Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment testing in familiar place vs. gifted tester

a psychologist from my DD6s former preschool was reccomended to give IQ testing. I thought this might be a good place becuase it is familiar. I got a reccomendation from a therapist type (I forget her title). Would it be better to go to someone who has gifted experience? Or does that not matter so much? At this point there is not a big urgency for testing. I'm just wanting to check into it.

A tester who understands, knows, and has ample experience for the whole gifted range is very important, imho.

They will know how to make the test itself more enjoyable and bearable for the child. With great ability to motivate if child feels onset of perfectionism and doesn't want to guess, the tester will know how to deal with that. Or, if the questions start off too easy, the tester will know how to motivate the child to try.

A warm fun tester personality is a definitely nice to have too.

Thanks for your response. what is imho?

In my humble opinion.

I have a question about gifted testers. How do you find one?

We had our DS5 tested by a psychologist starting when he was three due to a variety of issues and it turned out he was really gifted (which we kind of knew but he was our first). We like the psychologist and she certainly helped us with behavior issues, but she is not doing anything useful for us in terms of educational support. Now that he is in Kindergarten I really need to find someone to give us guidance. The doc told us she has never had experience with kids like him. I would like to find someone new. Anybody know of someone good in the Washington, DC area? I searched on Google but nobody seems to be advertising that they are a specialist in gifted children.

This might be useful to you. http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/psychologists.htm

When we were looking for one, we asked friends with gifted kids. We found a few who mentioned gifted in their interests/areas of specialty. Then we interviewed, etc.

Eleanor05,

Are you familiar with Johns Hopkins CTY? We just started working with them and haven't received the final report with recommendations for education yet, but they are pretty highly regarded and just up the road in Baltimore. PM me and we can trade notes if you want. My son is in K, but we are looking at trying to grade skip to second next year. We are in Maryland.

Thank you.