True, acs. We all do that. I think I was falling into the "all kids are like mine, right?" trap when I misread DS6's level of GT. When you only have one data point, it's not hard to misread the data. He's all I knew, so I figured he was significantly closer to average than he is. I knew he was GT. That was never in doubt. But I significantly underestimated how GT. And that makes as much difference as the difference between ND and "vanilla" GT. It's a drastic change in the needs of the child.
I did follow DS6 where he led, Bianca--I read the "Consumer Report" car edition to him while he potty trained, for goodness sake! I followed! It's not like I plopped him in front of the TV and ignored him. But the fact remains that he can only lead as far as his environment allows.
DS6 was always curious and active and incredibly verbal, but he was the sort of kid who was writing grand stories in his head or building things or staging auto races with his toys, not nagging for constant attention. He's an introvert, as am I, so I was happy to let him do his own thing a lot.
He has always asked a lot of questions, but they were the sort I expected from your garden-variety GT kid...because I didn't know any better. Don't all MG kids obsess over alphabet puzzles at 13 months and know their letters and numbers to 0-9 by 15 months? I simply didn't know better. Once I read Dr. Ruf's book with baby book in hand, I realized how wrong I was. (But I just did that this past fall, a few short months ago.)
So I maintain that earlier ID would have helped us. Maybe it was just us. Maybe no one else made the mistakes we made. But we made them, and that should be taken into account. I guess I'm saying please don't dismiss early ID just because you think it wouldn't have helped you. As acs says, we all think that our own experience is what others experience, that our kids are the norm for everyone else's kids. I'm telling you that in this case, that's not true. Maybe we're the exception, but we exist.
Was our son in agony his whole young life? No. But he was bored. Did he find ways to entertain himself? Yes, absolutely. It's one of his strengths. But to me, prolonged boredom is a problem even if a kid can find ways to cope. And he was bored not just at school, but at home, too. I'm not sure he even knew he was bored--it was just his life. Just how thing were.
That makes me sadder than anything else.
