Where can I have my 6YO tested for gifted/talented? (Las Vegas: 2014, preschool)
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Vegas gifted in hiding here. I was one of those PG kids. I hid it from the world.... at least I tried. I was raised in a small town and then moved to Vegas when I was 6. Parents had ten children and because Daddy became consumed with gambling (came from a wealthy fam, lost money on failed businesses... ah, fell into the gambling trap), we were dirt poor with hardly any food. Duct tape on holey shoes, and trash bags taped around ankles inside our shoes when it rained or snowed. TV... nada. I read the encyclopedia and dictionary and played with mud, bugs, dogs etc. for fun.
I grew up in the ghetto of Vegas and was bussed up to the wealthy schools so they could have well-rounded numbers of minorities. Problem was, I'm Caucasian. Parents were yelled at by the Principal because we "messed up his numbers." Supplementing my education were the streets of hardknocks which includes, "Don't stick out profusely." When you experience your neighbors shooting and beating each other, drug deals on the corner, drunk drivers running over your friends in the alley where you played, you watch every move you make. Now imagine the heightened hypervigilance of a intellectually advanced child colliding with this type of environment. My husband laughs at how jumpy I still am.
When we moved to a slightly more affluent neighborhood, the teachers caught on and sent me off for testing. I was devastated when I qualified and bawled, begging my mother to refuse services out of fear. To stand out was death. She did and I went about school, trying to stop teachers from reading reports, sharing my grades on a paper, calling on me, hiding my report cards from students so they wouldn't say, "I hate you," when they discovered my grades. Most peers knew I was intelligent, but I downplayed it.
I graduated 5th in my class of over 500, but never really applied myself. I look back and I wished I would have used all that to continue college, but my ghetto-fantastic side of hiding took over. Now I have 4 children, 2 of which have been tested as highly gifted... one 3 years old turning four and one who just turned 6. I have always supplemented their education at home, but I absolutely appreciate social skills. I wouldn't be alive today without my social skills immensely. I am a person who saw mostly bad, but is always happy. I see both sides to this issue of letting a child be a child, but I also know it's a dog-eat-dog adventure out there, where no one is going to fight best for your child's education but you. I always slide in an element of learning for my children.... it's in my nature.
I am starting college this year so when my children are all in school, I don't go stir-crazy (also to set a good example as college is a requirement in our home). I remember feeling utterly alone at times in school because everyone around me seemed so dense and cloddish (still do to this day... shhhh, don't tell my mother in law). I also remember accidentally "word-vomitting" and blurting out one of my "strange ideas or theories" and having people call me crazy. To this day, I hate when people call me crazy even in play. My husband sings a song at me "I'm not crazy. Institution. You're the one who's crazy. Institution. You're driving me crazy.... etc." Punk music. I was just extremely brilliant and average intelligence people... they just don't see connections or the world like I do.
I believe my husband was an unknown little genius but because of the wrong "letting kids be kids" with no supervison or guidance, he was a destructo hulk. He fits the mold of "what happens when smart kids go wrong." He is so mellow now that you would have no idea that he once lit himself on fire for an "experiment", was expelled from school in 8th grade, had a mohawk, jumped off roofs, fought often, etc. He often tells me he already figured out what the teachers would teach and then tune them out. The next thing he knew, they had already moved on and he was behind the next subject. He was very bored.
Now, I am looking for services to assist my little ones. Not to exploit, terrorize and destroy their childhood, but to guide them along. I figure with my "crazy" rearing, I can find a happy medium that was definitely more stable than I had myself.
My whole point to my life story blabbering: We show a perfect mix of having no stability for children, but add the mensa brains, or close to it, and choas ensues without proper supervision. So find what your children needs, if you feel their lives are havoc without a rigorous structured learning environment, get to it. Or like my childhood, let them learn in the dirt and books... just don't feed them to the wolves in the ghetto (although I would never trade what I have gleaned from that). I will be searching out all avenues first for my children and then I'll make a decision and then tweak and tweak it again. I always have the power to change my mind again. Best of luck with all your children. And don't forget to have fun. =) ♥
Oh and had to add... children with goals to strive for and focus on, usually they get into a lot less trouble. For myself, ok is fine as my background doesn't support a person who can come out of hiding! For my children... they always have been front and center, wanting all the goods life has to offer. I let them lead and they are pulling faster than a pack of huskies!
I'm glad that many well-informed people are helping the poster. For those who don't necessarily have a full understanding of the issue at this time, here are some responses that might help.
Most parents of genuinely "gifted" kids hate the term worse than you do.
The term in and of itself suggests superiority and elitism and tends to evoke well-meaning (if inaccurate) answers like "They'll do fine on their own," "All children are gifted," and "They need to learn to be bored."
The first notion is manifestly inaccurate. The best place to question this assumption is absolutely Hoagies Gifted, a one-stop shop containing tons of information and research.
The second is also untrue. Though all children are precious, worthy of respect and love, and in fact are gifts themselves, no, not all children are gifted. Logically, it would make as much sense to assert that all children are learning-disabled.
If we're talking about talents within one individual, I might be a far stronger runner than I am a basketball player. With my stature and hand size, I generally stink at b-ball and am better at running -- but that doesn't make me a Gebrselassie or Ryan Hall. It doesn't mean I'm "gifted" in running -- nor "learning-disabled" in basketball.
The final idea is one of the most hostile and damaging. We immediately realize how damaging and nasty this idea is when we ask ourselves whether our neurotypical child should ideally be placed three or four grades lower than where his abilities tell us he should be. If he's doing sixth-grade work, bounce him back to third grade. Why? So he'll learn to deal with being bored.
Sound wrong to you too? Yes. It should.
OP, I highly recommend contacting the UNLV's Center for Individual, Couple, and Family Counseling, because their grad assistants assess kids for a substantially reduced fee. They do the Stanford-Binet V and the Woodcock-Johnson III, for example. I would also immediately seek out the Davidson Institute of Talent Development. Call them. Even if your child is not a DYS, they're very helpful.
As far as the issue of schooling, I think CCSD struggles with this issue, and in an age of cuts and funding issues, gifted services -- which are no more than a pullout anyway -- will very possibly face the chopping block. In all seriousness, I would strongly recommend either grade-skipping, a course of action that abundant research has demonstrated to be among the most effective methods of dealing with the gifted child in the regular classroom -- and that's whether you consider cost, academics, or the oft-mentioned issue of socialization. The other option is homeschooling, a choice that ultimately may work the most effectively of all, particularly since gifted services are not mandated in this state, if memory serves, and any decisions to grade-skip are really the decision (or at the whim of) the principal, who may or may not be receptive to that solution.
To some degree high IQ types have simply got to make their own way. Four of we five were very gifted...but mostly in different ways. My mother was up to the role in some ways though hopelessly deficient in others. She was an academician's academician...but with vast holes in her skill set. She graduated magna or summa *** laude in her three degrees. Had one 'C' in her academic career...from an older law school professor who believes that was the best any woman could ever get in his course.
We all were initially educated in very plebian catholic schools. However there was lots of enrichment at home. We did much better in high school as by then there were options.
Being bored was never a problem. You simply found things to do when they tried to grind you down. To some degree you must be able to do that. If you can't you simply have to be born in the right circumstance. One of the reasons perhaps that the bright children of the upper 2% do better than most.
Two of us, including me, went through trouble after puberty. Mother was unsuited utterly to managing that. We worked through it with varying degrees of success. The set was reasonably successful. Certainly not optimal. Perhaps the brightest of us was least successful because of the toll taken by the process.
I am not sure anyone could have gotten a better outcome. Money would have helped when we were young...but not a lot. Better judgement and a more experienced parent set would have helped. Ours were actually very naive, even if very bright, and that was costly.
Mother, with all her intellect, was incapable of home schooling her children. She made immense contributions to their education. But too many smart kids in too small an area...she would have gotten killed.
To some degree high IQ types have simply got to make their own way.
Hey, we all do, man. We all do. Middle- and low-I.Q. types have got to make their own way also (to whatever degree this is practicable and possible). However, one of the best ways we can make that happen for all kids -- or at least more of them -- is by teaching them at the appropriate level, fitting the educational shoe to the intellectual foot, as it were...and not the other way around! (Ow!)
Quote:
Four of we five were very gifted...but mostly in different ways. My mother was up to the role in some ways though hopelessly deficient in others. She was an academician's academician...but with vast holes in her skill set. She graduated magna or summa *** laude in her three degrees. Had one 'C' in her academic career...from an older law school professor who believes that was the best any woman could ever get in his course.
We all were initially educated in very plebian catholic schools. However there was lots of enrichment at home. We did much better in high school as by then there were options.
Being bored was never a problem. You simply found things to do when they tried to grind you down. To some degree you must be able to do that. If you can't you simply have to be born in the right circumstance. One of the reasons perhaps that the bright children of the upper 2% do better than most. ]
Two of us, including me, went through trouble after puberty. Mother was unsuited utterly to managing that. We worked through it with varying degrees of success. The set was reasonably successful. Certainly not optimal. Perhaps the brightest of us was least successful because of the toll taken by the process.
Well, and not having a "control self" out there (an identical twin raised under different circumstances), it's hard to say what would've been changed otherwise. I think most of us try to do the best we can, and no, no solution is ever going to be perfect. Sometimes the best you can get is "good enough."
Ahhh how we envied you...all those rides on the short bus where we had to walk...
IMO, there's a fine line...between the short bus...and being gifted.
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For my children... they always have been front and center, wanting all the goods life has to offer. I let them lead and they are pulling faster than a pack of huskies!
