... she's a pretty cut and dry mildly gifted child in my opinion and just want her to qualify for the G&T program.
FWIW, this was what I told myself about my dd too--it was very helpful to have the WISC scores to get a clearer picture of her LOG and how to advocate for her.
Well, I did find a tester who suggested waiting til closer to the deadline for the G&T application for the most recent results. After speaking with the tester I really am curious as to her LOG now. My dd started out with such gusto and really floored me with her early development. For instance, without any instruction she knew all her letters and their sounds by 18 months. She had a bit of an obsession with letters, pointing them out and saying the sounds wherever we went which caused quite the stares in public. Later, while going back through videos I found clips of her at as young as 10 months pointing to letters and giving them sounds, albeit most were incorrect. At the time I had no clue as to what she was doing but watching the videos now I see what she was doing. She started to sound out words before 2 1/2, started spelling simple words around that time and would even spell them backwards for fun. Shortly before turning 3 she was writing simple sentences and was doing 100 piece puzzles (she had a bit of an obsession with puzzles from ages 2-3 1/2). But what I found the most astonishing about her at an early age was her drive, her drive to learn and achieve (i.e. requesting I teach her how to play chess at 3). I have never taken an approach to teach her anything (unless she asked) and really just took her lead with everything.
However, at around 3 1/2 she started to drop off her trajectory and lost her drive. As I don't believe in hot-housing I just followed her lead as usual and let her do as she pleased and as time passed she seemed less gifted and more along the lines of just a very bright child. While she was in pre-k (started a year early since she was advanced and ended up doing 2 years of pre-k) her teachers always had wonderful things to say about her and how she was the most advanced but I honestly didn't see anything too out of the ordinary.
Currently her biggest strength is reading (she's at a late 2nd grade/early 3rd grade level). We've just recently started some math workbooks to supplement the lack of math instruction at school. Today I gave her the Singapore Math Primary 1A placement test and she refused my help. She only missed 1 problem but it did take her awhile to finish it. I really don't think she's that math-y but I did admire her determination at figuring out the problems. Other than the reading she really doesn't seem all that gifted, more along the lines of bright and slightly advanced. So I've always felt guilty about her stagnating, blaming myself for not enriching her enough or encouraging her to do more, and left wondering what could have been.
I shared my dd's development with the tester today and she commented on something that I really didn't even think of. She mentioned how my dd's development seemed to drop around the time she entered pre-k and said that often times kids will dumb down to fit in with their peers. So now I really don't know what to think and even more interested to have her tested just to see what she truly is capable of.
Sorry for the long, rambling response. Thanks for listening if you made it to the end.
