Where'd She Get That Brain?

It's sort of frightening to have a kid that may be smarter than you by the time she reaches high school.

Peanut is in 1st grade this year and we knew even before she entered school that she was one smart cookie. And her standardized test scores have been proving this since Kindergarten. (Her daycare teachers informed us that she was acing the Kindergarten readiness tests that they gave her.)

The lowest, lowest, she has ever scored on a standardized test was the very first one she took in the fall 2011, in math. And she scored in the 97th percentile. Yes, her lowest score is that high. That is supposed to mean that only 3% of children in this country, her age, scored higher. Yikes. Can I get some of that brain for myself?

Since then? She stays steady in the 99th percentile. Yes, I said steady. In both math and reading. She stays right there, like a comfortable little chair.

Not that Button isn't smart. She's above average in the district and national percentiles. 

Peanut picks up on things fairly quick. So when my husband started teaching her to tie her shoes when she was not yet 4 years old, I knew she could accomplish it. (She had to use Button's old pair since I had a heck of a time finding small shoes for Peanut without Velcro. Seriously, maybe a lot more kids would learn to tie shoes if they had laces.)

She got it on the second attempt and has never looked back. She thought it was totally normal to tie them that young. So much so that she was a little put off in Kindergarten when they were learning to tie shoes. She was almost outraged that so many kids didn't know how to do it.

In Kindergarten, she was scoring high on tests but in class she was goofing off. When we sat her down to ask her about it she claimed the work was 'boring'. She was getting it quicker than most of her class so it wasn't challenging her. But I told her then that she wasn't proving that she knew it. You have to complete the work to show that to the teacher.

This year, same thing. She has stayed constant in the 99th percentile on the tests that took in fall and winter. But this last time, her actual score jumped up higher than a normal 1st grader is expected to jump. So her teacher mentioned that maybe she needed more of a challenge.

Yesterday, we received a note from the school. They want to test her to determine whether or not she needs to be in a few gifted classes. Over the next few weeks, they will be giving her a cognitive ability and an academic achievement test.

We discussed it with her to let her know that she needs to do her best and not fool around. This is her chance to prove to her teachers, and to us, that she really isn't challenged. She keeps saying that she gets bored in class because she already knows the material. But not doing your work doesn't prove anything to anyone. We've told her that not doing the work makes it look like it's too difficult, not too easy. When she has incomplete work, we don't get too upset because she does know the material. We go off of her saying 'it's too easy'.

While we are proud of her big brain, it's also a little scary that she is this smart already. What will she be like when she's a teenager? They usually think they're smarter than everyone around them. (I know I did.)