My son - Steffen- is 4-1/2 years old and is attending a school for the gifted. It includes: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Studies (Reading), Art, Drama, Music and PE. According to his teachers, he is number 1 in his class. He identified all of his letters between 12 and 18 months old. He read by 2 years old and continues to astound me. He performs addition and subtraction in several formats including word problems without ever being wrong. He was building complicated designs with legos from as early as 18 months old. A criteria to being accepted to the program for Kindergarten through 8th grade, the child must pass the IQ test of having minimally 125. He just took the test and wasn't even close. Verbal was 70%, Manipulatives was 61%. He came out of the test crying because he was so frustrated. I calmed him down and he finished the reading portion with flying colors. I did not get a percentage, but the test administrator was surprised with the words he could read. He told me there is a dilemma. The teachers tell him that my son is the best in his class. Everyone at the school told the test administrator that he would have a pleasant test with Steffen because he would just pass it with flying colors, but yet he tested barely above average on the test. Does this mean my son is not gifted?? Could my son just not want to take this test at 4 years old and the test be inaccurate to his potential. Confused mother - fran

Personally, I never like to label a 4 year old as gifted. I have experience there.

While some children take off running at the gate, they eventually even up with the other children, and visa versa.

When my son was 4 1/2, he was labeled as gifted and fell into the 8 year old level with reading, math, etc. He is now 7 and is struggling in second grade. Why? Because he was labeled as gifted so he has been put into classes with more challenging teachers. It has now come back to bite us in the hiney.

Let your 4 year old be a 4 year old now. If he is gifted it will show in the future, but don't get his expectations too high or he will lose whatever self esteem he's got now.

Again, I speak from experience.

Do you need a number to know that your child is smart? No, of course not. You know that your child is smart. Praise God that he is healthy, and let him be a kid.

Does he enjoy his schoolwork?

Is he happy?

Yes, personally I wish they did not even do programs for 4 year olds and let them be kids.

But of course he could just be bad at tests and/or the pressure of the test was too much, often at that age, the pressure parents put on the kids can be too much for them to take

Thanks for all of your kind responses. Steffen did not even know it was a test. I want him to be a child and he loves this school. His words "I love all the cool classes n stuff". He would not get all of these classes in the public school system at this age. I love him more now and I do not care about the IQ score. He wants to stay there and I want him to be happy. He loves the teachers and his classmates. From my point of view, he is finally challenged and happy. In the public system, I was getting called at least once a week on how he was disruptive. I told them what they needed to do to keep his attention, like let HIM read the book to the class, let HIM count, let HIM build. It just feels like we are caught between a rock and a hard place.