Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Trying to understand all this...

Our daughter has been assessed as gifted and dyslexic and is enrolled in a "academically highly gifted" public school for 1st grade this fall.

So she's "twice-exceptional" I guess. We're pretty nervous about how she'll feel about her dyslexia at this school but are pursuing an scientific/evidence-based remediation program outside of school and are hoping to see results. We're also talking with the principal of the gifted school about accommodations and she seems pretty knowledgable and comfortable with the idea of our daughter being at the school.

Her GAI is 154 which I gather is pretty good, though I don't really understand what it means. I know that professionals look at the score vs. the percentile since there is a wide range of scores above the 99.9 percentile (aren't there any tables with more decimel points?). I don't really understand standard deviations and I'm wondering if there's a good explanation of this out there for a parent like me - without a pHD in gifted ed. After all, what is the difference between moderately gifted - highly gifted - profoundly gifted anyway? I'm straining both to understand her learning disability and her giftedness - it's complicated!

Bump!

Welcome to the forum.

And congrats to your DD's exceptional score (GAI of 154).

Dr. Deborah Ruff has levels of giftedness which is quite easy to understand.

http://www.talentigniter.com/ruf-estimates

The average IQ is 100 and 1 standard deviation is 15. So about 68% (within 1 standard deviation) of people IQ's are between 85 and 115. About 95% (2 standard deviation) of people's IQ's are between 70 and 130. We can't label gifted unless above 2 SD or at least 95th percentile. So your DD is clearly highly/profoundly gifted.

I don't know much about 2E and hope others will chime in.

The second 95 should be (about) 97.5.

Here is a table
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

Welcome! You don't want more decimal points than 99.9; the numbers aren't meaningful enough for that to be sane. I'm not a statistician either, but on the basis of this test your daughter is very very bright. The Wikipedia article on standard deviation looks OK and you might or might not be content with looking at the pictures :-) - your DD is over in that thin 3sigma tail of the top diagram, doing better on the test than 999 of an average 1000 children her age taking the test (or you might find it easier to think of her being somewhere in the top 1000 of a million children taking it). She's bright enough, in other words, that to put it crudely, how bright she is is probably never going to be the limiting factor on what she can achieve. However, the dyslexia might be, and there may also be interesting information in the details of the marking of the test she took.

If you have the details, there are people here who could comment, assuming it's a well-known test like the WISCIV. One thing to look at is how different her GAI (general ability index?) is from her FSIQ (full scale IQ) - are either or both of her working memory index (WMI) score or her processing speed index (PSI) score much lower than her others (PRI, VCI, unless I've forgotten a TLA)? They almost certainly will be somewhat lower (they almost always seem to be in gifted children), but if either is below the 50th percentile that's definitely worth being aware of, and if they're up to around (plucks a number from the air) the 65th maybe, you might want to think about it. These don't get counted in GAI, but they can be important in school achievement and more generally. There are ways to help, if either is a severe relative weakness.

I will say, Ruf's "levels of giftedness" mentioned above are controversial because they aren't based on good data, and I have the impression that parents of 2e children often find them particularly unhelpful.

My first thought is, you're in a really good place at this point in time - you were able to place at this point in time - your dd has been diagnosed, you're pursuing outside help to remediate her challenges, and she's being placed in a gifted program at school too. You didn't mention what is in place re her dyslexia at school - will she have an IEP or a 504 plan? Has anything been discussed yet?

I don't have direct experience with dyslexia; my 2e ds13 is dysgraphic and has an expressive language disorder. Like many of the other 2e parents I know, early elementary was really tough for him because his challenges went unrecognized until 2nd grade when he was really *really* struggling, and teachers tended to think he really wasn't all that smart (in spite of his IQ scores) - simply because he couldn't write. If there were two things I could do differently in hindsight in those early years of school they would be to first, give him the intellectual challenge he needed along with the help he needed for his challenges. It would have helped him tremendously to have been in a gifted school with peers who were closer to his level of intellectual thinking, and it would have helped him feel more successful if he could have been doing work in math/science/social studies etc that matched his ability. The other thing that I wish we could have done was know earlier on that he was dysgraphic, because going through his first few years of school undiagnosed he developed tremendous anxiety and also a lot of self-consciousness over his challenges. SO - you are in a good spot with respect to both of those things - she's in a gifted program, and you know what she's facing in terms of challenges.

My one key piece of advice based on watching my ds go through school is - expect and demand that the work your dd is doing in school is at the level of her intellectual ability, even if it's technically "hard" due to her disability. Work on remediation when it's appropriate, but everything else should be at her true intellectual level - give her the appropriate reading instruction during reading, but for "reading" outside of that, give her audiobooks. For my ds, who is extremely challenged with generating ideas to write about, what we've seen time and time again is that he writes *extremely well* when he can get started, and hence his best writing work happens when he's in an appropriately leveled Language Arts class (or history, social studies whatever). It just doesn't happen when he's held "back" and given work that's intellectually "remedial".

I'd also keep myself well-informed about what was going on at school (keep an open dialogue with both your dd and her teachers) - and keep on top of all that you can re knowledge about dyslexia and associated challenges. We found that our ds' dysgraphia and expressive language disorders impacted him in ways that we hadn't anticipated as he went through elementary school and on into middle school - none of it was so difficult he needed to not be in accelerated programs, but we did (and still do) run into small road bumps here and there that have to be addressed. Once they are addressed, he's fine and he does very well in school.

Some things I'd like to know about the school your dd be in (if I was her parent :)) -

1) Experience with 2e students - are there other 2e kids there? How does the school typically deal with 2e issues? Will she have an IEP or a 504 plan?

2) Does the school define giftedness as ability or achievement or a combination of both? We did opt out of our district's HG+ tract in elementary due to concerns that we'd heard from other parents that there was a philosophy of "gifted" = "give the kids a lot of homework" instead of "foster intellectual growth and creativity" - and I think that was the right choice, for elementary and middle school, for my ds. His challenges have meant that he spends a bunch of extra time on homework that his peers typically don't, and we've been able to meet his intellectual needs in other ways.

3) How does your dd feel about her challenges and how does she see herself relative to peers? What is the overall atmosphere at the school like - do they value and support differences? Or will she feel like the only student there who has a challenge and will it make her feel out of place?

I've said it before (probably way too many times here!) - but parenting a 2e child in the early elementary school years often feels like it's much more about meeting and remediating challenges and learning what accommodations are needed than it is about being able to take advantage of gifted programs and fostering huge intellectual growth in leaps and bounds. It sounds like you're in a good place for both... but if you ever get that feeling that it's all about dyslexia and that the challenges are taking too much out of your dd's life (more than you'd want them to)... all the work you (and she) puts in now, early on, is going to pay back tremendously a few years down the road when she's had the remediation and you've both learned how to accommodate/work-around/etc - by the time she's entering middle school she'll be where she needs to be for her intellectual gifts to shine

Best wishes,

polarbear

I can see that I've come to a very good place with these questions. THANK YOU for taking the time to thoughtfully reply to me - you are all reaching out to soothe a stranger's worries and it's a very generous thing.

(Perhaps I should have posted this up on the 2E forum. Anyway I can do that? I hate to clutter up this forum if my post really belongs somewhere else!)

(BTW, what does 'DD' stand for?)

As for the test scores on the WISC-IV. Her GAI was 154 and her FSIQ including Working Memory and Processing Speed is 140/99.6%. She was in the 75% for Digit Span, Letter-Number Seq and Coding and the 91% for Symbol Search. I really don't know how exactly this relates to her dyslexia but can imagine that it might. For Verbal Comprehension she was Similarities 19, Vocabulary 19, Comprehension 15. for Perceptual Reasoning she was Block Design 16, Picture concepts 17, Matrix Reasoning 17. Is this the information that might be useful? I don't know that anyone used extended norms on her 19s or even if it matters.

As for her dyslexia:
On selected subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson III, she scored.... 113/81%/Grade Equivalent 1.6 on Letter Word Identification. 102/56%/GE 1.1 on Reading Fluency. 107/69%/GE 1.1 in Passage comprehension. 122/93%/GE 2.0 in Word Attack. 109/72%/GE 1.3 in Broad Reading.

On the CTOPP - Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, she scored....
Elision 11/63%
Blending words 15/95%
Sound Matching 11/63%
Memory for Digits 11/63%
Nonword Repetition 14/91%
Rapid color Naming 5/5%
Rapid object naming 6/9%

Anyway, here's the reply I got from the principal of the highly gifted (PUBLIC) school where our daughter is enrolled for this fall. I felt somewhat encouraged by it and am eager to see how this will all go in practice:

..........................................

Hi (Parent of DD),

When the teachers come back to school at the end of August, we can set up a meeting with you and the classroom teacher. We will be starting our SIT (student intervention team) meetings in October once teachers have had an opportunity to get to know students and have a better understanding of their needs. All of the first and second grade teachers are attending the (Dyslexic Readers) training this summer and will be able to support the work that (DD) does with (Tutor). In addition, all of the first grade teachers have had teaching experience with struggling readers. We will contact you in August to set up a time to meet with (DD's) teacher. We will also schedule a SIT for (DD) in early October.

Best Regards,
(Principal)
..........................................

2E parents, how does that sound so far? In the couple of brief conversations I've had with the principal, I gathered that of the (probably small) 2E population of this school, most are on the autism spectrum and in reading would have problems with comprehension - not decoding like our daughter. She did say "none of these kids is good at everything....they don't come in pretty little packages".

At our daughter's neighborhood school (where she attended kindergarten), she was identified as needing additional support in reading at the beginning of the year but never recognized as gifted. We tested privately. My guess is that other parents with 2E dyslexic soon-to-be 1st Graders are not sending their children to this 'highly gifted' elementary school out of these same concerns or may not realize their kids are highly gifted OR dyslexic yet - for heaven's sake, our 2E daughter got a 98% on her Spring Reading MAP test! (Still, she is clearly struggling. It's complicated!) I can see how indeed with 2E - the giftedness masks the LD and the LD masks the giftedness - making the child seem more average.

I have heard that at this school, students are encouraged to honor each other's differences and support each other. Our daughter is sensitive to the fact that she's not reading quickly like many others. On the school tour, I don't believe I saw any books in the 1st grade classroom that are on the level at which she's reading (will have to do something about that). We've been talking all summer long about what it means to be dyslexic. Hopefully she can educate some of her peers as well and I will be as involved as possible in advocacy for her - I have been reading a few books, including "Overcoming Dyslexia" (Shaywitz), "The Dyslexic Advantage" (Eide & Eide), and "Academic Advocacy for the Gifted: A Parent's Guide" (Gilman). I WELCOME RECOMS FOR ADDITIONAL TITLES, especially anything geared specifically towards 2E Dyslexia. (I've also read "30 years of SENG" and "Parenting Gifted Kids" (Delisle))

SPECIFICALLY, I need to put together a list of questions and requests for the SIT Meeting mentioned above. Would love suggestions about that....everything you all have already written has been helpful.

I know this is probably not recommended, but I considered getting out some rice and showing her (in grains of rice) how her GAI score on the WISC-IV works statistically. I don't want her to get arrogant or lazy, but I really don't want my daughter to feel dumb when she encounters non-dyslexic 1st grade peers who have already independently read the Harry Potter series. (I suppose that its possible that some of these super readers had scores on the WISC-IV that were not as high as my daughter!?!) Our new mantra is basically, "You learn differently than they are teaching" "Your brain is wired differently" "It's just going to take different practice" How in the world will she be able to hold "different" in her mind when they all seem.....better!?! I have to admit that I am afraid - though identified early as highly gifted myself, I spent many years feeling stupid and incompetent...and I didn't have dyslexia or go to a gifted school.

I have no idea if we will find that the teachers are good at fostering intellectual growth and creativity for our daughter's needs, but this question is definitely on our radar. "Defining giftedness solely as academic achievement and the ability to do additional work" will not go over well with our extremely imaginative, artistic, spirited, highly-gifted dyslexic daughter! We are going to do everything we can to emphasize her strengths! I just really hope that we're doing the right thing - our neighborhood school was good and I don't want to be changing her school every year.

Thanks again for anything, everything. We've already received some helpful information. Bring on the suggestions! Would love to hear from more 2E parents, especially of highly/profoundly gifted dyslexic children.

First off, you are welcome in the 2E forum. "DD" means "dear daughter," (or sometimes another adjective, given the erratic behavior of some of our loved ones).

It sounds like so far, you are doing everything right, and your principal's email sounds promising. One suggestion that I would make to help bridge the gap between high-level understanding and low-level reading is audiobooks. I wouldn't spend a lot of time talking about her test scores or filling her with the idea that she's smarter than her peers, and I probably wouldn't do the grains-of-rice demonstration, certainly not before school starts. Instead, "feed the beast" by giving her the information and answers to her questions that I'm sure she craves. If her friends at the new school have all plowed through Harry Potter and she wants to know what they're talking about, then check the Harry Potter audiobooks out of the library (they are excellent!), and let her listen. But don't manufacture problems before they appear. Maybe no one will care about Harry Potter and instead they'll be playing Percy Jackson, or ballet school, or who-knows-what.

Thank you for the perspective. I am borrowing worry from the future and driving myself a bit crazy!!!!!

My DS 7 has writing issues - not exactly dysgraphia but elements of - and he noticed the differences between what he could do and what the other kids were doing so we had to talk about it. He is in a gifted school and they and we emphasize how everyone has something they are good at and something that is challenging, even if you can't always see what those challenges are. I am dyslexic and began talking more about my issues as well. I second MoN regarding learning at the intellectual level while also remediating the issue. And hopefully trying to not make it always about what you can't do.

Does your DD have something she is really interested in? For my DS it's science and we make sure he has access to opportunities and materials at the level he is. For the most part that is outside of school via books, video, taking him to talks etc. if she is having trouble with reading but likes more advanced materials - great courses videos or books on tape is a great way to go.

And definitely ask questions here as they come up, and do some searches or read back in the 2e section, there is a lot of good stuff in there! I know the parents here have really helped me with how to talk to the school and other things that were really useful.

DeHe

Hi scby4U - I wanted to let you know I saw your reply and have a ton of more thoughts to share with you, but I'm running short on time this afternoon. I'll be back to post later.

One quick thing you can do to start thinking about what to ask for at your SIT meeting is to google "dyslexia + accommodations" to find lists of typical accommodations that are used for testing and in the classroom. You can look through the online lists and see what makes sense for your dd.

More later!

polarbear