Thank you all for the warm welcome and the responses, truly appreciate it.

To answer some questions: My daughter goes to a public school in MI. We are a state with no gifted legislation or funding. Sadly, the elementary school won't even acknowledge that she is accelerated and from talking to other parents in our district, I have found out that there are no accelerated programs until high school.

I do not think my daughter has any LD (although I read a book that said many gifted children go undiagnosed with LD because they overcompensate academically, so I may be wrong). She seems to have some mild anxiety but nothing that interferes with the quality of her daily life, so we just deal with it as it arises and I don't make a big deal out of it.

The reason I am seeking testing may be selfish, so please don't judge, but I have her best interest at heart.

I feel like since she was born she has accomplished and surpassed milestones but I could never tell anyone or talk about them. I soon began to realize that the things that she did were not age appropriate and it made my peers uncomfortable, even though I was not bragging (just trying to join in on mom conversations type things). We did minimal preschool (for socialization purposes really) and when I put her in Kindergarten she quickly became labeled the teacher helper (by the teacher) and the teacher sat her with the slower students because the teacher said she could use my daughter's help. Thankfully Kindergarten was half day and I was able to enrich her at home. Her 1st/2nd grade teacher recognized that she was bored and gave her enrichment work at school to do, which I appreciated. Her 3rd grade teacher loves her and works well with her, but when I suggested that the curriculum was not challenging enough for her at conferences, I met with some resistance. We still do enrichment at home.

I would like to have her IQ determined so that I can find out once and for all if she is genuinely gifted or just a bright child. If she is a bright child, I can relax a little bit and just continue to nurture her strengths and support her academically as she achieves.

If she is genuinely gifted, I will at least have some evidence to present to the teacher/principal to try to advocate for a more challenging curriculum for her.

I will continue to enrich her curriculum at home, however, my main concern is that it won't be long before I am going to be outwitted by her and unable to teach her the level that she is going to be requiring.

Additionally, if she is genuinely gifted I would like to be able to review my education options for her and see if perhaps a private school might be a better fit.

And my last reason for wanting her tested is because I just want to know if this feeling of being overwhelmed and being crazy and not getting any support or encouragement for having a smart kid is valid or not. I just feel like I have no support system in place and no one to talk to. I tell my daughter she is smart but not to tell anyone how smart she is (sadly because the people around us do not support the gifted and of course they label me as *that parent*, even though I am not that parent).

I just want to advocate for my daughter if she is gifted or just let her be a very bright child, if she is not.

I am OK with whatever these tests results show, I think the results are going to bring me internal peace, it is the answer I need so I can move forward.