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Testing


gracesteacher
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I found it useful but.

1/ my son attends public school

2/ he turned out to be somewhat brighter than I thought so I have had to change my thinking.

 

It is nice to know I am not crazy and neither is my son.

 

What kind of test depends on where you are and what you want it for.

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I feel like once I had dd9 tested, a whole new world opened up to us! Being able to see your child in a different light and realizing their full potential is amazing. As a parent, you always know if there is an area of strength (or weakness for that matter too), but to have it validated by a set of numbers somehow makes it more real. At least to me it did.

We still follow her lead, but I feel like there are areas that I now feel comfortable pushing just a little harder as I know she has the capacity. We went with the WISC-IV as I feel it is a well rounded test with specifics broken down into subsets.

 

To some people it's just a number, and to others it can create a road-map to guide you along the "adventures of education". There is no right way, just different ways.

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OP's question (ETA assuming it is about IQ testing and not some other form of testing) has been discussed a lot in the past on this board as well...I'm not able to search for past threads right now but do look through the archives, some good food for thought there.

 

I would test but only if it is cheap. We tested because we were given an affordable opportunity via a local university's psych department. They employed the WISC4. I took the opportunity because he was in the suggested age range for WISC4 (8 yrs and a few months old) and I had heard from friends with HG+ kids that the results wouldn't have been as accurate (for a HG+ child, I think?) if I'd waited much longer. Even then he hit many ceilings on the subtests. I wasn't given any interpretation of data (cons of doing it so cheap) so I had to read up a lot, and did a lot of digging and found that I could employ extended norms scoring to get a more accurate score (make sure you have raw scores to be able to do this). It was worth it in that it validated a lot of my suspicions--suspicions I was afraid to give a name to because I didn't have clear, cold data. But now, exactly 2 years later, the number no longer matters. I see it as just one shapshot of how he felt/ did on one particular day, for a few particular hours. Granted that the range shouldn't veer crazily from day to day but still it is only one POV from one test. BTW, I think the fifth edition of the WISC will be available soon but am not sure exactly when so you may want to wait for that if choosing the WISC.

 

So the pros for me personally were: validation, and putting him in a "range" so that I could read case studies of other kids in that range to see how they did from ages 6-ish to college age and have a clearer idea of what to expect whenever he made his sudden cognitive leaps (and to not worry too much when he fell into a rut because that happens as often as he has leaps).

 

I found these case studies in Miraca Gross's book, Exceptionally Gifted Children, and online through various local and national gifted forums and the Davidson database. Also, visit Hoagies for more information on testing.

 

ETA: I always forget to mention this...I suggest testing to weed out or to confirm learning disabilities if any. DS is not twice exceptional (as far as I know) but can be VERY absent-minded so that worry was also in the back of my head when I decided to test.

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