Ah, OHG, well put! Really well written!

You might consider submitting that to Hoagies or someplace. I think more people should read that!

Hi, I am a Mom of DS5, he is currently in K. He excels in math (doing 4th grade math now). Your son is very good in math and my guess would be that he would for sure tested in 99%, probably higher.

Whatever you are doing is for sure working It's great that he is happy in school. Is his K half day or full day? How much is his teacher aware of his math abilities? K work is way too easy for him and he could use much challenging work. I would suggest Zaccaro book for elementary students.

It takes time to get used to the gifted label. I suggest reading Ruff's book. It explains quite well, how gifted children differ from other kids as well as each other. They really have different needs and smarter they are more difficult things get.

Hi Madmanmoon,

IQ & Ability testing are very useful to understand your child's strengths, weaknesses. It helped me understand my kids more thoroughly, rather than just instinctively. I encourage many people to do diagnostics on their kids, not just because they're showing great ability. Some parents wonder about learning styles or exceptionalities. It's just a tool and doesn't commit you to anything. We hired the district diagnostician who does private testing on the weekends for supplemental income.

Aside from the gifted label, do you have a goal if you were to test him? For instance, if you found he was 99.9% in math, what would you do about it? Would you try to get the school to give him advanced work? Subject skip? If you saw several strength areas, would you grade skip? Since he's new to school (which is a challenge in itself), he may not have any issues or problems now, but as time goes on, he probably will be bored to tears. Do you think it's right that he waits 4 more years to do math that he's able and anxious to do now? I would say that's tragic.

I think highly gifted kids are in need of "special education" as much as disabled kids. It means parents have their work cut out for them--I don't believe we are gleefully cheering how smart our kids are, but more searching tirelessly about how can we help them. There is a lot of research out there that indicates highly gifted kids are prone to depression (less so when they've been academically accelerated), higher high school drop out rate--we're being proactive in trying to make sure this doesn't happen to our kids and that they grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults.

I understand the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" idea, but just be prepared that things might change.

Hi MadManMoon.

I will confess - I used to have a big problem with the word gifted. I used to roll my eyes when other parents used the term. I never intended to test my kids and only had them tested in order to diagnose ADHD (the IQ and achievement tests are just part of the package).

But I now believe that it is important to know what you are dealing with and to advocate for your child, and the test scores make that so much easier.

I still have trouble calling my child gifted, because rightly or wrongly, it carries the implication that my child is "better". But I accept the fact that it is the best label out there.

Personally, I'd recommend reading Genius Denied instead/before reading Losing Our Minds. I found Genius Denied to be something that I could probably recommend to my parents or to school personnel without flinching, not so with Ruf's book. You can count me in the camp that is uncomfortable with the label "gifted", MadManMoon. Recognizing that its use by psychologists is basically jargon and not congruent with the word's meaning otherwise was helpful to me.

My K age son is also in love with math, but I can't be much help since he has not been tested as yet.

I think Genius Denied is about PG kids. I think it's hard to find your child there. You can dismiss the book saying that you do NOT have a child like that, but you can easily see your child in Losing Our Mind. I don't like her LOG, but I still think it's an excellent and eye opening book when you are new to GT.

There is a nice book about math kids, Developing Math Talent A Guide for Educating Gifted And Advanced Learners in Math.

I think the baseball player is an apt analogy. I know some really amazing young players. They got so good that they cannot play in the local leagues, they're on some sort of all-star regional teams now. I think some parents would freak out if they played on the local team. With sports, there's a system in place. It's clear-cut who can advance to these better teams. It's purely skill-based. I would never ask one of these kids to play tee ball with kids his own age, if he could already throw 90 mph fastballs. Nor is is good for the other kids. It's not a big deal to have some sort of all-star academic type environments.

It shouldn't be a big deal, yet it seems to be.

How about CAS- cognitive acceleration syndrome?

Yes great analogy calizephyr!

To extend it further with real life incident....my son switched from recreational soccer to travel team soccer which is alot more work. He said he loved travel team soccer. I asked why. He said because the kids work hard, they really want to play, and they play much better. Also, you get to keep score and that makes it fun. In the regular league, while he wanted to learn plays and a position, the other kids weren't there yet in their skills. It wasn't fun being top dog. Now on travel team, he's average for ball skills but has his niche on defense which he naturally plays well. He has really rose to the occasion on travel team now that he's being challenged. Gee I wonder what he could do if the same thing happened in school?