Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment wppsi-iv asynchrony and potential eye sight issues

I think it is best if you can get some accommodation in the classroom; I'm sure he will need it. It's worth considering different approaches, though. Mixed age instruction can work well. My daughter is in a mixed age classroom now and it helps. It often takes creativity to work out good solutions, though, unless you are incredibly fortunate in finding an appropriate school. That's why I think it so important to find a school willing to work with you and with a positive attitude towards academic achievement (most schools say they value academic achievement, but it's less common to find schools that really value kids who don't fit easily into a regular classroom and need additional help). We have often felt like fitting in and doing well on the standardized exams was valued more than exceptional achievement.

Right. But unfortunately it seems to me (from talking to many parents) that most private schools seem to want 'easy' children who don't take too much resources from the herd. We hope he will be such a kid, but if he hit some limit, then we might have to step in by volunteering, which we are willing to do if we have the expertise. This is all a bit confusing for me, so many criteria for selection, and in our area private school entrance (esp school for GT) is extremely competitive due to the potentially higher concentration of GT children. Literally, if you leave your spot, five other families will jump in and they are likely to have GT children as well.

I think the schools will want to be chosen by parents of children whom they think fit in their classrooms, on the other hand they have the luxury to choose as well, and their decision is not necessarily by the level of giftedness. OTOH we don't care too much about standardized exams, and it is not hard to find private schools that don't put a lot of emphasis into exam scores.

I am often feeling conflicted with this whole giftedness notions.. We learned from our current school to "respect the child" and on the importance of whole child education, so we had not focused on acceleration opportunities. My husband and I were both in special programs growing up, but mine was not GT program, which was not available where I grew up. I am just starting to grasp the idea that part of respecting the child is to provide acceleration as an option if he wish to pursue it.
I wish we don't have to plan this far ahead for possibilities, unfortunately it does seem necessary.

peanutsmom, something we have had to come to accept is that even a great school is not great for every child. Even a school that is great for a child one year might not be the next. And no you CAN'T know if a school that talks the talk will actually fit your child until you are there (and then remember that thing about some years being great and others being terrible). Basically I've stopped believing I can plan very far in advance. Certainly, I have plans that I hope might work out, but I am very aware that any year could be my kids' last at a particular school. When you are dealing with an unusual child you need to start thinking about "least worst" and "right now", because things change too fast to be sure what will work. I get caught up in every decision feeling so huge and momentous and long reaching in it's consequences, but sometimes you need to step back and realise any school choice can be changed, and it any choice you make might HAVE to be changed, no matter how sound it was at the time you made it... Make the best choice you can for right now and hope it keeps working...

Isn't that the truth.

If life has taught me one thing it is that you need to write your plans out in pencil and have a good eraser.

YES times a million!

My DS is now 7 and has changed so much even over the past year. Last year school was a disaster, this year is is fantastic and the only change is him, the teacher and a few classmates (he's still in the same school). I have no idea what next year will bring but we'll deal with it as it comes. DS is very introverted and resistant to change but as he's maturing even that is becoming less of an obstacle.

He has 4 SD spread between the WISC-IV categories, scatter and asynchrony is our normal Try to find the best fit for the present and your best guess at the future but don't be shocked if that path changes.

Thanks to you all for sharing the wisdom of parenthood your GT children. We are still new to this and this is our first child, so we have a lot to learn..

One of the asynchrony that doesn't show in our score is where he hit the ceiling by a good margin.. He is really advanced in building.. He just asked to go to a lego bootcamp, and I shopped around. All the bootcamps I found in our area are organized by age ranges, and his skills are beyond the age ranges where he will be slotted How do you all manage with after school extra curriculars?

My son is 11, and was a lego guy, too. He could do any set by age 5. Since he's my oldest, I thought every kid could, too.

My advice to you, is to just find a school you like for him, with parents you like, with a flexible administration. And then just sit tight and let them do their jobs. If it doesn't work in a year or two, and after you've worked with the school, you can make a change. He's only 4!

In the meantime, I would keep buying him sets until he's old enough for a Mind Storm. (My son got one at 7.) Look around for a Jr. Lego League. It shows them how to build things from scratch-- plus how to add movement. They start in K. First Lego League (starts in 4th grade, I think) was started by Dean Kamen, a great american inventor who created the Segue, among other inventions. There's something called i-camp your son will be able to do in a couple of years (it's combined ages 2nd- 7th, I think). When my son was going into 3rd grade, he was asked to come to icamp as a "Lego Master" and teach the other kids how to build the cool things he was building. He got to go every day for free-- if he'd teach kids whatever they wanted to build. He loved it that summer. (But he was over it all by the next summer.) Also, look at other building and creative sets. My son liked those complicated Knex marble runs, electric Knex, and many Maker projects. We did lots of building with real tools, too.

As for learning to read in a different way-- mmmm. I'm not so sure about that. I think that unless you think he has a learning issue, he'll learn to read and just take off without any special methods in the next year. Get him some lego building books and help him figure out how to read those. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

At his age, I don't see why you'd need to do additional testing. If I were you, I'd wait a few years and see how's he's doing. If there are strange quirks in his learning, additional testing will help figure it out. The most important thing I've found is a flexible school administration and teachers who don't feel like they have all the answers, but are willing to learn.

Have fun!

For extracurriculars so far we've done sports (right now it is hockey) and Beavers. He is very average at most sports so it has been a huge learning experience for our DS to actually have to learn and practice something and we often use it to help him empathize with his classmates that struggle with things that he finds very easy. Where we live 95% of the boys (and a few of the girls) at that age play hockey so it gives them something in common especially since none of the other kids we know are going to discuss astrophysics or Fibonacci numbers with him. DH and I are both engineers so building, playing and reading about science/math are as fun for us as they are for the kids and we do a lot of it at home. Most of the cool camps/clubs tend to have much higher ages so we haven't had much choice anyway.

Lego Mindstorms has been a huge hit with both DS7 and DD5. We've spent many hours building and programming various things.

Thanks syoblrig and chay for the kind responses! It is immensely helpful to hear from other parents whose children are gifted in the same area. I stumbled upon online info that VS giftedness is related to talents in engineering and math, and that totally explains it to me. He is also our first, so we had assumed that all kids could build the way he does. Also we didn't give him large sets until we got wppsi-iv result, so we were surprised as well with the extent of his abilities and perseverance.

I don't know what kind of information re-testing might give us, but I am mostly interested in parenting help, extra curricular resources, and DYS support.At our companies we have a lot of geeks, so they are always talking about the coolest geeky toys etc, and I can tag along there. But I think what is missing right now is a close friend with building abilities close to his, and also programs that let him participate at his abilities level (instead of age). Oh, and also while we are qualified to work with him on his interests, I am often ready to drop when I get back from work.

Processing speed sounds like it would be processing speed, such as how fast one can mentally assess or manipulate concepts or information. That is difficult to measure. The subtests on the wppsi and wisc that feed into the processing speed index can not measure the mental component alone, they necessarily also measure how fast the child is visually able to input information including how well they can keep their place on a page, their attention span, how well they listened to the instructions that were given them, how fast they can manipulate a pencil, how much they like to check their own work, how much of a perfectionist they are, etc. Those are timed subtests and some friendly kids may be too chatty to use their time effectively. Others may feel distractedly anxious knowing they are being timed. Those subtests also to me appear to favor a quick and dirty get the job done approach, versus detail oriented careful work. For example in one of the processing speed subtests on the test my son took they are to draw some simple shapes, a child who likes all their circles to look very round might end up much slower than another who is content with anything that remotely resembles an oval.

It's apparently very normal for a child who is otherwise very gifted to be more average in processing speed. They do say that when there are standard deviations between one or more other indexes and the "processing" speed, that the child may not appear to teachers or strangers to be as gifted as they seem at home. And it can be a bottleneck that frustrates the child internally too. This is absolutely true for my son who's processing speed index is 50 or more points lower than his other indexes. So that's something to watch out for.