Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Please read and offer some suggestions.

I am not sure whether I should have my daughter tested or not.
Here is her background/attributes/whatever.

She is currently 2 years 6 months 26 days old.

She know all of her ABC's and has since she was 1 year 8 months

She also knows all of the symbols for each letter and number.

She knows basic shapes: square, circle, oval, triangle, rectangle, diamond, octagon.

She can count objects into the teens.

She know all of the major colors (red, blue, orange, yellow, pink, brown, black, green, silver, gold, purple and others) and can easily discriminate between them.

She remembers many many songs and often makes up new lyrics to fit what she is thinking about.

When we look for a certain song on a cd, she knows if it is the right songs within the first 2 or 3 notes of the song. As each song come son she will say nope for each one until she hears the notes and that gets excited and says yes!!!

She remembers things that happened a year ago - such as who gave her individual items that belong to her (clothes, bracelets, books, toys) or what we did on vacation and a lot of the things that we did.

She knows almost every animal that we can find to show her in books. She also differentiates between the types of animals within a group (birds - she knows they are birds and they have a specific name for each one. Other animals too...like bears etc.)

She speaks mostly in complete sentences.

She knows when to use singular or plural words.

She know when to use past tense words.

She knows attributes of animals and uses items around her to simulate the animal. (EX: she will pick up something and put it on her back and say she is a turtle)

She is very aware of her emotions and is able to describe how she feels (sad, angry, happy, scared etc.)

She can search for and find a book on her book shelf out of 200 or more books within 5 - 15 seconds (usually).

She is able to do more, but I am sure you can get an idea of what type of abilities she has. Does anyone else have a child that has/had similar abilities at this age?

Suggestions please...

emoons -
I reccomend you enjoy her! She is certianly on a different developmental path. Throw out 'What to expect from your toddler' and buy or borrow 'Losing our minds, gifted children left behind.'

Keep documenting her development. Formal testing can wait a few years, unless you have some worries. But yes, children like her do exist, and it's perfectly normal, for her, to be like she is.

If you can do anything now to prepare yourself financially for homeschooling, there is a very real possibilty that you will be needing to homeschool for some or all of her educational years.

take care of yourself, and any friendships or husband,etcs. you may have - nurturing these children can be very draining, similar in some ways to having a speical needs child.

Smiles and welcome - so glad you found us,
grinity

I would wait. Our first was tested at 3 and tested MG. She tested PG at 7. There are a lot of reasons a wee one may test artificially low.

Some will tell you testing before 5 will provide inaccurate results.

I agree that she is too young to test to get an accurate read. What were you planning to use the results for? She wouldn't be able to go to KG at her age. I agree with Grinity - enjoy her! Take her to local museums, enrich her mind, expose her to music, and most of all, engage in lots of play - both imagination-stretching activities and physical activities. I would not assess her until closer to 4yr. If you are seeking ways to keep her engaged, I would suggest Suzuki music instruction (can begin as early at 2.5y). Also, lots of reading to her and with her. You are blessed with such a clever child. Enjoy!

I agree it's way too early to test her. Whatever results you would get wouldn't be accurate. It's hard to test small children and results may vary a lot from day to day. The same can be said about the children in the testing sample. Add those two together and you get very inaccurate results. Wait with the testing till she is at least 5.

In the meantime have fun and go with the flow. If you let her she will let you know what she needs.

I agree with all of the above.

I'll add (FWIW) that I usually recommend testing when you have a specific question that you want/need to have answered. There are many questions that fit the bill, but I think it's helpful if it's more than just "Is my child smarter-than-the-average-bear?" I suspect you already know the answer to that question. Add to that the fact that at age 2, the level of GTness is really hard to determine with any sort of accuracy, and I'm not sure how much testing might matter. It could matter a bit--I wish I'd realized much earlier that my DS7 was HG+ instead of MG, since I would have had harder books in the house at a younger age... But since you're already aware that this might be an issue--whereas I was not--I'm not sure a test is necessary for your child. You can have that sort of stuff around just in case. Testing might have helped me to get over my GT denial, but I don't think you have that problem.

If you need to know more for school placement, for decision-making, for placement in a GT or other program, etc., then test. If all is well and you'd just like to know what your child's IQ is out of curiosity, then I'd say save your money for a time when things aren't going well. If you have a GT kid, your changes are better than half, I'd guess, that they *won't* go well forever. And you'll want that testing when you need it!

Welcome!

Don't think anyone else answered the question, so I will: Yes, the same list would have described my DS at that age. Have fun, it gets even better :-)

I agree with everyone else that there's no clear advantage to test right now. I have two suggestions:

- Find out about education options now. She'll change, and you won't know now what will work best for her, but you want to know what the different options are, especially if there might be waiting lists involved in any of them.

- You don't say whether she's reading or not. If she is showing interest, or trying and getting frustrated by non-decodable story books, trust her! DS was a bit younger than she is now when we bought our first Oxford Reading Tree Songbird Phonics, which I heartily recommend, and he took off with them. If she knows her sounds, that'll probably be enough to get her started with level 1. What we did was never to push them at all, but to treat reading books as special books which were only ever read by DS, not read to him. They are graded gently enough that he never needed help with more than the odd word.

hello, and welcome! It's quite a ride you're embarked on.

If you're wondering whether to test her because inside you're saying to yourself "what in the WORLD am I supposed to do with this child???? Is she REALLY that smart???" (which is what I did)

than I would wait ... and love her ... and wonder at the amazing person you have in your family. Testing and all that can come later. And trust yourself to be able to meet her needs as they show up.

Hello,

My dd now five was like that. Strangely enough she is not very "academic" for lack of a better description. She is exceptionally bright but doesn't do the things you would expect. She can't read very well yet, her fine motor skills are not great but it is what she knows and understands that make her amazing. I agree with the other just have fun. Definitely take her lots of interesting places, we always have. I would strongly recommend plays. We live on children's theatre!

best of luck

I agree - DS4 loves our children's theatre. We read the books that the plays are based on before we go. So much fun! (We do the same with movies - e.g., before we saw peter pan, we read the original and the disneyfied version.)