I will share a few observations that may touch on this.
- The "gifted" label tripped us up. We lumped our child into a category and then read a few books about other gifted children, assuming that somehow told us about her. We fit her for a gifted team jersey and then pushed her back out there expecting everything to change somehow because we now had an IQ score. Had we spent more time understanding her unique strengths, weaknesses, and needs, she would be a lot happier and possibly in an entirely different place. Labels are more helpful as clues than as conclusions.
- Remind yourself that the gifted population is incredibly diverse despite what some books imply.
- In my experience children do not often tell parents what is really going on. Just last night DD9 told us for the first time that when she was four her pre-K co-teacher told the entire class they were stupid after all but one failed to put a certain number of cotton balls on their sheep craft. This same teacher also told DD she was not smart after she made two lady bugs instead of the required three. She carried that around for five years after without telling us. Ouch.
- Learning disabilities can be incredibly hard to tease out of gifted children, so that's always worth exploring especially if you can afford to test for it even "just in case."
- As Cathy M said on this forum once, "Any test score is just a snapshot of your child on a particular day. It's not a number stamped on her brain at birth."
