Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Experiences w/Davidson Young Scholars Program?

For my family, the biggest benefits to DS's DYS status are the connections we have made and the information we get from them. If money is an issue, and you can't find low-cost testing through a university or elsewhere, I'm not sure that I would go through the testing. Another benefit are various gatherings where you can meet other families like yours.

Also, you could avoid the cost of testing if you were able to submit qualifying achievement scores plus a portfolio.

Can you afford a long weekend in Reno once a year? So far, the annual Summit has been the most valuable thing we have gotten out of DITD, with local gatherings being second mostly because they aren't frequent enough to bump them into first. We did get good advice on advocacy from them, but I think just being able to be with "our people" has been the biggest advantage.

I just wanted to second mon's experience with testing. We had never considered testing for our children outside of what was required to get into our school district's gifted programs, then we ran head-on into a 2e wall for my ds in 2nd grade, and once we'd had that full suite of testing (with a tester who explained how the tests inter-related etc), it was such an amazing wealth of info for me as a parent. Whether or not it yields scores at DYS levels, it reveals a lot of info re how your child learns, where relative strengths and weaknesses are etc. It's also been a crucial piece of data for us in advocating for gifted services and accelerated coursework at school.

polarbear

Thank you polarbear, MON, Elizabeth and st pauli girl. I should have been more clear in my earlier post - DS goes to a good private school which is very rigorous academically for 1st grade and he gets pull outs to attend LA, Math and Computer programming with 2nd grade. We opted against grade skipping for now. The school is open to discussion on DS's needs and they also have opportunities like science fair, math contests, essay and spelling contests etc where DS can participate inhouse, I think (we are new to this school).
I have an old WPPSI score for DS with FSIQ in the 140s from 2 years ago. It is not a detailed report. We afterschool DS in math and science and he attends enrichment classes and clubs outside of school too.
Money is not the main issue in not getting DS tested - justifying to myself the pricetag of $3500-$4000 for it when there is no pressing need is the issue (these are typical Silicon Valley prices for testing). I plan to call Stanford university which is local to us and see if their testing is any lower in cost.
We don't live too far from the Tahoe/Reno area, so stopping by at Reno once a year for a summit is not a problem.
We have not even thought of college plans yet. But I can see how DYS connections can help in that area. And we already accelerate DS afterschool to meet his needs - detailed testing might give us a better idea on how to handle the acceleration.
And I am sure that my son will enjoy spending time with "his kind of people". So, yeah, I will start being an un-slacker about this.
Thanks for your help!

Ashley, I'm actually a bit of a slacker-personality myself Honestly, from what you've posted in your reply I'm not sure I'd be in a hurry to test or to apply for DYS - it sounds like things are going really well for your ds The time when test data has been most helpful for us was when our children *weren't* getting appropriately challenged at school and the school was putting up barriers. In your situation, I'd seriously consider waiting a few years to test - because your ds is still 6 (I think? - my apologies if I got that wrong!)... anyway, the reason I'd consider waiting is that there may be a perception that test scores are more reliable at 7-8 years old. Whether or not *you* believe that, we've found in advocating that other people will question early test scores.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks for your reply polarbear. We spent a bad year for DS in public K where we encountered poor "customer service" to put it mildly and recently moved him to a private school for 1st grade (yes, he is 6 years old). So far, we have had no complaints but we are only 6 weeks into it. We will see.
I too believe that 7-8 years might be a better age for testing - largely because the child might be more mature and more in control of their impulses.
I will also try to find the local DYS groups and see what kind of summits, meetings and events they have locally.

We did it for the potential of finding intellectual peers for our DD more than anything else. I want her to know that there are other geeks and kids that look beyond the surface layers/think beyond the first move out there.

Thank you, madeinuk. So far we have been finding intellectual peers for my DS in the friend circle as well as by attending enrichment clubs where there are kids at his level. So, when you say that you applied to DYS for the potential of finding intellectual peers, what do you mean by that? Do you get invitations to join a regional meet where all the DYS kids attend some activity together? Or do you initiate invitations to those kids to form groups for things like Destination Imagination and Science Fairs? Or do you just set up playdates for your child with these peers? Or do they all interact online?
I am trying to understand exactly what everyone means by "finding intellectual peers" on this forum.

At the most basic level "intellectual peer" would be in contrast to "age peer." It represents the complexity of language, ideas, interests over the coincidence of birthdays.

Some gifted kids will fit in fine and adapt with their age peers doing many things. Others are really caught up in their world of ideas and the way they think about them, they may not be able to dial it back and will tend to gravitate to adults and much older kids.

A six year old who says things like: "I am fascinated by the implications of mixing liquids of various PH levels; so, let us sneak into the back of the cafeteria and borrow some." might not get the most receptive of audiences on the playground to their ideas or conversation. So here, the asynchronous nature of gifted has a mix of a certain interest above age level and the common sense of a six year old. This kid might find an eight or nine year old who is interested in their idea, but could also be mocked for the bad plan.

Not sure if that clarifies it enough, but that's the basic concept in my mind.

There are regional meet-and-greet type events, if you are lucky enough to live close to an area with a great enough density of Young Scholars to attend one. Our next one is a couple hours gaming session at the library. If you meet someone that you "click" with through these, then presumably you could meet up for playdates with some of the connections you made there. The tools are there for online interaction between kids (the elists), but it doesn't seem to be really popular.

Zen Scanner gives some good examples of why asynchronous kids may not fit in well with their age peers. As another example, DD8 wanted to "play goddesses" with her friends, and assign everyone roles as Greek goddesses, but everyone else did not necessarily have encyclopedic knowledge of them all, especially some of the lesser goddesses. Girls who were old enough to have read all the Percy Jackson books (her initial source of this knowledge) were not necessarily interested in pretend play any more. Peers who are both the same age and the same intellectual level were a better fit.