Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Early Entrance to K testing brought me here!

This is all very new to me. My husband and I went to Dr. Deborah Ruf to get a "score-only" assessment (Stanford Binet 5) on my 4 year old girl. We were interested in Early Entrance to Kindergarten for next year since she just misses the cut off and is a bright little girl who is already reading.

The school has requested a "Superior" (130 I think?) score to be considered and my daughter scored an FSIQ of 141 (Exceptionally Gifted) with an Abbreviated Battery of 148 (Profoundly Gifted).

What now? Dr. Ruf mentioned that the school we are going for (there is a lottery) is a good start since it has a wonderful classical curriculum but she also said that while she thought Maia would do well in Kindergarten next year she expected some adaptations would be needed in 1st grade and beyond due to her giftedness level.

Thank you all! This is new territory for me and while my husband was extremely gifted (he graduated high school 2 years early with college credits) I wasn't really expecting the same from our children!


Here are her scores...

NVIQ - 135 - 99%
VIQ - 144 - 99.8
FSIQ - 141 - 99.7
FR - 153 - >99.9
KN - 123 - 94
QR - 130 - 98
VS - 132 - 98
WM - 141 - 99.7

I don't really know what all of this means other than that Dr. Ruf said that we should go back to discuss with her how to handle Maia's "Level 4" giftedness. The test itself was very expensive so I figure further discussion would be much more-so!

You should read up on Dr. Ruf's levels of giftedness, probably you can google on this, if you are going to go back and see her. Level 4 can be extremely difficult to find a good academic fit. Please note these levels do have some critics, so I'd look at more than just one source for understanding a child with scores at that level. Google on 'exceptionally gifted', as an example. Welcome!

Just want to say a quick Welcome to the forum!

Welcome! You can certainly expect some challenges in the years to come (though if you have a good school, they may be pleasant joint ones) but I wouldn't necessarily assume you need to pay a lot of money and see Dr Ruf again - see how it goes. (She has her fans, but I'm not one from what I've heard.) Hang around her, browse Hoagie's Gifted site, etc., and enjoy your DD!

Thanks everyone! I loved Dr. Ruf and so did my daughter but honestly I had no idea she was so widely known and published when we went to see her. She was just a local psychologist who tested kids for gifted ness!

We will just take things one step at a time for now and see what happens. We decided to also apply for early admission at another classical school that is further away so we will see. I just really feel that she wouldn't benefit from another year in preschool and while I could homeschool her I'd rather not since I also have almost 3 year old identical twins.

Thanks for making me feel welcome!

Is there anyone else here who didn't even really suspect their child was gifted? Smart, yes. Gifted, no. There was nothing really extraordinary about her milestones until she caught on quickly to reading. (My preemie twins on the other hand...)

My oldest falls into Dr. Ruf's level 4 based on milestones. The one time she was IQ tested was at age 7 and she was coming off a really poor school year and kind of shut down. She completely refused to complete some of the tests so her scores were all over the place ranging from the 25th percentile to beyond the 99.9th even within subtests. I say that as a caveat b/c that one set of composite IQ scores, while still gifted, don't quite fall into Dr. Ruf's level 4 range I think (I haven't looked @ the IQs for those ranges in a long time).

I would never venture to guess exactly the educational trajectory for a child based on IQ alone and I'm sure that it varies from kid to kid even kids with similar profiles. That said, the best advice we were given was to look at what was best for the child right now (i.e. - take it a year at a time and try not to worry about whether doing something like skipping a grade is going to be a bad move down the line).

My dd's trajectory has been to start as one of the youngest (just made the cut-off by two weeks - so on the other side of that than your dd), skip 5th, and subject accelerate in high school in her major interest area.

Assuming a kid with passion and no major twice exceptionality, I'd say that it would be safe to assume that a HG+ child will likely need alternations to the typical GT offerings especially if the school mainly offers in class groupings or limited pull outs. We've generally found subject and grade acceleration to be better fits than GT or honors classes (although I'd certainly take advantage of any honors/GT classes that are offered).

Hello and welcome!
If you are in the Twin Cities area, hurray! You have a lot of options for GT kids, many of them public and available to all if there's space through open enrollment. I sent you a pm (blinking envelope).

To answer your question re: not knowing your child was gifted, I think that is fairly common for people who are very bright or GT themselves. "Gifted" wasn't really in our vocabulary, and our kiddo seemed normal to us and to the folks we hang with. We knew he was smart, but that was about it until we read a newspaper article that two different people saved for us re: "signs your preschooler is gifted."

I wasn't really surprised...I always tested high an DH and both were invited to talent search events (neither of us went). What's surprising, and frankly, upsetting, is how unique Butter is, how MUCH LIKE my brother she is turning out to be, how AWFUL that was to live through and how UNPREPARED schools and other people are to deal with and understand her. She is awesome and she doesn't show it to everyone...I thought ALL the kids could read Dr Suess when they started Kinder...I thought they could ALL understand "100" since they had 100 day...

oh, I guess not, lol!