JBDad - you kind of sound like my DH in the GT denial area. He was incredulous when I told him that most kids entering kindergarten do not know how to read at all. Although we have not yet entered the school system, I'll let you know my experiences and plans as someone who has already gone through the assessment process.

We worried about waiting for kindy until our son was 5, a requirement in our state. He was reading at 2nd-grade level (based on book descriptions) when he was 3 1/2. Our state requires IQ of 130 to be early entranced, so we found a gifted specialist to test our son. We expected he would be MG, and were floored to find he had DYS numbers. The assessor told us that in our smallish district, our son would likely not find anyone like himself through high school. She recommended that we don't start K early, but let him have fun for another year learning at home. She made it clear we would have to be flexible in our education, and thought we would probably have to move at some point, and homeschool too. Our son is in a 2-day a week preschool, with a preschool teacher who gets him and provides advanced materials for him. We will keep DS in this preschool next year too (he doesn't turn 5 until next Jan).

DS4 is not one of those kids who will follow rules or sit still "just because." So, we're thinking that another year of maturing would be good, then we'll put him in K. We have good friends with a HG+ child who have been working with the school system for a few years now, and our schools are becoming more GT-friendly. We hope to talk with the school district ahead of time to find options for our son before he goes to K (e.g., reading group with older kids, etc., grade-skipping) We are taking a wait-and-see approach. If the school is willing to work with us, that would be the best. If not, we will ask for partial homeschooling. And if that doesn't work, we'll do full-time homeschooling.

We have found great benefits in our son's assessment. We received advice tailored to our son and our family and our needs. We now know the obstacles we will probably encounter, and we were given many resources to help us on the way. And we found out we were not crazy. It was a huge relief, in many ways.