Is Everyone's Child 90th percentile and above on the WPPSI III or just the DC's on this board?

[Anonymous]

What are you parents doing that I'm not to make your kids so darn smart? I'm being serious. Are they studying numbers and letters at 5 months? Are you teaching them to read at 12 months? I thought I was doing everything right (atleast according to parenting books). Now I dont' feel like my 4.5 year old will be ready for K in the fall. He was no way near 99th percentile more like 75th percentile. Will he be ready for K or will he be so far behind everyone else. I feel like he is really smart and were he is supposed to be at his age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you parents doing that I'm not to make your kids so darn smart? I'm being serious. Are they studying numbers and letters at 5 months? Are you teaching them to read at 12 months? I thought I was doing everything right (atleast according to parenting books). Now I dont' feel like my 4.5 year old will be ready for K in the fall. He was no way near 99th percentile more like 75th percentile. Will he be ready for K or will he be so far behind everyone else. I feel like he is really smart and were he is supposed to be at his age?

Don't worry. It's just a test, and not a particularly accurate one for that age. The overwhelming bulk of children are not tested before K, and the overwhelming bulk of children do well. Their parents have no idea what score they would get on a test like WPPSI, and look to the children's actual progress and not a past score.

It's unfortunate that due to the high demand for private school spots, the schools have to test young children. But don't allow this to make you think that your child cannot succeed. Your son could very well outperform any of his peers. He is not a test score. He is a child with potential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you parents doing that I'm not to make your kids so darn smart? I'm being serious. Are they studying numbers and letters at 5 months? Are you teaching them to read at 12 months? I thought I was doing everything right (atleast according to parenting books). Now I dont' feel like my 4.5 year old will be ready for K in the fall. He was no way near 99th percentile more like 75th percentile. Will he be ready for K or will he be so far behind everyone else. I feel like he is really smart and were he is supposed to be at his age?

don't worry - some kids have a bad test day. people have always told me how incredibly bright my child was blah blah blah so i was dismayed last year when his/her verbal was in the high 70's (performance was better). i thought the same as you but honestly i knew he was smart inside but did start to doubt myself and how much tv we started letting him watch, etc... anyway, point people, my child's test scores this year were awesome - 99 percentile for full scale iq. i didn't do anything different except tried to play some analytical games etc... no worries - i know my child is bright and am happy that he scored so high but these tests are questionable in my mind b/c i think he was just as smart last year! he'll be fine - don't worry and it sounds like you are doing a great job!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you parents doing that I'm not to make your kids so darn smart? I'm being serious. Are they studying numbers and letters at 5 months? Are you teaching them to read at 12 months?

I've got no idea. I just think some kids are naturally tall, and others are naturally fast, and others are naturally pretty, and others are naturally fast learners. DC is in the fast learner category, but all we do is look at Winnie the Pooh books and watch Dora the Explorer on Youtube. I'm just hoping DC can hurry up and invent a better mousetrap soon, so I can retire early and plant flowers.

[Anonymous]

Thank You. I agree as long as I work on his weak areas (which appears to be fine motor skills) he could someday beat out all of competition (lol). He also was in a bad mood that day. I think my husband and I arguing on the way there and my freaking out because I stepped in dog poop while getting into the car didn't help : ) Just a cold rainy bad day! Luckily we only applied to the schools that didn't require the WPPSI. He "seemed" (because you never really know) to do well at the playdates.

[Anonymous]

hahah..Maybe I should start entering my GORGEOUS but not too bright according to WPPSI score daughter in beauty pagents in the hopes that she will get so good at them that she will be a pro by the time Miss America pagent comes along. Then I won't have to pay for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good post! Thanks. Lots of insightful thoughts there, so I will need to think about it further. One quick quibble:

Anonymous wrote:Actually the chart you cite shows exactly why a 99.9% score is significantly different from a 90%ile or even 95%ile. Depending on the scale used (Wechsler or Stanford-Binet) one out of every 18-24 (or 15-19 for the SB) scores at the 99.5%ile score or above. This means that your average child would have at least one intellectual/academic peer in the class, perhaps more if there is more than one class in a grade.

I think you mistakenly looked at the 95% ratio (1:18-24) when you meant to look at the 99.5% ratio (1:215). This sort of blunts your first point about peers in the class, since if you are correct then anyone over 95% would have no peers in the class, and it sure seems like a lot of kids in the area with scores over 95% are getting into schools. Nevertheless, all your other points are good ones that I want to think about some more.

Thanks for posting.

Oops, sorry, thanks for catching a typo. I meant to look at the 95%ile, and used those ratios, but wrote 99.5%ile after that. My typo after switching back and forth between screens to look at the data. What I was trying to show is basically this -- a child scoring at 95%ile will likely have 1 o4 2 peers in a class or grade, but a child scoring 99.5%ile will probably have NONE. This is why kids at the 99.5%ile may have more trouble with admissions than other lower (but still overall high) scorers.

[Anonymous]

Given the number of high scores reported on this board it seems that around here, even children scoring at the 99.5th percentile are fairly likely to find peers in their class or grade. I thought this part of 14:19's post was particularly interesting in this regard:

Anonymous wrote:Also, the authors talk about the fact that they find surprising numbers of these exceptionally gifted children:

"According to the normal curve of distribution, the incidence of children above 170 IQ should be approximately 1 in 294,000 (Dunlap, 1967). This means that the entire state of Colorado should have no more than 2 or 3 of these children.

In the past 9 years, however, we have discovered over 80 children in Colorado in this IQ range. Similarly, the state of Maine should have one such child at most, and yet 15 have been found in rural Maine during the same time period. Grossberg and Cornell (1988) indicate that only 0.14% of those in the gifted range should score 164 IQ or above, but in the past 9 years 4% of the children brought to the Gifted Child Development Center, in Denver, Colorado, scored above 170 IQ. These figures add to the growing body of research that has found an unexpectedly high frequency of scores at the upper end of the IQ distribution (Dunlap, 1967; Gallagher & Moss, 1963; Jensen, 1980; McGuffog, Feiring, & Lewis, 1987; Robinson, 1981; Stott & Ball, 1965; Terman, 1925)."

So, perhaps the high frequency of high scorers mentioned on this board helps support their findings.

[Anonymous]

To the poster who asked about MoCo school being a better fit for highly gifted kids: I think that might possibly be true for the upper grades. For younger kids, though, MoCo doesn't require any gifted education at all, and it is at the whim of each school's individual principal. Our local school (a "good" one) told us point blank that they couldn't guarantee any acceleration at all. (We have one of "those" children--DC reads and does math at least four grade-levels ahead), and we are finding that private school is better, but only because we found one willing to pull DC out for reading and math at the appropriate level. (Parents of a couple other neighborhood kids that I'm friendly with, whose kids are also very intelligent although not as advanced as DC, report that their kids are bored in MoCo and are not being challenged, FWIW.)

[Anonymous]

So what private school are you happy with?

[Anonymous]

It's just a test! It's only one part of the assessment. Our 3.5yr old DC had to take it b/c it was required. We thought of her as a regular child who is active lievly and tells you what she likes best about school is playing outside. She does not attend a prestigous preschool and both her parents work long hour fulltime jobs. She scored 99.9%ile which shocked us both. It's still no guarantee, she'll be accepted. All around, she's a normal happy fun easy going kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our 3.5yr old DC had to take it b/c it was required. We thought of her as a regular child who is active lievly and tells you what she likes best about school is playing outside. She does not attend a prestigous preschool and both her parents work long hour fulltime jobs. She scored 99.9%ile which shocked us both .... All around, she's a normal happy fun easy going kid.

Hey! Are you my spouse?!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the poster who asked about MoCo school being a better fit for highly gifted kids: I think that might possibly be true for the upper grades. For younger kids, though, MoCo doesn't require any gifted education at all, and it is at the whim of each school's individual principal. Our local school (a "good" one) told us point blank that they couldn't guarantee any acceleration at all. (We have one of "those" children--DC reads and does math at least four grade-levels ahead), and we are finding that private school is better, but only because we found one willing to pull DC out for reading and math at the appropriate level. (Parents of a couple other neighborhood kids that I'm friendly with, whose kids are also very intelligent although not as advanced as DC, report that their kids are bored in MoCo and are not being challenged, FWIW.)

If you wouldn't mind, please share the name of the school that is able to meet your child's needs - thanks so much!

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm really sorry, but I'm not comfortable naming the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, I'm really sorry, but I'm not comfortable naming the school.

Sigh. Lucky you that you found it, then. Wish the rest of us luck, too, will you?