Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Help Analysing WISC-IV Scores Please

Oh, Grinity, I forgot to add that we go to meditation at the buddhist centre every week. DD's favourite is metta bhavana!

We've also been advised to arrange a reading test to back up the other scores and give a better profile, which sounds like a good idea to me. Just not sure where we're at with resiliency. DD is currently pretty low after the IQ testing. I guess they make it fun, certainly hope so! Think we may leave it a while though.

K x

Hi there. You should probably get a hold of the Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses book by Dr. James Webb. I would also highly recommend you read one called "Gifted Grownups" by Marylou Strenewski.

I just read up on that and it sounds like a perfect fit for your DD's perfectionism and your 'expanded awareness' of yourself too - can you work a 15 minute sit into your daily lives once or twice a day? The meditation I do involves listening or feeling the pulse or heartbeat and timing the breathing to the pulse-count. You might like to try adding that to everything else for more fun.

I also sprinkle a minute or two of deep slow breaths throughout the day when I need to get more compassion-energy to get through. Slowly over time this could become a powerful tool for your dd.

Heartbreaking to think of your DD behind the couch hiding from the 'hard questions.' Is homeschooling a possibility? What about a gradeskip? Or going up to higher-aged rooms for reading? If you homeschooled, would you be able to recruit her current teacher as a science tutor?

The afterschool activities sound good. Keep tweaking!
Grinity

K x - I don't know of any research on this, but it sure fits lots of personal stories I've heard. And I've experienced and hear that the reverse is true as well - getting into a challenging environment has helped my son and many others get better at dealing with challenge. I used my observations with my DS's interactions with challenge to gauge how hard to push the school over the years. I loved it when DS made friends at a summer camp with a kid who had learned to solve the Rubix cube in 3 weeks and my son set himself the goal of learning to solve in 10 days or less. Youtube has tutorials now, but it's still a big job to memorize all those steps. Believe me - DS tried to teach me! I was even more delighted when DS returned to school that year and was willing to show off to his friends his cube-ability. An adult friend who works at the school told us she saw DS walking between classes in 8th grade, a friend handing him a jumbled up cube as they passed in the hall and DS solving it as he walked to class, with a larger and larger crowd surrounding him as he walked. He got to class on time and solved the puzzle on the way. That sums up my picture of what I want for DS - 1) willing to try hard things, 2) willing to openly share his interests with his friends.

So the question is - what can be changed in her school environment to bring in the challenge? Can they allow her to attend gifted extension with kids two years older as a trial and see how that goes?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

dont worry

This is all very interesting to me. Thank you for posting about your experiences and thoughts everyone!

Our younger dd, age 10, has been IQ tested twice. Once her VCI was in the 99.7th and PRI was in the 99th and the second time, a year later, the PRI had dropped to the 75th if I recall correctly (VCI was similar to the first testing). Since she also did achievement testing @ the time of the second testing and it was more in line with the first IQ score, a psych she's been seeing recently felt that the first IQ score was likely more accurate. She has significant anxiety and was coming off a year in which her teacher kept telling us (and her) that she wasn't that bright and just "guessed well" whenever she scored highly on anything (including IQ).

B/c she is also a very divergent thinker, she has also spent a lot of time hearing that her answers are wrong as she approaches things so differently. The above quote is interesting to me for that reason b/c I can certainly see in our dd's case that she has learned a fear of failing b/c, in her mind, she has failed at a lot. It also hasn't helped to have an older HG sister who is a superstar student.

Hi all,

Sorry for not posting sooner, we've been seeing a gifted specialist and reading lots!

DD is a divergent thinker too, hence being taught in increments doesn't work for her. In effect she just knows the answers, but doesn't know how, so apparently we have to work backwards to get her to demonstrate how she got there. We'll see how we go.

I'm considering homeschooling for a term to help her resiliency levels but am concerned about removing her from school and then re immersing her, although it would more than likely be in a different year group as we've been advised she needs accelerating and also above level testing and then p/t homeschooling as a permanent feature of her education.

As always, this is all new to me and I'm a little overwhelmed with taking on the educational responsibility of a profoundly gifted (and profoundly sensitive!) child, even in the short term. Not to mention fighting the school, etc. etc. Oh, not to mention terrified of the though of no reprieve from her intensities. I know this sounds selfish but I'm built the same way and so I'm unsure who would be in tears the most!

Desperate for advice (again!), but feeling better that I'm finally getting a handle on what the problem is. Now I just need to figure out how to make life a little easier on us all!

Hope everyone is happy and well :o)

K x