Hi Madmanmoon,
IQ & Ability testing are very useful to understand your child's strengths, weaknesses. It helped me understand my kids more thoroughly, rather than just instinctively. I encourage many people to do diagnostics on their kids, not just because they're showing great ability. Some parents wonder about learning styles or exceptionalities. It's just a tool and doesn't commit you to anything. We hired the district diagnostician who does private testing on the weekends for supplemental income.
Aside from the gifted label, do you have a goal if you were to test him? For instance, if you found he was 99.9% in math, what would you do about it? Would you try to get the school to give him advanced work? Subject skip? If you saw several strength areas, would you grade skip? Since he's new to school (which is a challenge in itself), he may not have any issues or problems now, but as time goes on, he probably will be bored to tears. Do you think it's right that he waits 4 more years to do math that he's able and anxious to do now? I would say that's tragic.
I think highly gifted kids are in need of "special education" as much as disabled kids. It means parents have their work cut out for them--I don't believe we are gleefully cheering how smart our kids are, but more searching tirelessly about how can we help them. There is a lot of research out there that indicates highly gifted kids are prone to depression (less so when they've been academically accelerated), higher high school drop out rate--we're being proactive in trying to make sure this doesn't happen to our kids and that they grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults.
I understand the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" idea, but just be prepared that things might change.
