MadManMoon, here are some links you might be interested in:

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/About_GDC/whytest.htm

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org (the hoagies site has an enormous wealth of information, including a state by state list of private testers http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/psychologists.htm , although they are by no means the only ones)

I agree with you 100% that the talents you listed--talent for fielding a grounder, putting a car together, etc.--are "gifts," and they are valuable! Everyone has gifts. Everyone!

But these gifts are different from being "intellectually gifted," which is the way the term "gifted" is generally applied in the field of education to kids who score in the top 5% or above (sometime top 2%, sometimes top 10%, sometimes other %s...) on IQ and/or achievement tests. Not everyone is intellectually gifted, by definition.

You don't have to love the term, I guess--though I have to admit that resistance always puzzles me, since it's a word with a very specific educational meaning that has nothing whatsoever to do with being better than others, nor do any of us involved in GT education think that it makes the kids better--but you probably do have to accept that it applies to your child.

GT kids just think differently, they learn differently, they need differently. A child in the middle of the Bell Curve simply doesn't beg for word problems at bedtime. That's just a fact.

As a side note, I attribute the all-too-frequent discomfort with the word "gifted" to be part of the same anti-elitist backlash that mostly eliminated grouping in schools--grouping (which is different from tracking, BTW) that helped ALL parts of the Bell Curve, not just the high-scoring tail. The result of this shift has been a woeful lack of attention for GT kids in most of the educational system in our country. So personally, I wish everyone in this country would stop reading more into the term "gifted" than is there, get over whatever semantic issues they have with the word, and just deal with the problem that is posed by systemically undereducating these kids.

I don't care if we call the kids "berdofpid" (or any other random collection of letters), as long as we provide a decent education for them!

Stepping down from *my* soapbox now. Who's claiming it next?

Sadly this shift has hurt virtually everyone on the educational spectrum, and most teachers will agree, even if they word it differently.

I'll leave the soapboxing to others, choosing instead to stand in the galleys saying "HERE HERE!!!"

One small request....just don't call us late for dinner, .

(Mom to three Berdofpids, LOL!)

P.S. Testing is usually performed by psychologists. You can ask your school to refer you to someone--though you probably want to be sure that the person you choose has experience with testing GT kids and not just with testing kids for LDs. If you want to get a better idea of the extent of your child's abilities through the testing, then you need a tester who doesn't stop the test too early.

Hoagies has a list of experienced GT testers, and snowgirl linked you to it.

Some university psych departments offer testing for less $$$, but again, you want to be sure you're getting what you want/need from them. Inexperienced testers might not know how to get the fullest responses from a GT child, so you might not wind up learning very much.

Sidenote to Dottie: I went to the brink of insanity and back today, so I'm right there with you! It was a loooooooooooong weekend!

Ugh.

Ah...so it WAS you...ROFL! (Congrats again for the quick-spot!)

I'm two-for-two! Yahoo!

(That's about all that went right this weekend...)

Maybe it's time for some of that virtual (or real!) wine, LOL! Sorry to hear it's been a rough one.

At least I didn't get the speeding ticket I thought I was going to get...which would have made me run out of gas for sure...and made us late to the soccer game we had driven 3 hours to get to this morning...as my DS6 sat in the back seat saying "I TOLD you we should have gotten gas already!"

Like I said, to the brink and back...

I'll grab the soapbox for a couple minutes.
If a child is gifted athletically, would you do your best to expose the child to a variety of sports and find what really inspires the child?
If a child loves mechanical things, would you encourage him to explore the possibilities?
If a child loves to help others learn, would you encourage him to follow a teaching career?
If a child loves to learn, and learns quickly, would you discourage that ability?

I've got more, but the bottom line is we are not blowing out other kids candles to make our kids shine brighter. We're just giving our kids what they need to allow their candles to burn as bright as possible, and hope other parents do the same for their children. Keep in mind it's a whole lot easier in the American culture to provide a child with athletic opportunities than it is to provide a child with educational opportunities tailored to his specific needs. That's why this forum is so valuable.