I guess that I was just wondering if a 2e person who doesn't struggle in school, at least as long as s/he isn't pushed to his/her ability level, would also grow up knowing that s/he was different in some way and feel misplaced in the world if neither exceptionality was ever ided. It sounds like, for the most part, that you all think s/he would.
I really do think they would. Gifted often presents as academically advanced but what produces that advancement is thinking differently. 2e kids are still thinking differently even if they don't necessarily have the ability to perform academically the way that other gifted kids do. In some ways I think the feeling different has got to be worse because they may not be seen as an a peer by the people they feel most like, it may be even harder for them to find their people...
I know for my DD being completely unable to learn to read as all of her friends one by one started reading was just devastating. Of course she wouldn't ever acknowledge it to us but she went from feeling equal to her group of friends to falling literately years behind them in the space of 12 months and she knew that she should be able to do what they were doing... Retrospectively she started school with a very skewed cohort of kids who I would say were all at least MG, one I suspect maybe even PG, they had parents like us that bordered on actively avoiding having their kids read before school. But they all progressed from not reading to reading chapter books in kindy. My DD was still struggling with the alphabet at the beginning of yr 2. Intellectually in play and conversation she fit perfectly, achievement wise they were worlds apart. Now she's heading back into the ball park and at speed but who knows what her future holds.bi am hoping that now she can read and is no longer dependent on auditory skills she doesn't have that she will start to perform more in line with her potential. It's a beautiful thing to see her calm and confident (true or not she believes herself to be one of the best in the class now).
She was so shut down when she did her WISC two years ago (the report states how hard she was to engage, easily tired, disinterested, etc), I am really curious to see what shows up when she's retested. She scored 99+ on the Ravens I sat her infront of last month so I think the potential is there but it's hard to trust an internet test result is "real".
