Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Does my child sound potentially gifted?

Thanks everyone! I posted an update in the "testing" section with his full scores, but forgot to update this post. He took the SB-5 and results were below a technically gifted FSIQ. He was sick at the time of testing, and there's quite a wide spread in his results so I think we will re-test in a couple of years, and seek out a school with facilities for extension anyway.


Fluid reasoning 14 (91st percentile)
Knowledge 10 (50th percentile)
Quantitative reasoning 13 (84th)
Visual spatial 18 (99.6th)
Working memory 13 (84th)

Verbal:
Fluid reasoning: 16 (98th)
Knowledge: 11 (63rd)
Quantitative reasoning. 14 (91st)
Visual Spatial. 15 (95th)
Working memory. 19 (99.9)

FSIQ: 128 (97th)
Verbal: IQ 131

Thanks for that. I feel like his results are kind of ambiguous. The psychologist said that we could comfortably call him gifted, but that he didn't quite reach that "magic" 130 in the FSIQ so I'm a bit reluctant to. She said her feeling was that his result would likely be higher should we retest when he is a little older, as the areas he performed (relatively) poorly on were ones that tend to improve with life experience and schooling, and he hadn't had any formal schooling or been to long daycare at the time of testing. He's also very risk-averse, and she said he refused to even attempt any questions or activities he wasn't 100% sure on.

This may be a sign of developing a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. You may wish to read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. One aspect or application is that gifted kids may stop taking appropriate risks in order to always be "right" or always be "smart" or never be "wrong", and this may work against them. The concept is nicely summarized in these youtube videos:
Ashley Merryman & Po Bronson: The Myth of Praise (link- )
Teaching a Growth Mindset (link- )

You may also wish to read up on perfectionism. A book which seems to understand perfectionism very well and which many find supportive is "What To Do When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough". Another book you might like is "Perfectionism: What's Bad About Being Too Good". While insightful, these are written gently for kids, in a style that is fun and engaging. With any of these books it may be wise for a parent to pre-read and decide if it seems to be a helpful tool to use in guiding their child.

Thanks for the recommendations. It's definitely something I'm constantly working on with him, and I'm grateful for any resources. I was a gifted child myself and very much a perfectionist, and I feel it was a real problem. To be honest, I'm now 32 and still struggle with this trait at times, so I'd love to help him avoid it!

Parents often learn a lot about themselves while raising their gifted children, and may experience significant insight and healing of old wounds (which were previously not acknowledged/understood). Enjoy the books and youtube clips.

It can be painful remembering things you hoped not to have deal with again.

Can you get your child to try new things? I took my over eneregetic 4 year old son to ballet so he had to work outside his comfort zone. I dropped the ball once he went to school though - my memory is of having to do a range of things- so now at 7 he won't do new stuff.

Yes, that's a great idea. My parents were very good at this and sent me off on all sorts of activities, and independent adventures as I got older. It didn't cure me of my perfectionist traits, but it definitely helped. I have actually just recently signed my son up to ballet as well. It's not an activity that plays to his strengths, so I think it'll be good to help him learn to work at and enjoy something he's not naturally good at.

I also found that four year old girls were more likely to follow the teacher's instructions so he had fewer partners in crime.

Looking at the SB-5 results, I noticed that something called "Knowledge" was his lowest score by a mile in both categories, and that you'd said you'd been a laid-back parent with regards to early education (and lest you think that anything that follows here is a criticism of that, let me jump ahead in here by saying I feel that's a great approach for that age). I'm no expert on that test by any means, but I wondered if "Knowledge" measured crystallized knowledge, whereas the "Fluid Reasoning" scores (which were very high) measured things any child would have to figure out. That would suggest to me that the Knowledge sections are largely influenced by how much exposure he's had to formal education, which you've indicated is very little. The scores on other sections would seem to me to be more predictive of his ability to absorb crystallized knowledge, given more opportunities.

So I googled to see what info I could find on what types of questions are included in the different sections, and came up with this: http://www.prepstrong.com/pages/about-the-stanford-binet

It would seem to confirm my suspicions. Vocabulary can be influenced by reading together and how the parents speak, but it still comes down to exposure. We all modify our vocabulary choices when we speak to children, but we "dumb it down" to different degrees. And for procedural knowledge... well, that's just not going to be there if someone hasn't shown the child the procedures.

My unprofessional analysis is that, assuming an appropriate educational placement that can meet him at his natural pace, this child would shoot past most of his peers at crystallized knowledge in very short order, and you'll never see an FSIQ that low again.

Yes. And Absurdities, which is the nonverbal knowledge subtest, is heavily culture/experience dependent.

I've also had personal communications from Dr. Nancy Robinson, who was a consultant on the SBV, in addition to being one of the seminal researchers in gifted ed and radical acceleration, expressing her disappointment with the end product of the SBV development process. Especially the Absurdities subtest. I think the Robinson Center still uses/accepts it, but it didn't live up to the design intent.