It’s Saturday night. The hubby and our girl are off with their Adventure Guide tribe camping in the woods. I’m home staring at a daunting form that is asking me - a totally biased mother - to rank her child against her peers to see if she is “talented” or “gifted”.

It’s my own fault. I signed her up to be tested. It’s a decision I always seem to be questioning myself about: will she be bored in regular classes? will she miss an opportunity to excel? is it too early? am I pushing too hard? is she really talented, or did she just get a good head start in preschool? will she feel she’s failed if she doesn’t make it?

And, how the heck am I supposed to rate her myself?! I mean, if I didn’t think she was exceptional, I wouldn’t have put her up for the testing to begin with, right? So, if I rank her really high will I look unrealistic? Or if I rank her lower will I hurt her chances?

What if I’m just setting her up for feelings like these from a reviewer of a book called The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids:

“I wish my parents had helped me break the deep feeling (and illusion) that I was loved when others acknowledged my being gifted…which inevitably came with the deep feeling of doubt about whether I was loved when I was not great.”

Oh, this is giving me angst.

I thought I’d gotten over that when I sat through the parent information meeting that seemed totally designed to discourage parents from signing their kids up to be tested. There was so much talk that evening about how being smart was not the same as being gifted. They also made a big deal out of how if we tested in kindergarten and didn’t get in, she’d have to wait until second grade to try again.

I came away thinking, so what. If she is “just smart” and not gifted, then it’s no big deal if she can’t retest for a couple of years. And, if she is gifted, then why waste time time when she could be getting the type of education she needs? So, I signed her up for testing, which at this point has already been completed.

And now I sit here conflicted again as I’m supposed to complete the process by filling out my own evaluation of her. Any advice from someone who has been here before?

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.