I sympathize with everyone! We had to have our daughter tested to show she isn't ADD/ADHD to prove to the school that was not the problem. We have found that getting things changed takes a lot of time and our children suffer waiting for things to get better, but luckily they are very resilient. I'm learning that gifted kids do look alike in some ways - our DD8 can be focused for hours if it is something she is interested in, but if it is something "boring" to her then forget it - no amount of coaxing will get her to come around. Also like your son, she gets very frustrated when the teacher repeats things over and over or forces her to do things over and over when she has already proven she can do it. I remember one parent teacher conference we had in 1st grade where the teacher wanted to make us aware that our daughter was not performing well on the timed addition and subtraction tests they did every day. Now mind you, 1st grade was a horrible year for our daughter (she hadn't been tested yet and we were struggling to find out what was going on). The teacher told us this information with a snub in her voice implying to us she wanted to prove a point about our daughter's poor performance. She had started off getting so many problems (I can't remember how many it was)solved in the 1 min. time they gave the class, then after a couple weeks of doing the test every day she was only getting about half that amount done. I asked the teacher if it was the same problems and same numbers each time or if they had different worksheets. It was the same problems every day. I suggested they give her a different set of problems and see how she did. Well guess what, after she got new problems to solve, for several days she was getting more problems done. After a few days she again tapered off and would only get about half the amount done. I asked her why she could do so many problems one day, but then couldn't the next day. I'll never forget what she told me...as grown up sounding as a 6 year old can be she told me it made no sense to continue to solve the problems when she had already proven she could do it. We had some idea that was what was going on because at the time she was doing simple multiplication in her head, but to hear her say it about brought tears to my eyes. She had been basically suffering silently doing what she felt was boring repetition on material she already knew. She didn't refuse to do the work or cause problems while the class was all working - she just tried to manage and get by. Of course to the teacher that was just not acceptable. Good luck to all of you!
