If you or your child's teacher thinks that they're ahead of their classmates you'll want to give some serious consideration to having them evaluated to determine if they can be considered gifted.
While you might think you're child's gifted, you will want to consider all of the pros and cons of having them tested before you commit yourself to having the evaluation done.
The age of your child should be taken into consideration.
Studies indicate that prior to your child's six birthday, the results of these tests tend to be inconclusive.
The results of the evaluation collected after the child's six birthday tend to be more accurate.
The advantage of officially having your child declared gifted means that you can start looking at schools that have a curriculum geared towards gifted children.
Being enrolled in these programs decreases the chances of your child getting bored with their studies.
Getting stuck with the label of genius or gifted isn't always the best thing in the world.
Granted, the label can open up some academic doors to your child, but it can have a less positive effect on the other areas of your child's life.
Getting labeled as a gifted child will often put a huge strain on their social life, especially if it means that your child gets bumped up several grades so that they're several years younger than their classmates.
It's not unusual to find that even the teachers treat your child differently after they've been declared gifted.
You should know that if the school suspects that your child might be gifted, they could make arrangements to have your child tested.
It's not uncommon for public schools to have students they think could be exceptionally bright evaluated, which often occurs around third grade.
If you have decided that you don't want your child tested, you need to make sure that this information has been recorded in your child's school files.
While these tests might show that your child does indeed have a higher IQ than their peers, you don't want to immediately start telling everyone you know that your kid is a genius.
Not all of the evaluations are the same, the evaluations done by public schools tend to have lower standards than the private tests which will provide a more accurate assessment of your child's IQ.
The other problem with most of the public school evaluations will be the subjects they test.
Most of the in school tests only focus on specific subjects.
The private evaluations tend to be more rounded, and therefore more accurate than the public school evaluations.