Hi Kbee!
Welcome. It's hard to know how much stock to put in those stories by the local psychologist who I would bet has never tested any kid with a VCI of 144 before. In fact, I think you should ask this in a nice way, for example:
"I'm trying to wrap my head around these numbers...Would you feel comfortable sharing in 'people-talk' just how unusual a 144 VCI is?"
If that doesn't pop out a 'well, I've been testing for 10 years and only saw it once' sort of response, you can follow up with:
"So did a lot of kid you tested this year have a VCI of 140 or more?"
Then you can have an extra 'fact' to store right next to the Tester's explaination. In other words, I'm not buying that there is anything wrong with her scores - to me, they just show a spiky profile gifted kid with a whopper strength in Verbal. If you look at
http://www.davidsongifted.org/young...holars___Qualification_Criteria_384.aspxyou'll see that her Verbal score is either enough (if you include the extended scoring) or very close to qualifying her into Young Scholar's Program. (BTW, I do agree with the idea of getting her achievement scores, and then sending them all off to YSP to see if she qualifies.)
If someone showed me (not a professional, just a mom who has lived through it) those scores and
frustration, emotional issues and depression...anxiety and perfectionistic tendencies were heavily apparent....cries several times every day
my brain would 'point the finger' at 'what is her school situation like' and 'does she have peer-ish friends she can unwind with?' faster than a See and Say Toy with a Farmer spinning in the middle.
We psychologically-orriended types can miss the forest for trees sometimes. If you look at the actual circumstances of her actual life as closely as you look at her possible internal realities, what do you see? Spend an hour observing in her classroom - is she bored out of her skull? Is she expected to 'take care of everyone' at the cost of getting anything academic out of her day? Is she being bullied (by the students or the teacher?) When she raises her hand - if she raises her hand - do the teacher and the students cringe? What does she do to handle the hours and hours of boredom during her school day? To put it another way, maybe she is depressed because her life stinks 6 hours a day.
Are there any situations where she appears comfortable in her own skin? Are there specific friendships where she is really happy?
In other words, tell us more about what she is like as a kid, what her school and extracurricular activities are like, what she loves, what she balks at, and we can try to help you brainstorm some experiments to get to the root at how to make her life better.
I know with my son, now age 14, there have been a few years when I've had to hang on to a vision of how happy he could be based on just a few days out of the year to not get ground down into thinking 'well, he's just a serious kid.'
(And yeah, sometimes those 'few days' were at YSP events where I could observe him with peerlike peers and see the lights go on.)
Huggs and More Huggs,
Grinity
