It depends. We did get some useful information from ours. We learned, for instance, that she should never be given time limits for her work, or that if timed tests were absolutely required, she should be given extra time. Also that videos would be a good way for her to learn. That was about it though.

That is just the neuropsych's bias showing. It really, really is. This is why my advice to homeschoolers is *always* to ask whether they are opposed to homeschooling for special needs/ASD/whatever your concern is before the eval is scheduled. They will tell you if they are, and if they say yes, you can call someone else. Luckily, where I live the neuropsychs at the largest LD testing and treatment center in the city are actually very supportive of homeschooling. Dd is being evaluated again next week (we have a dx, but we're looking for more details and more recommendations this time) and they've told me they will include recommendations for how to assist her in both a school and homeschool environment. That way, no matter what her future holds, we will know what services and accommodations she needs. That said, my dd was in school last year, and *despite having a dx of Asperger's* (the same thing as HFA) the school made NO accommodations for her. None. They wouldn't give her an IEP or a 504, even though they knew that, not only is she autistic, she has a severe processing speed delay. They didn't care at all.We gave the school a 16 page eval report detailing what the problem was and how they could assist, and even that wasn't enough for them to do anything for her. As long as she was getting decent grades, they didn't care, and the new neuropsych we are seeing said this is pretty standard behavior, and she's involved in all kinds of litigation for families trying to get the services their kids need. So don't just assume you'll get services or you'll get good services just because the psych report says she needs them. Sadly, that might not be the case.

My 9yo dd is like that, too. She went to public school last year, and I really worried about how that would go for her, but she managed. Now, she did lose recess constantly for not finishing work on time, but she has a pretty bad processing speed deficit, and it wasn't because she was refusing to work. She was always working, just too slowly for them, and they refused to accommodate in any way.

Um, I just realized that, for some reason, I read Ameena's reply and was thinking it was the OP replying on her thread, so I posted a comment about her being a single mom and how hard that is. So now I'm deleting it because I realize that's totally stupid, since Ameena is not the OP and I have no idea if the OP is actually a single mom. My apologies to all.

I was all set to order the Gr. 4 book, since that's DD's grade, but one of the reviews said it wasn't challenging enough for gifted 4th graders. Here's where I'm never sure if I should be posting here or the learning differences board, but DD is gifted, and her biggest strength is her verbal skills. However, she's dx Aspie and tends to miss things sometimes, whether that's because she's spectrum or because of something else (processing speed deficit, low working memory, pick your problem) I don't know. Would this be good for her? Too easy? Just right, given her issues? I guess it's cheap enough that I could try it and just order the next level if it's too easy, but money is tight for me as a single parent, so if anyone has any insight to save me from that possibility, I'd appreciate it.

I think it could be any number of things. My dd appears to me to have ADHD, but that is not what any of the professionals have thought so far, and we've worked with 3 therapists and had one complete psychoed eval, plus the intake interviews with a neuropsychologist, who will do a more thorough eval in 2 weeks. None of them think ADHD, although the neuropsych is reserving final judgment until the eval is done, of course. My point, though, is that I think to untrained parents, things can look a lot like something they aren't, and if there's any way you can have an eval done, I would highly recommend one. What we do know about my dd is that her processing speed is really low, and that causes her to lose track of what she's doing just because it takes so long. So what looks like inattention or poor memory is really just her slow, little mind on overdrive (I hate calling my kid slow because of the connotations - she's actually very above average intelligence; she's is literally just a slow thinker). Her working memory is low, but it's within normal limits - certainly not bad enough to cause her to forget what she's doing all the time. However when observing her as a parent it *looks* like her memory and inattentiveness are the big problems. I can't say enough how helpful it is to have these testing results.

DD was dx with Asperger's, very high IQ, but 2E because she has a processing speed deficit that puts her way, way, way below the normal range. We had that done through an educational psychologist. However, we're now pursuing a new eval through a neuropsychologist, partly because we need more detail. That's why I recommended a neuropsych. :) We took our DD to a social worker who specialized in collaborative problem solving. That was when she was 6. It was a failure, and my guess (although I hope I'm wrong) is that it won't work for your son, either. He sounds too much like my daughter for it to work. We saw a child and family psychologist. He failed us miserably, too. He kept wanting us to punish, punish, punish her more. It was a nightmare and it did not work. If you find your psych doing that, and it isn't working, feel free to find a new one. I would get the neuropsych eval first. That way everyone knows what you're all dealing with.

This is SO TRUE, because we did not have my daughter tested because I suspected she was gifted. I thought she *might* be (and according to the testing she is, but she's 2E) but she just had all these issues...no, ISSUES. And I could see that she was smart, but it was like I couldn't get through to her. She was too smart to be picking things up so slowly and to be getting so frustrated over things. It didn't make sense. But testing made it all make sense. Now I know she is capable of every bit as much as I thought she was. It's just a matter of packaging it up in a way that she can take it in. Now, her results were borderline, so that I'm not sure whether she's actually, actually gifted or whether this new testing will show something else. I know she's close enough to the line that I can expect as much as I was expecting from her, and that's all I need to know. I DID need to know that, though, and there was no way for me to be confident about it without testing. That might just be an issue for kids with LDs or kids who learn differently, and not for all kids, gifted, bright, or whatever else, but I think it's very true for smart kids with learning differences. It's easy to see they're smart. It's not easy to figure out how to help them learn.

She understands place value. We used manipulatives from K-2nd, until she told me they were for babies and she didn't need them anymore. I think you might be misunderstanding our issue. :) It is not that I don't know how to teach her math. I've read Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, I own Family Math, a million manipulatives, and several math games, and I've used great, hands-on curricula with her in the past. I know how to teach her math from the ground up, so it's not that. It's that I'm not sure what the best/fastest, but least stressful, way is to help her recover some skills she *already had*, but lost due to not using them for a year. I just need to know the best way to get back on track: Back up and reteach, or forge ahead and hope she remembers. Does that make sense?

Beaners, I absolutely agree. Actually, the one that annoys me most lately is the myth that all gifted people are introverts. So silly. It's like people want to shove all gifted folks into some tiny box. I'm on my phone, so I don't know how to quote, but I just wanted to clarify for the PP who quoted me, I'm not one who thinks giftedness can be dx by academic achievement. I was just talking to/about those who do. :)

Those two links are interesting. I can't decide how accurate they are. My childhood testing consistently put me well over the Level 5 benchmark score, but I don't know that I was doing many, if any of the things Ruf says a level 5 kid should do during toddlerhood. I know I was still frustrated with trying to write my name after I had turned 4. Maybe I have some undiagnosed LD or something, but I always did fine in school, so I was never tested beyond the requisite IQ testing to get and remain in the G&T program. On both lists, I think it's safe to say that the effect an LD might have on a kid isn't accounted for at all. Regardless of how gifted you are, if you have a processing deficit or disability of some sort, you're probably going to need more than 1 or 2 repetitions to remember something. Or at least it seems that way to me. I really wish I could remember who was so passionate about this topic in the thread I'm thinking of, but it was a long time ago. I've never heard anyone say that giftedness requires an LD. Instead, I think the idea is that many LD kids are just very bright or gifted, but a generation ago, no one would've noticed them.

But at what point are cognitive abilities advanced enough to be considered gifted? This actually has no bearing on my life at all - I'm not trying to decide if I have a gifted child or not - I've just wondered about this ever since a discussion a couple of years ago in which some posters made a big point of saying that giftedness didn't start until some point long past when most people believe it does, and I've been curious about how people define it ever since then. Also, for those who define it in terms of academic achievement well outside the norm, that excludes many kids whose IQ scores put then in the highly gifted range, but who have learning disabilities. So do you believe being 2E disqualifies one from being gifted, if the disability is bad enough to mask the intelligence? I'm so curious about all this and have been much too busy the last year or two to follow up on it, but I've been wondering. :)

I'm curious how different people define it. Do you go by IQ scores? If so, do you refer only to the global score or do you consider subscores? And what kind of scores are we talking about here (use percentiles, since the different tests score slightly differently). Do you require a talent or special gift? Does the child have to appear gifted to anyone who met them or saw them doing academics? What do you mean when you call someone gifted?

We originally did the educational psych testing, but their results just didn't have enough clarity or advice, and some of their advice...meh. For instance, we have a *very* writing averse kid with sensory issues specifically related to writing. Forcing her to write holds up her education, because it takes forever and frustrates the heck out of her. The educational psych's advice was to make her write more, never even acknowledging how it might be a problem or discussing how we might do that, when writing makes her start screaming because she can't stand her fingers touching each other. We're now going back for a more in depth eval from a neuropsychologist, and she *does* give educational advice, because her testing results are given to schools, used in lawsuits when schools refuse to provide accommodations, etc. Her report and testing just more thorough than the psychoed eval was.

She did known her math facts before starting school. She no longer remembers them, as they did so little arithmetic in their math curriculum that she rarely needed to know them. Additionally, they were encouraged to use calculators. I refused to allow this at home, but I had no control over what happened at school. She does not know her multiplication tables for the same reason. She is perfectly *capable* of knowing her math facts, as she did when she was younger. However, because of her learning differences, that didn't always provide automaticity when it should have. For instance, she know 8+7=15, but might get hung up when she got to 28+7. For those times, the mental math tricks, taught in ALL Asian math programs that I know of, were very helpful. She understood the conceptual reasons for things. She just had trouble remembering concepts and math facts all at once. However, like I said, she tested at 80th percentile in math (Woodcock Johnson administered by a psychologist, not a school test) so she is perfectly capable of doing well in math. It's not a question of ability. It's just that she hasn't practiced in a year. Use it or lose it is a fact for her. I think we'll just take 2 or 3 weeks and review that stuff, plus decimals, which they didn't explain conceptually at all, while maybe only doing a few problems a day from the MM review pages. That way she's moving forward in the curriculum, but still getting a more thorough review. Thanks, all!