My son, youngest of three, didn't initially strike me as gifted partly because in the family culture he got tagged as the cute, goofy, baby brother.
Then one day, his pre-school teacher said, "S is very, very, smart," and I began reinterpreting some of his behavior.
For example, he loved to do watch video of rockets blasting off and doing the countdown, "10, 9, 8, 7...." I realized he was moe interested in the numbers than the rocket. (This reminds me of Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem. His mother said that when she read him a book, he was more interested in the page numbers than the story.) Later, his abilities became more immediately apparent, such as when he could look at a clock and say it's 23 minutes before the hour, or when he devised his own methods of doing 2 and 3 place multiplication in his head.
What I'm trying to say is that there are a variety of family dynamics and personal filters that affect our evaluation of other people--similar to my missing how much dementia my father was developing.
