Incog - beautifully stated.
I think there are good and not so good reasons to test early. Whoever spoke about their child spending a lot of time in day care was a great example. I was (and am) a stay at home parent. I bought my preschooler lego set's for teenagers (and I assumed all 4 year olds could assemble them) and had a science lab in my kitchen. I taught my 4 year old how to play chess. He was highly demanding. His preschool was very open ended and active. He wouldn't have been ready for formal curriculum, although I wish I would have left some early readers laying around, instead of going from baby books to Roald Dahl. I'm sure he would have read much earlier with minimal effort.
I found he was only limited once he got to all day kindergaten. And unfortunately for him, now is very well behaved and is more than satisfied with blending into the crowd. I feel like I'm much more in tune to DD3.
And I can totally relate to being in a gifted denial family. That was completely my family growing up. It is comforting to be validated. When I found out DS was highly gifted it really made so much of my childhood make perfect sense.
