Thanks Dottie for some very much needed perspective. I guess what makes me less nervous and upset about this whole testing thing is that I'm really okay if my kid is not gifted and just bright, intelligent or even Plain happy. I think as parents we need to remember that happiness is probably the one goal we should be focused on. Behavior wise, I feel my biggest responsibilty outside of developing his intellect is working on character, and if ADHD and ODD is making that worse - that's probably the #1 priority, or a 50/50 with his other learning. Learning is super important to me(!)
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End of the day - I just want DS6 to be challenged, reach his potential and be a happy productive person with a career he enjoys.
IronMom - great remarks, sorry there is so much conflicting info for you right now. The tester sounded lousy.
We are in a pickle w/Ds8 testing above avg/not gt to very low on some recent screening, and I have pondered long and hard about whether to go forward with something additional. Finally we are going for it, for better or worse. I think with the tester we have found I will have some definite peace of mind knowing that the scores will be fairly accurate (barring illness, etc.)
We met with him for a couple of hours yesterday and will bring ds in for a couple days very soon.
We are trying to focus primarily on ds' happiness too; he seems *way* happier in his present gt setting, and these latest lower scores are a threat to that balance we've finally found after a couple years of real fear for this cheerful little guy. THe school would even likely do more testing, too, in another 6-8 months, however I don't want to put the stress on ds nor risk getting a less than ideal testing scenario. If he's not able to stay/get into this program, so be it, but I would not feel good about leaving things entirely in the hands of the school - considering how miserable he was before. He hated most of 1st and 2nd and the wondering and waiting to get into the first program was not a very happy time for him.
Somehow, having committed to going forward with testing, the major testing anxiety has pretty well evaporated.
