

Joey scored 151 on the SBV. This puts him in the highly gifted range (exceptionally gifted with the previous version of the Standford Binet). Not surprisingly, I felt vindicated.
The first thing I did was have the results sent to Joey's pre-school and request that the district be contacted to see if there were any resources available for gifted children available through them. Commenting on the SBV results, the school said that they knew 'all along' that Joey was very gifted (hmm, right), that there weren't any services available through the district for gifted children at that age, but that if I wanted to fill out the form for the 'Special District' services, then we could get Joey some help adapting socially. Seriously??? I was livid. I said that there was no way in heck I was filling out that form, and instead, I asked for a referral for a private psychologist, so that Joey could be evaluated (again - this would be his 3rd developmental assessment that year - after passing the first two without any problem) in the group and private setting. So the school did that. They referred us to their favorite private psychologist, who proceeded to observe Joey in class and then in a private session. Her conclusion? That he was actually advanced socially, particularly when it came to pretend play because he had advanced vocabulary that he was using for this purpose. He was just cautious in the group setting, so more an observer than a joiner, something that she attributed to the fact that he was much younger than the other children in the class and perhaps his personality. She said to us that we didn't need to see her again, unless we had other concerns that came up in the future. Fast forward a few months later, Joey started talking in class, including to his classmates. Actually, they started looking to him for answers about academic stuff (and to make Marbulous designs for them), so little by little he was taking a leadership role, even amongst children who were up to a year and a half older. He also became more outspoken and better at standing up for himself.
Kudos to the teachers for recognizing this and to the school director for coming around in the end. This helped us decide to stay in the same school for pre-K, which Joey will start with the same class...
The rest of this year (which is our current year) will be covered with posts on special topics
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