Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Give me good reasons to have IQ test

He is eight/2nd grader. He is bright, though not as bright as many of your DC. I have read so many children have IQ test on this board. I just can not decide to have DS doing the test or not. I mean how IQ test can help me and my son.

DS showed gifted signs at 2. I didn't think he was gifted at that time though. I just thought he was a highly maintenance kid. I also wondered he had ADHD or Aspergers. He did have some behavioral problems at home and school but they were not significant enough for us to take him to evaluation. As the time went by, DS showed less and less behavioral problems so I am not worry about ADHD/Aspergers now. I think the quirkiness is contributed by OE.

The IQ test idea came to me because I do want to know his ability more. On Feb. he took SCAT test and got 93% Verb, 99% Quant. He is also IDed as gifted (98% or up) by school district but they didn't give me detail information. DS told me he felt happy at school with friends but he also admitted he was daydreaming a lot in the class. School district is facing budget cut impact. Our school barely provides any gifted service to gifted students. I have to search other resource to challenge him. But I still got lots of questions. Is it necessary to have an individual IQ test. I know he is gifted, I know he is not a PG. What can the IQ test tell me more?

There is another issue to cause me thinking about an IQ test. DS sometimes has hard time to sort out his thought. He has some writing problems which I had posted in another thread before. His output seems a lot weaker than his input. It is like he consumed a lot of information and processed but hard to express them into words. Dose an IQ test provide me more information about his weakness? What is the reason you took your kids to have an IQ test?

Hey BB

The reason most parents get a 'Psychoeducational Evaluation' which is the testing that includes an IQ test is that there are issues that the parents want help with or insight into. There is no standard definition of PG or HG but many of us parents were quite suprized to see those sorts of scores even if we knew what our kids were doing. Gifties often live quite surrounded by other gifties- friends and family so we might feel sort of average.

If it is possible to observe your child's classroom that might give you more of an Idea of 'is this really a problem?'

If your child is unhappy or begging for harder school that is one reason.
If you child seems to not be learning that learning can be hard work and how to handle that slower gratification.
If your child seems happy but wont try challenging activities.
If your child is acting up.

These are all the things that prompt parents to start searching for a tester who is familiar with all the levels of giftedness and pick up the phone and start asking questions. The book '5 levels of girtedness' might give you a rough idea of how careful you have to be in choosing a tester. As we know, 5 gifted children sure feel like a lot of gifted children so when testers self report that they have tested a lot we need to ask more questions.

love and mmore love
grinity

Hey BB

The reason most parents get a 'Psychoeducational Evaluation' which is the testing that includes an IQ test is that there are issues that the parents want help with or insight into. There is no standard definition of PG or HG but many of us parents were quite suprized to see those sorts of scores even if we knew what our kids were doing. Gifties often live quite surrounded by other gifties- friends and family so we might feel sort of average.

If it is possible to observe your child's classroom that might give you more of an Idea of 'is this really a problem?'

If your child is unhappy or begging for harder school that is one reason.
If you child seems to not be learning that learning can be hard work and how to handle that slower gratification.
If your child seems happy but wont try challenging activities.
If your child is acting up.

These are all the things that prompt parents to start searching for a tester who is familiar with all the levels of giftedness and pick up the phone and start asking questions. The book '5 levels of girtedness' might give you a rough idea of how careful you have to be in choosing a tester. As we know, 5 gifted children sure feel like a lot of gifted children so when testers self report that they have tested a lot we need to ask more questions.

love and mmore love
grinity

Just to add my two cents. I seem to recall that your son has some writing issues. An evaluation may help you identify what is going on with his writing.
We had my DD8 tested last summer. She was in a gifted center program for 1st grade but struggled with some demands of the program, particularly in writing. Her 1st grade teacher said that while DD is gifted in math, she was just an "average kid" in other areas. We were considering pulling her out of the program. Her testing showed that she is highly gifted with dyslexia and dysgraphia. Her scores ranged from the 97th to 99.9 percentile, with an FSIQ in the 99.9 percentile. Achievement scores highlighted her challenges. As a 2e kid, her challenges mask her giftedness and her giftedness masked her challenges. Based on her testing the school psychologist strongly supported keeping her in the GT classroom and worked with the 2nd grade teacher to identify accommodations. I don't think that this would have happened if we hadn't paid for testing.

2 cents

we did have our child tested and we're glad we did. it just clarifies what we are dealing with. it addresses and lets us know if there are any weak areas, what the strengths are. the knowledge it gave us just helped us in short/long term decisions. it also finally confirmed for us what we believed, but chose not to believe -- that child IS gifted. I had very strong denial. And then realize, so is the rest of the family, and oh -- that explains some of the other relatives, too!

For us, testing provided a way to 1)confirm what we believed we were seeing, and 2) communicate with others about our child (particularly the school) in a way that they took as "unbiased fact" rather than as coming from "those parents" who think their child is the most brilliant thing on the planet. In providing us with "hard" data, it also provided us with specifics about their relative strenghts and weaknesses. Having test results gave us the confidence we needed to advocate for our children effectively.

Someone correct me if this is not accurate..You may want to read up on this.

There may be some advantages to testing at an early age to see more about a child's potential. I believe I read between 5 and 8 were an ideal time for testing. If it's not an finacial burden and you think your child will be ok with it I would recommend testing.

My DD7 showed some signs but I really was not sure she ranked as high as her brother. The testing was good to help her Dad understand she special needs.