I've tried posting this a few times and always changed my mind thinking it was unclear.

I have an 8 year old who has always been very academically advanced; she gets very high scores on tests and is a DYS. However, we've had to fight for every academic accommodation she has ever been given. The schools just told us, "we have many bright students."

I also have a 6 year old who is very different. When he was younger, he had severe developmental delays and had many, many assessments by a great range of different professionals. Over time, he has completely caught up. However, I haven't thought that he was gifted. He is just very different from my daughter. On his last IQ test, he scored high average overall but over 130 for the brief IQ. His preschool teacher and therapists always told me he was bright, but I didn't think he was gifted.

Since he started school, his teacher has been telling us how gifted he is. They have called in the gifted specialist even though they don't start screening for GT until second grade. Without my even asking, they started moving him to first grade for part of the day. They give him fun activities (e.g., last week he wrote a report on the death of stars because he loves space). His teacher tells me his delays must have been like Einstein's (and yes, I do know that people speculate that Einstein had an autism spectrum disorder - my son has been screened repeatedly for that).

It's making me wonder if something is still holding him back in testing that might be an issue later on. If he's high average, that's wonderful (we used to worry he had an intellectual disability). However, I don't want to underestimate him and his school seems to think he is capable of much more.

He has had many evaluations and no one has suggested any underlying problems except some lingering fine muscle weakness for which he sometimes has occupational therapy.

Has anyone experienced this sort of situation? He seems to be doing well academically, so what would hold him back in a testing situation? Something must have caused his early delays, right? Could the schools be making assumptions based on my daughter, meaning they may be expecting too much from him? He is not at the same school.

I'd appreciate any advice so we can help give him the right level of academic work and not miss any lingering issues that might be holding him back.

Last edited by apm221; 02/06/14 06:25 AM.