Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment SB5 result of 142 for my 5 yr old

So this is all very new to me ... still learning all the codes and acronyms etc feeling totally out of my depth ....

I have recieved the report from the testing of my 5 yr old, as mentioned in the title - he has a fsiq of 142 which puts him on the 99.7th percentile. Being totally new to this my previous (small amount) of reading showed that 160 is genius level so 142 is just a little bit gifted...??
but reading more and more - he is actually pretty high up ont he scale yeah?? thats not a brag lol a genuine question.
the thing is my son seems SO NORMAL. lol, he doesnt seem to haver any of the quirks, the struggles.. he is very popular, loves school (likes recess and lunch best, and complains of work but I had just put that down to being a 5 yr old boy lol.)

I am kind of in denial I think.. maybe the tester made a mistake???

I think I am a fraud in all this because I consciously taught him to read when he was 2.. I am an early childhood teacher and struggled so much teaching many 5 yr old boys to read because they simply werent interested that I decided once I had my own kids I would teach them to read EARLY

My son had his reading age assessed when he was 4 as a 9 yr old level... so the way I see it hasnt all the extra reading he has done early given him all that extra knowledge?? is he gifted or just well read??

and on a lighter note, hubby and I were reading through the report and for qualitative reasoning (??I THINK) he got 123... and this was an area of weakness for him... lmao - he is on the 93rd% and its his weakness - oh the struggles he will face!!!

I was finding out the same thing 4 yrs ago.
SB5 and the same results. +/- .

Our friends Mother is a Professor at local University and Specializes in School Psychology - Assessment.
She gave him the SB5 and later confirmed our denial. LOL


Fast forward, he is now 9 in our Public School.
He is in his original 3rd grade class and is in the 5th grade HA math class.
He is in the 4th grade reading group.
We only have 5 Elementary grades then on to Middle School.

So now we are here.

Moral of the story:
Take it one year at a time.
Make as many friends as possible along the way.
Communicate with the teacher/teachers, Often. Let them see you.

It also might help to be VP of the PTO. I have not tried this one.
I only coach little league.

BTW: There are a lot of people here that are good at this stuff.

I agree with the idea of taking it one year (or even just one step!) at a time. Yes, 142 is more than just a "little bit" gifted lol! OTOH, I'm not surprised your ds seems "normal" - lots of gifted kids, no matter how gifted, seem just like any other kid until you get to know the inner workings of their brains. We read a lot about the quirks and idiosyncrasies of gifted kids and hear all about how to deal with them due to them being outliers on the ability scale, but sometimes I think we can take that to an extreme. The 142-SB kid that you have today is the same kid you had 2-3 days ago before you knew the numbers on his IQ score

Re the impact of early reading - I don't think that will impact his IQ score one bit. It will impact reading achievement tests, but I wouldn't stress out about that. I also wouldn't anticipate that it will ultimately change where he will end up later in school re his eventual reading ability - it will mean he'll be working ahead in reading during the early years of elementary due to exposure and teaching, but I'm guessing by the time he's in 2/3 grade you'll see quite a few other gifted kids who are also reading far ahead of grade level whether or not they started reading at 2 or 6. Our ds12 didn't start reading until he was in K and even then he didn't let us know (he never would have put up with us trying to teach him at 5, much less 2 lol!)... but once he started reading it wasn't long until he was reading college-level books. We've never stressed out about getting him accelerated in reading in school - instead we've found that advocating for stretching him in math/science worked best *for him*.

Each of our kids is going to be different/individual. I've found that reading all I can on giftedness helps me to have a good bank of knowledge, but the real key is to just know my kids very well, inside and out, and take the cues from them re advocating for their needs.

Best wishes,

polarbear