources would respond to presenting the relevant primary index scores for focused advancement.

Was the testing done through the school? If so, there may be different rules ...

... but at least in the US, when you pay to have a private EP run testing, you typically receive at least:

- the scaled score and percentile rank for each subtest
- the composite score and percentile rank for the primary indices (VCI, VSI, FRI, WMI, PSI) and FSIQ

Spikiness and differences of 2-3 SD's (standard deviations) or more between relatively high and relatively low on the WISC-V is not uncommon with highly gifted, profoundly gifted, or twice-exceptional children (some may even say that score profile is in the majority among these populations) ... so I wonder how much experience with those kinds of populations, your EP has had?

In any case, if she has scaled scores for all of the subtests, she can calculate an FSIQ. Whether she is doing it electronically via Q-Global or looking up tables in the Technical Manual, there is nothing about the range of subtest scores that prevents an FSIQ from being calculated. She is correct that the wider the spread among the subtests the less reliable the FSIQ is considered to be. But she has already provided you with that expert overlay.

On a related note, be aware that schools have wide discretion on how they want to identify giftedness. If a school wants to stick to FSIQ and not use other indices such as GAI or EGAI, that is their call (not saying it's the right call, just saying it's their call and they don't have to change it.)