Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment gifted son?

hi all,

I'm new here! little background.. our son is 5 (just turned 5 in August). He's had ongoing issues in school settings since pre-school - not listening, arguing with adults, being bored with the work, not able to relate to kids his own age. At 4 year 1 month old he was given some testing so he could get an IEP and his visual-spatial score (VMI) came back at 129. His DAS-2 SNC score came back at 113. These were not really explained to us and he continued to have issues and a spec ed. teacher visit his class once a week during pre-k.

he just started kindergarten last month and we are seeing the same issues again. he can't relate to the children, he knows he's different somehow, he argues with the teacher, he doesn't like it when she tries to help him w/o him asking first, he pushes the other children, he won't listen and follow instructions. we are working with them now on a new IEP (we moved counties and they can't transfer them).

we believe he is gifted. my IQ has been tested at 148 by UK MENSA (i live in the USA now). we used a sperm donor to conceive our son (we are a same-sex couple) and although we don't know his IQ he has a master's degree in quantum physics. my sister's 2 oldest sons are gifted. my maternal grandfather solved the rubik's cube in his 60s and wrote the solution down. he and my uncle could do it in seconds. i suspect my dad is also gifted but he has never been tested.

do the test scores we received when he was 4 show anything? we're not sure if we should have him tested again. he shows amazing skills in problem-solving computer games, mazes, jigsaw puzzles (can sit quietly since before he was 4 and do 100+ piece puzzles), can build Lego designed for older children, can "read" books back verbatim although he can't read yet. he basically shows all the same traits i had as a child, including some of the emotional issues we've been seeing.

help!!

g

I think with gifted children parents have to "rearrange the world to fit their child" and "rearrange their child to fit the world". If you believe that at all there's a book called "Transforming the Difficult Child, The Nurtured Heart Workbook" by Howard Glassner and Lisa Bravo.
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....3054/Transforming_the_Difficult_Chi.html

Don't be fooled by the title into thinking it's a "break your child's spiritedness" book or anything. It actually extends the way you used to "redirect" them when they were toddlers, teaching you how to gently but effectly continue to guide them. It gives you a "vision" to make your policies from. This is my limited advice if you want them to conform, at least enough to go to school at all.


What did your tester tell you about what your scores meant?
What reason did you have for testing him originally?
What is the special Ed about?


Quote:
we used a sperm donor to conceive our son (we are a same-sex couple)

Congratulations ! It's a boy !!

If you scroll down the following link a little bit you'll see a color chart (the only color chart on the page). It shows 113 in the range of average and 129 in the range of gifted. It shows an area of giftedness in "visual spatial".

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/visual-spatial.htm
Sorry, many of the links seem to be broken on that page.
And I used to have a great page bookmarked for visual spatial learners but I cleaned out my overflowing bookmark list and that one got lost. Oops.
It had advice such as "tell them to doodle on their notebook while the teacher's talking. Seeing the doodles activates their brains so they wake up and remember more of what the teacher says than if they were just passively sitting while they listen.

I don't know by looking at the score itself if the child is 2e, which is gifted and learning disabled. If so retesting may not return a higher score.

From the things you've described, I'd want further testing. I'm not familiar with the DAS, and I'm not sure about the VMI you mentioned but suspect VMI stands for Visual-Motor Integration (our ds has had the Beery VMI test as part of a neuropsych eval). It sounds like a private neurospych evaluation would be very helpful here - an eval that includes a full IQ + achievement test set plus follow-up tests for any areas that show discrepancies in scores. It's possible that everything you're seeing is simply due to giftedness, but many of us here with 2e children found that in the preschool and early elementary years (prior to testing and diagnosis) the only outlet our kids had to show us they were frustrated due to very real challenges that would later impact reading/writing/etc was through behaviors that we, as parents, didn't quite understand. Not sure what I'm saying makes sense! Just suggesting that there may be more going on than giftedness, and it's worth checking into to be sure it's not something more. And while you're looking into it, you'll get more info on the degree of giftedness too.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - I suggested private testing simply because many times you'll get more answers with private testing and you'll often have more ability to dig deeper with questions you may have post-testing. If you need to go through the school for cost purposes, that's ok - but I think I'd start with asking the specific questions you're asking here of the school staff that were involved in your ds' previous testing - they may have some insight to you based on his behaviors during testing etc, plus they should be able to explain the technical details of the specific test questions. Rather than look at it as "I'm pretty sure my ds is gifted and do these test scores show this or if not why not" I'd approach it from a "My ds is struggling in school, is there anything that we can learn from his prior testing".