Pseudoword's sole purpose in life is finding DISabilities. If a child struggles there, it could point to dyslexia or other reading concerns. It has a low ceiling overall, and even if high not a sign of "intelligence" (she says lamenting this was her son's adult level AE, LOL!)

Picture Concepts is a tad lower too, if you take that out, his scores are much more solidly gifted. He's a bright kid!

Your GT teacher's words are sadly pretty accurate for our school too. And our GT program is only two hours per week, *sigh*. I would add that the GT program has an upper limit as well, and kids above say 140 or so are still going to have to do some of that "poking along".

Best wishes along the way! I hope you'll stick around. Please don't let anyone lead you to believe he's "just barely" gifted.

Hi Squirt! Welcome!
I think that that quote reveals the extent to which the current standard way of doing things is to look at a Full Scale IQ as a single number. The quote kind of assumes that all kids who score 131 are 131-ish across the board. (Not that I think that there is such a thing as 131-ish but yes, practically speaking, a lot of MG kids are well accomidated with the 90 minute a week pull out program.) You son may be too strong to get much out of the program is his strongest areas.

I call this a 'spiky' profile - fun that your ID is 'sparky.' I encourage you to encourage the school to try to do what he needs, and you may be able to take the 'Just try him and see' approach. In the meanwhile, make sure his afterschool and summer experiences instill a work ethic, and try to provide opportunities to soar outside of the classroom. Also get his hearing checked - literal hearing as well as Auditory Processing - if he is missing small nuances in social situations that could be causing his bottleneck.

Remember that you can do the best you can, for now and that later you might be able to do better. Your resources will be few and far between, but I believe you can do quite a bit for your son - it will just take some time. Your own family members may have similar stories to tell - shake that family tree a bit, ok?

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Where do I get Literal Hearing and Auditory Processing testing? An audiologist? I'm not even sure what they are, but you make a good point.

Meeting with school was not so good. They did decide to have his 2nd grade teacher pretest him on math and reading units so that he doesn't have to do all the stuff he has mastered (given that whichever teacher they assign to him is even willing). But, they want to use that time to have him work on his weaknesses (creativity and writing), which is good and bad. I'm not sure how they'll get him to do that. I can see this in his head "Hey, I can pretest out of this math and reading stuff but then I have to write, hmmm, I think I'd rather just keep doing math".

Dottie, not to beat a dead horse, but is it your opinion that having him restested in a couple of years might change his scores and qualify him for more programs? When his social comprehension is better? Or, is the thought more that "what you've got is what you've got"?

Explain it to the school along these lines: if you had to spend all day, every day, doing what you dislike in order to "improve your weaknesses," would you develop a love for learning? Or would you hate going?

For every minute he has to spend trying to get better at something he's not so good at, he should spend at least two minutes in areas he loves. Preferably more. (That's a hint from Dr. Amend, and it's been great advice for us.)

Oh gosh Squirt....here a week and asking all the hard questions, ROFL! IQ results are finicky. They can change drastically, or not at all. They could be an over-estimate, or an under-estimate, and improving things like vocabularly, or visual skills can absolutely make a difference....as can mere maturity and a more cooperative tester.

That said, they are never in my opinion more than a "rough estimate" of what's going on. High scores are certainly high, and I'm not saying they can be that much of an over-estimate, but they could just as easily drop for a retest.

I would continue to collect data as time goes by, and if you have reason to believe your child IS higher than his current scores indicate, you might consider retesting.

We did have auditory processing testing done on our daughter, and had to call around a bit first. You definitely need an audiologist, but one who can do this newer level of testing. I called a few that had heard of it, but freely admitted they didnn't have the proper facility to do the testing, before I found one who did. Don't forget to check into insurance, as ours was completely covered. Ask for an "auditory processing evaluation". If they don't know that terminology....you need to try another audiologist, LOL!

I know that's not terribly helpful in the first part anyway, but that's my "de jour" thoughts...subject to change with still more time, LOL! I'm sure I had different things to say a year or two ago, but we learn as we go.

Your son's achievement scores are quite high. I would guess from that that his IQ testing is an underestimate, but that's not guarantee that more testing will change the results. You do have your work cut out for you! Keep pushing for accommodations and changes based on those achievement scores, letting the school test him on more curriculum based assessments as they see fit. My son would likewise prefer "easy" math to writing, LOL! Your son (and mine!) need harder math that is more indepth.

Kriston, I like that 1:2 minute quote. Who is Dr. Amend?

Dr. Ed Amend, a noted GT expert and author of useful books. He tested my DS6 on a bad test day, but he still gave us some really useful advice that ultimately led to retesting and DS6's qualifying for DYS, among other things. In short, he's one of the good guys!

Here's Dr. Amend's website: http://www.amendpsych.com/

Hi Squirt.
About abdominals and such: no 6 year old wants to exercise. Have him do more outside - riding a bike, swinging, climbing, lots of "heavy work" pushing and pulling things. That's how a child develops core strength. If he actually has enough core weakness to be assessed as having hypotonia (not as uncommon as most people think) then low muscle tone could be influencing his willingness and ability to write. Good postural stability is needed to have good distal control of the arms/hands/fingers in order to write. This is what gets addressed in OT - developing the core foundation for stability in order to allow for ease of arm and hand control.

I couldn't agree more with Kriston about the balance between what he needs to work on and what he's already good at and loves. Somewhere I had read a little story about a group of animals that went to school and how the rabbit was forced to learn to swim and never got to hop, how the eagle had to learn to climb and never got to fly, how the cheetah had to learn to fly and never got to run, etc all because of the idea of "one needs to practice what you aren't good at". I'm sure you get the moral of the story. I can't remember where I read it, but the story was intended to be a commentary on our public school system and how we force our children to work all the time on what they are NOT good at and never give them a chance to develop their natural talents.

There's a lot involved in the why your son doesn't like to write. It could something like his level of perfectionism or it could be due to some delays or disorder. It could resolve in time and all even out or it might need a little help (aka: intervention). I'd work on getting the academic needs settled and then take another look at the writing if it doesn't start developing.

About behaviors, I'd say that some of the immaturity or problems you are seeing in school in terms of social/emotional stuff might just be linked to boredom. You describe a different kid at home. My son was awful about going to school and much of it resolved when we bumped him up another grade for math. He still is bored with the pace of the class, but things are a lot better!

My son has hypotonia that was bad enough to cause a 50% delay in gross motor skills at 12 months and the doctors he saw at a military base never recommended therapy for it. He went for regular check-ups and saw different doctors through the years and I asked questions about the hypotonia and not one of them recommended therapy. It wasn't until my special ed teacher friend (the mom of one of my son's friends) told me that she noticed red flags for sensory issues and that we needed to take him back to the doctor that we started to get a few answers. I took my husband with me and we were able to get a referral to a developmental pediatrician who confirmed that my son did still have hypotonia and that it did contribute to his problems with writing and the low endurance and fatigue issues.

He is almost 10 now and has only been in occupational therapy (sensory integration therapy but the OT says she can't call it that because out insurance doesn't pay for that) and he is getting better in some things. His piano teacher noticed the difference, but there are still things I don't understand about this, like how he is sometimes able to play really well in piano (2/3 of the way through Level 3 where you have to look at the music and then move hands to different positions and look back up at the music and play both hands and sometimes he does this really well without having practiced very much and then other times he did practice and it doesn't look like it when he plays for the piano teacher. We used to joke that it must be "misfiring neurons." But lately, since he has had OT there are more of the good days and I am amazed at how well he is doing. Another strange thing though is that he still doesn't do jigsaw puzzles quickly and the OT says this is important but she didn't explain why. I don't think that it affects him academically in any way, but I do think it might cause his IQ score to be lower than his achievement scores.

I had some people tell me that you can't really tell by achievement scores if my child is gifted or how gifted. But I found an article written by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D. "Using Test Results to Support Clinical Judgment" that said the highest indicator of a child's abilities at any age should be seen as the best estimate of a child's giftedness. She gives an example of a child with a reading achievement score of 160 but an IQ score of 125, and says that the IQ score must be an underestimate and it is impossible for a child to achieve beyond his or her capabilities and that "overachiever" is an oxymoron. In our case my son would be a twice-exceptional overachiever which seems even more ridiculous.

The article goes on to say that the measured IQ of parents or siblings, early achievement of developmental milestones, profound curiosity, deep moral concern, remarkable associations of generalizations, perfectionism,... should all be taken very seriously in determining the abilities of a child and that in the end the diagnosis of the degree of a child's advancement must be based upon clinical judgment, not just on psychometric data.

The certified educational psychologist that tested my son using the WIAT a few years ago took his achievement scores and his early reading and the fact that he has a half-sibling who tested highly gifted into account when he told us that he believed that my son was highly gifted but we needed further testing to confirm how highly gifted, but I don't think it really matters for us since we homeschool.

I know that my son seems advanced in everything except physical skills compared to a public schooled friend who tested gifted. The public schooled friend's gifted older brother (another of my son's friends) even noticed this and he also said that he thinks my son is smarter than he is in some ways and he is four years older.

I know that my son is very different from me in the way he learns. The energy he lacks physically is there in abundance mentally. IQ tests just don't tell the whole story.

I sat in on an online seminar with Dr. Amend and really liked his personable style! HE even fielded a few emails from me and was very patient. I would love to have him test my kids!

I wasn't sure I was going to agree with Silverman's thoughts on achievement testing, but maybe I do. Those tests do tend to test "high" in the very early years, but I think if you look at a more average of scores, they probably do tell you more than I first thought. I've gone back and forth with that, having wildy disparate data on IQ and achievement for DS, but after years of collection...the higher achievement does tend to be the better estimate.

I wonder if in our case it isn't a written vs oral disparity. DS is just not a very outspoken guy. Don't get me wrong, he did great on IQ testing too, but he has that "statistically unlikely" difference with achievement being the higher of the two by a tasty margin.