Hi all. I've been struggling for a few months with trying on the idea of my son being gifted. This will likely be a long post, and I sincerely appreciate any readers.
My son (just turned 8) exhibited early signs of giftedness (pretty much every indication that you read about being common in the early development of gifted kids, except that he wasn't an early or self-taught reader... VERY early on all major milestones, incredible vocab with full-sentences by 15mo, etc.) He has always been super intense. His tantrums were off-the-charts.
While his temper / anger issues were somewhat problematic at home (and almost always due to his frustration at not being able to do something), the real problems started when he went to full-day kindergarten. Because he wasn't reading, I didn't really think of him as gifted at that time. I'm supposedly gifted, but I taught myself to read at 2.5 and was always very verbal, whereas my son never showed any interest in the sorts of things I was advanced at, so I didn't recognize his giftedness, (assuming it's there). He's very visual-spatial. Anyhow, kindergarten brought absolutely explosive, aggressive behaviors towards teachers. He was diagnosed with GAD and ODD. He got an IEP and BIP, and was removed from the gen ed setting almost exclusively. He spent almost all day in a special ed room and had to gradually work his way back into the main classroom in a scaffolded way. At the beginning of his kindergarten year, he had an WISC-V administered as part of a psychological eval, but it was given by someone who definitely didn't specialize in testing 2e/gifted kids. Our son was defiant and non-engaged at many times throughout the test, but he completed it and we were given his scores. His FSIQ was only 108. There were no big spreads in the subtest scores, except for him getting a 132 / 98th percentile on the Visual Spatial Scale. The tester did not even mention that to us as something to watch or something interesting when she gave us the results. It was just kind of like "so there's some strength in this 1 little area... moving on..." If I had suspected giftedness before that point, that IQ test result killed it. IQ is the be-all, end-all of diagnosis, so ...
1st grade seemed to start off better - he was integrated for about 70% of his day at that point, and then the wheels fell off. His aggression was worse than we'd ever seen before. He was frequently blocked in with tall PE mats and we'd get the seclusion/restraint paperwork sent home often. He refused to set foot in the gen ed room and therefore spent his whole day in SPED. Silly me had assumed that work from the main classroom would be brought to SPED and taught to him there, but it turns out that none of that was happening. For a period of about 3 months, they literally taught him NOTHING, outside of his IEP 1:1 instruction in handwriting and behavior. I was livid when I found out that he'd been stuck doing busy work all day.
Towards the end of last year (1st grade), he started telling me the answers of double and triple digit addition that he did in his head, and showed an understanding of negative numbers. I asked his SPED teacher if she was teaching that to him (that's when I found out he'd not been learning aaaanything new in math!), and she said no. When I told her what he was doing at home, she brought in the GT teacher to meet him and see what she thought.
As soon as the GT teacher came into the picture, everything changed for the better. She did some activities with him in her room and reported back that he flew through some stuff she usually gives to 4th and 5th graders (she typically only works with 4th and 5th grade as kids are ID'd at the end of 3rd in our district). She was acting like she'd found a diamond in the rough. The impression we got from her is that DS7 was definitely gifted, not even a question. She administered the CogAT to him (Form 6, Level A = a bit above level for a 1st grader) individually and split up the testing over many days, ceasing testing whenever she could tell he was becoming anxious, tired, or frustrated. Whereas a normal CogAT might only take 90 min, my son took it in little chunks over 5 or 6 days. She also scribed for him, as handwriting is such an issue for him that we suspect dysgraphia. She assured us that he couldn't fake his way to the high scores he got. His CogAT results were as follows:
Quant SAS 144 (Raw 59, USS 232)
Non-Verbal SAS 132 (Raw 61, USS 217)
Verbal SAS 118 (Raw 53, USS 184)
This blew our minds as his WISC-V definitely didn't indicate giftedness. We are so blessed with our school being 2e-friendly and very amenable to grade-skipping. On the basis of his CogAT, *THEY* advocated for him to have a grade-skip plus extra subject acceleration. So he's a 3rd grader now, having skipped 2nd completely, and then he finished up 3rd grade math in the 1st 2 months of this year (1:1 with the GT teacher) and is now doing 4th grade math. Meanwhile, he is still fairly behind on reading, and writing remains a huge issue. We just got the results from his fall MAP testing as well - in Math, he got 225 (99th+ percentile) and, in reading, 189 (53rd).
I spent all summer reading up on giftedness, and learned SO much. I was just garden-variety gifted, a teacher and parent-pleaser, auditory-sequential learner. I had no idea that giftedness can come with a whole bag of other not-so-lovely issues like OEs, anxiety, behavior problems, LDs, etc. Everything I read made me feel like things were finally clicking into place, that giftedness made sense as a new lens through which to view my son. But I just can't get over that WISC from a couple years ago. I feel like I'm still not allowing myself to think of my son as gifted, because of it. The CogAT is NOT a real IQ test; I've read that over and over.
We're on the waiting list at Belin-Blank here in Iowa to get a 2e assessment. I'm excited to maybe get some more definitive answers, but I'm also terrified. If he doesn't test in the gifted range, I once again will be rudderless. It's not that I 'need' him to be gifted to fulfill some parental fantasy; it's just that having a cohesive lens by which to view him is so seductive. If he's not gifted, then what the heck explains all the other everything?! I know Belin-Blank is known for their 2e work, and I guess we are in as good of hands as we could be, but my son does not do well with lengthy testing, in clinical settings. If we could get an IQ test administered like his GT teacher did with the CogAT (sitting on a comfy couch with dim lighting, broken into many days of testing), I'd be able to trust the process more. But Belin-Blank can't/won't do that, so I just don't know if they'll be able to get our son's buy-in.
Wow, this really got long. Sorry! I don't even know what I'm really asking here. I guess, if you were me, would you think the CogAT / MAP scores sufficient to indicate giftedness? Do you have any advice about the IQ re-testing? Anyone been to Belin-Blank and been happy with them, specifically in terms of their accommodations? If the re-test scores are still just average (and I know to look at more than just the FSIQ!), it'll kind of stink to share those with the school... they're the ones who recommended we go to Belin-Blank and they know we're on the waiting list, so it'll be pretty conspicuous if we get him tested and don't release the results (i.e., they'll know the scores must be low if they don't see them!). I dunno. I'm just stressing!
Thank you for reading.
