Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What to tell DD about being G - help!

Back to the OP, when we were in that situation we explained exactly that: DD was unhappy with school, and we were having her meet with an expert at matching kids to the best schools for them. (In your case, adjusting the school to work for your DD.) For this to work, she had to give the tester the best, most honest picture of herself possible. She absolutely saw this logic. It was years before we explained the results, because they weren't relevant to her at the time.

When my DS was 5 and was puzzled that this great place called Kindergarten where he was going to learn all these fabulous things never worked out and he kept asking me why he never learned anything at school, I told him - as matter of factly as possible. I told him that some kids are able to master elementary academics in a short period of time and are ready for even more but that for others, it takes 4-5 years to reach that point. I also told him that getting tested helps the tester write down what his brain's strengths and weaknesses were and that it helped the parents find other options - and that the tester's report would help us approach other schools that would give him work that matched his skill sets. He used to feel like a misfit before, but since we tested and then moved him to another school, he has met many gifted kids and found peers (even a few that are more gifted than him). He understands that he was trying to fit in before and that there was nothing wrong in feeling bored in a class where there was nothing to learn.

Do you think Stanford-Binet and WISC are culturally biased for certain groups of English-speaking U.S. residents? What I have read (for example in "Bias in Mental Testing" by Arthur Jensen) is that IQ tests are not culturally biased in the sense that people from lower-scoring groups outperform in academic achievement and in the workplace what their IQ scores would predict. These IQ tests have been through many revisions and have been vetted by psychometricians who know how to test for cultural bias.

Did anyone link to this Gifted Girls thread yet?
DD8 denied being smart the other day, which really annoyed the heck out of me Yeah, sure, because most 8-year-olds' ambition is to work at CERN and be the one to unravel dark matter *eyeroll*
But I shouldn't be surprised because it took me until I was 45 - FORTY-FIVE - to realize I was gifted too. I really wish someone had told me (several times, decisively) a few decades ago

Thank you all so much. DD, who asks us about all kinds of things that never are or would be relevant to her (things like what DH and I are talking about, even though she can clearly hear it has *nothing* to do with her... sigh) didn't ask a bit about the further testing and assessments.

I told her to expect more assessments, and she said 'oh, well Mrs. B had me do the end of the year 3rd grade assessment right after I did the end of year 2nd. I didn't mind, it got me out of doing the boring stuff the rest of the class was doing.'... OK, so clearly I overthought all this!! LOL.

At some point we'll have a conversation, I guess, but for now all I've said is that we're looking to see what she does and does not know, so that she doesn't have to have another year like this year where she is bored.

Again, I so appreciate all the advice. I feel like I have some strategies in place for when the conversation *does* happen - as we all know it will. Either she will come to me asking questions, or I'll notice her masking her abilities more and need to address with her that being smart is part of who she is, and that she shouldn't hide, apologize for, or deny that part of her. OR it will come up as soon as DS finds out she might be doing 4th grade math as a 3rd grader ;-) A totally different conversation (one in which I'll also have to do some apologizing to poor DS10 for the lack of challenge he had to suffer... but I can't control changes in administration; just take advantage of the opportunities those changes afford!). [I'm also kind of kidding about DS - he knows she does his 4th grade math homework at home already, so it won't come as too much of a shock...and, I hope it doesn't need saying but just in case, I will not be pointing out to him the fact that she'll be subject accelerated... Plus I do have some hope for changes for him too, just those are not easy changes like hers could be]

Agreed, as this seems to be what is true in their circumstance: For other children, who are outliers, this may not be true. If they've not been surrounded by intellectual peers IRL, they have more questions about the rarity of their intellectual profile.

In any event, I did not post about "exactly how many schools you'd have to go through to find another."