Hello! I know very little about testing but have also read a lot on these boards recently--there seem to be lots of folks here with tremendous experience. My son, who just turned 5, was also tested with the WPPSI recently (just before his 5th bday) and did very well. Our psychologist put in the report that she felt like the scores were a low estimate of our son's ability, mostly because he is an extreme perfectionist and didn't guess. So we also were left feeling like, "wow, these are high scores, but is there something missing here that we should also know about our son." The psychologist recommended that IF we decided to retest we wait until 2nd grade, so around 7 or 8.
We went to visit a private gifted school last week for a "visit day". I'm not sure whether or not we'll be able to send our son there b/c of cost, but we figured we'd check it out. They do a visit day where they ask students to "try out" a classroom to see if they think the child would be a good fit for the program. During the visit, we were talking with the school counselor and some other parents. One of the couples was nervous about testing, which they had not done yet but which is required for entrance to kinder. The counselor admitted that she felt like the best age to test was between 6 and 8 but that their school did require testing for kinder so she knew that for some parents testing twice was not feasible. But, she said that she felt like a test score at 6-8 generally held true for a child up through their educational career. She also said that she was not crazy about the WPPSI because (in her experience) children almost always scored lower on the WPPSI than they did later on the WISC. I thought that was kind of interesting since it goes against what I've read here. But, she ended up telling these parents that their particular school will accept in place of testing a visit with a psychologist in our area who supposedly can give a "recommendation" to the school as to the level of giftedness of a child after just spending time and interviewing the child but doing no IQ testing. She told the family that if they would rather wait for testing they could look into that option. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.
So, from what I've heard so far, it sounds like 6-8 might be the best time!
Your daughter sounds like a very, very bright girl! I'm so glad you've found a school that is a good fit for her, for now, but I understand your concerns for the future!
