Looking back, especially through this blog, I should've known my son was special. I didn't realize to what extent because he was my first child and I wasn't around many young kids. I knew he was smart, but I had nothing to compare it against. Yes he was saying "ma-ma" at 7 months and knew his letters and colors by 18 months. He read his first word around 2 and was reading full books at 3.5. Looking back, that makes this is all so obvious. I remember looking at the baby milestone charts and thinking that those were made so that you knew when to see the doctor if there was a development delay because my son was always 2-3 stages ahead. I was so naive. I don't remember exactly when it switched from "he's really smart" to "he must be 'gifted'".
He tested about a month after turning 6, just as he was just starting 1st grade. The first inkling we had that maybe he wasn't just "bright" was when the tests took so long to complete. The child psychologist said the test would take 3-4 hours for the cognitive and academic achievement tests. The first test took 3.5 hours and then we were told to come back the next week to finish up. That took another 3 hours. We had to wait 2 weeks for the results. During that time, I researched levels of giftedness, cognitive and achievement tests, what it could possibly mean if it took 6.5 hours to do the tests that were supposed to take 4. I started to come across a few stories here and there about kids that did similar things as him as babies and toddlers. These were kids that skipped grades and took college courses in middle school.
When we got the report, it was a bombshell. It threw us for a loop for weeks. His IQ is >99.9 percentile. He'd hit the test "ceiling" in 5 of the 14 subtests, meaning that he had scored 18-19 out of a possible 19. He had extended norms on 3 of the subtests which are additional questions for kids that hit the test ceiling to see how far they can go. On the Matrix Reasoning subtest, he scored a 23. The psychologist, who specializes in gifted kids, had never seen a score so high on that particular test. His achievement test was also phenomenal at 99.7 percentile without any preparation for it.
Why is that such a bombshell? It's great news to hear your child is profoundly gifted. We are truly blessed. He is so bright, funny, vibrant, intense, caring, passionate, and just a wonderful little person. The news that is hard to take is that no school will be able to challenge him enough. Traditional private school won't be appropriate and even the schools for the gifted likely won't be enough. What works best for kids like this? The most expensive school there is, home school as it takes the family down to a single income. That just isn't doable living in high cost San Francisco while owning your own business with your spouse. We know that we have to do something, but the weight of the responsibility is overwhelming. There are many options and sometimes it's just hard to know what direction to move towards. It's just obvious that something has to change.
