Gifted or just bright? Assessment?

[smileygrapefruit]

My dd has just turned 4. I've always thought she was very clever but just assumed above average rather than gifted. In the last month two separate people (new childminder and a retired teacher I know) have told me how intelligent she is, apparently well ahead of most kids at the end of reception.

A few examples: she can write simple sentences, she can do simple written addition/subtraction, her drawing is incredibly detailed, she asks questions about EVERYTHING and retains all the information, the thing I find most incredible is her memory, she can literally remember things from when she was a tiny baby, and can recite whole books or songs after hearing them 2-3 times.

She's not at school until September but what the childminder spoke to me about has got me worried that she's going to be miles ahead and bored. Is there some form of assessment that can be done before school? We can't really afford private school but wondering if maybe that's a route we need to explore? Or should I just stop worrying and wait til she starts (the local state) school?

smileygrapefruit your dc certainly sounds very able. Have a look at the PPUK -
The new name for the National Association for Gifted Children, website for more information. They are very helpful and will answer your questions. They also assess young children.

Thank you very much Rose. Will have a good look at the website now.

If you continue to teach her she will be ahead. Teaching 1-2-1 is a lot quicker than in a class of 30 and children can often learn quicker than they do at school.

They will do an assessment when she starts school, but as soon as she finds something she cannot do, that is the level she will be assessed at. So, for instance, to take an extreme, if a child cannot count backwards fluently, that is the level where the testing will stop, and it will make no difference that they can understand decimals.. You used to be able to get a list of what they are assessed on on-line. This is what happened a decade ago when dd started, so it may have changed.

How schools deal with her being ahead will depend on the school. If you read back on threads in this section, some have schools which deal well with it, but some not.

She does sound bright but you really don't need an assessment. What would it tell you, other than what you already know? The label "gifted" is just that - a label. It won't make any difference to her.

Reception is mostly about learning through play, so she shouldn't be bored when she starts school, even if she is far ahead of the other kids. As she gets older, she may stay far ahead or others may catch up - it's difficult to say at this stage. If she continues to work well ahead of her peers, she will need some good differentiation in school so that she gets an appropriate level of challenge. Some schools are extremely good at this, others aren't. If your school turns out to be one of the ones that isn't, you may need to advocate on your dd's behalf, but you can cross that bridge when you come to it.

Bright children don't need to go to private schools just because they're bright. If anything, I'd say that a private school would add more value to a child with mediocre academic ability.

Thank you for your responses. The thing is, I haven't taught her at all, obviously I read to her and stuff but she picks things up on her own. I'm definitely not a "pushy parent", sitting and teaching her maths and stuff so I can't stop teaching her because I've never started!
I get what you're saying about it just being a label, and you're right, I certainly don't need a label put on her. I've just been kind of shocked by other people's assessments of her recently as obviously we all think our kids are great but having other people initiate conversations about her advanced ability has thrown me a bit.

With such a wonderful start of working out how to do written addition and subtraction all by herself, I would say you have nothing to worry about because she will quite likely work out the rest of mathematics by herself also, no matter what she is taught at school.
Also other people, particularly professionals, being shocked by a child's ability, is quite common in this section.

I agree, you don't need an assessment now.
Some school do great job of stretching, some don't. It depend on each teacher as well. You may strike lucky and her school maybe wonderful.

Thank you. I hope we do just strike lucky with the school. The only thing I'm really worried about is finding out a year down the line it's no good and having to move her, rather than pushing to find out whether she might need more help now iyswim.

DS was similar, I think, especially the memory thing. He was never bored in reception - how can you be bored by playing dinosaurs?
(He knew over 50 types of dinosaurs, could identify them, could tell you when they lived, could tell you things like that earlier dinosaurs tended to have more front leg digits (fingers) going down from 5 in the early Triassic to 2 in the late Cretaceous, that 'Pterodactyl' is merely a common-usage name for generic flying reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs, but there is a Pterosaur type called 'Pterodactylus', that Spinosaurus was one of the largest 'carnivores' but actually probably an 'ichtyophage' as his main diet were Ichtyosaurs, and lots more... ) But why should all that stop him from having fun playing dinosaurs roarrr with his friends?
Equally, he wasn't 'taught' much in reception, as differentiation was not so good, however that didn't stop him from learning.

Conversely, he struggled a bit, socially/emotionally, in reception. So we were pretty glad to be able to focus on that and being able to relax about 'academics'.

When he went into Y1, the days were a lot more structured, there was a lot less 'free play'. This meant that a) he struggled a lot less, socially, as he didn't have to deal with a bunch of 4-5 year olds barely supervised anymore, and b) that he started to occasionally feel a bit bored during lessons, and his rate of learning slowed down.

Really, reception should be fine in most schools, as even if the actual teaching is mediocre/undifferentiated, there is plenty of free play/child led activities to balance this out. From Y1 things can get trickier, for some children, in some schools.

cross-posted... don't forget, whatever you / nursery have been doing up to now clearly has been 'working' so why should she need 'more help', why should you need to change anything? Reception is not so much different to nursery that you'd need to expect to need to 'help' your child particularly differently/more than you do now.
Where reception IS different, IME, is in the levels of supervision. More independence is expected of the children, both practically and socially/in dealing with other children. If your DD struggles with any of this, then that's what I'd keep my eyes open about, rather than academics.

Thanks Brill. My dd loves dinosaurs too but don't think she has as much knowledge as your ds, he sounds amazing!
I know you're right about reception being more play based so hopefully she will enjoy that! I'm not worried at all about her social/emotional skills, she has shown empathy beyond her years from about a year old, I guess that amplifies my worry about having got the school choice wrong as she makes friends so easily I would find it really hard to move her.

She sounds very similar to two of mine. Dd2 taught herself to read very early (2ish) but we didn’t know she could, and ds1 had a weirdly innate maths ability (by Three he had worked out multiplication and number bonds on his own and he loved to play shops and work out change). We just let them get on with it - the nursery approached the LEA but they refused assessment saying they didn’t have a process for gifted 3yos (nursery didn’t tell us until after the event).
Ultimately, dd2 was assessed in yr r, but we did it privately (it wasn’t for education purposes). Ds was assessed at about 9 (again because of something else). Dd1 got assessed at some point, which was actually school linked as they recognized her ability (she’s a hard worker - had memorized the alphabet and ‘words beginning with’ at 18 mos lol, but that was essentially a party trick).
None of the assessments have really made any difference to their lives. Dd2 is the ‘most’ gifted on paper.
Unless you have the ability to fund a private school with an academic reputation, I wouldn’t bother. It’s interesting - it gives you a really weird insight into how IQ is calculated and how mc white kids are at an advantage in terms of scores
Even for fun I wouldn’t do it as a pre-schooler. You would need a psych who was prepared to use the school aged testing (pre school tests top out too easily). I’d wait until 6 even for fun.
There’s no real need though - if you can afford private school anyway, you can just do that - no assessment necessary. Mine have been fine in state though. The only thing to bear in mind is to choose a primary rather than infants if you have a choice. They will cope anyway, but if it is a small school a kid who starts yr r reading comfortably might struggle to find enough reading material to get them through three years. (dd2 was assessed at reading comprehension of 12-15yrs in yr r, and was in an infant school). They managed ok. And mostly she just read stuff from home anyway.

smileygrapefruit, a few years (and new passions) later and most of that stuff is well forgotten (it's only in my mind that it stuck). It was very impressive at the time though, in a party-trick kind of way!
Sometimes I wonder, should I really have fed his passion for dinosaurs (by, like, visiting museums and looking at books and watching videos and often just talking about it all together etc) given that he'd eventually move on and forget most of that stuff anyway? But I do not regret it; it trained his mind in 'scientific' skills such as observation, classification, comparison, analysis etc and even though many of the 'facts' are now gone, it is much more important that some of those 'thinking skils' stuck, rather than the perhaps somewhat random facts.
Just like he can no longer recite the complete Room on the Broom - another of his party-tricks!

Aww Yes, my dd can recite all of her Julia Donaldson and Dr Seuss books. I have some videos of her doing it which I will keep to remember my wonderful 3 (now 4) year old. Scary how fast they grow and change isn't it. Do you mind me asking how old your son is and what level he is now/what areas he has excelled in?

He's 7 1/2 now and not 'gifted' particularly, in a 'always seeking out new things to learn way', he just learns things very easily (if shown/presented with them). August baby so started school at just 4, and we haven't pushed things at home, and school hasn't pushed him either.

He is probably about 18 months to 2 years ahead of the maths curriculum, could be further but we don't see much point in progressing too much; and it is hard to say how good his reading is, how do you measure that really? He reads everything I let him (I vet books as to age appropriateness rather than as to how hard they are) and his comprehension, and ability to acquire knowledge from reading, is excellent. Currently he is into Greek mythology and asking to read the 'originals' (Odyssey by Homer etc)... Need to think about that one! The amount he knows about Greek gods etc has far surpassed what I know; gone are the days when we'd discover things together... (and I remember the odd facts years later, while he has happily moved on)...
His writing has room for improvement, but it's plenty good enough and there is plenty of time for that.
Anyway, I enjoy watching him develop!

Incidentally, I have a nearly 4yo DD too, who is very, very different. She has nowhere near the 'skills' that DS had at the same age. And yet I am quietly confident for her: She has a way of working things out for herself that leads to deep understanding. She is just quite resistant to being taught, which slows her down, comparatively. But life is not a sprint...

brilliotic you have a fantastic attitude to learning and both of your children. So refreshing.

My DS sounds similar to your DD. He was noticed as gifted and talented early on and they nurtured it when he got to Primary School.

They devised extra hard questions aimed specifically at him so he wouldn't get bored.

He is gifted at maths and science.
He never really got too bored because of course in Primary School there's friendships and all sorts of activities going on.
Just let nature take its course really.
He never had an assessment as far as I'm aware it was just very obvious he was streets ahead in maths and Science.
He has just started Secondary School and is one of 12 children in his year of 300 ish to be selected to do something or other gifted and talented wise. No idea what that entails tbh.
He goes to an excellent State School.
As parents we just let him get on with it because he learns what he wants to and none of us quite frankly understand physics (or maths) which he is very much into.

In year 5 and 6 he was doing GCSE maths questions

Thank you every one. You've all put my mind at rest a bit. I want her to enjoy her childhood and I don't want any pressure on her at all. I guess I'll follow her lead and deal with any issues at school if/when they come up. In the meantime I will just enjoy my lovely, funny little girl 😊

nursery was very gushing about her and put extra activities in place for her (she had a keen keyworker who’d just got her degree). Nursery later caused some unnecessary angst by contacting DD’s upcoming reception teacher and being disappointed/worried by her apparent disinterest in this ‘exceptional’ child. Of course, these concerns were unfounded: DD is happy and stimulated at school so far (she’s in Y2).

I’ve learned the hard way that there’s no benefit in getting too excited. Enjoy the fact that your DD is going to develop a wonderful confidence in learning as she will grasp new concepts easily and extend them. Have lots of fun with her – she will probably keep you on your toes, mentally at least!

Sometimes even very advanced child have weakness somewhere. My ds's was creative writing and comprehension. Since other works were easy, we focused on his weakness mostly at home.
And as others have said, reception is great for able kids. It start to be more problematic when more formal education starts.