On the other hand, I know a number of kids who went to Montessori schools and were reading fairly well before Kindergarten. Some of them are GT, but many of them are not based on what they are doing in early elementary school. This is what I don't really like about the Ruf levels. It points to certain skills (that my child really wasn't showing in preschool), but doesn't really deal with the intensity or speed of learning. I could have never spent 2 hours reading a day with DS - he had way too much physical energy. But science experiments, exploring the library, going to the science museum, sure. At 7, he regularly sits and reads for 2 hours on his own.

So even if you are looking at a preschooler that doesn't read, write, or compose concertos, maybe they mastered legos years earlier than normal, memorized every species of dinosour, or can give their parents directions on every errand they run. Or maybe they are just intensely imaginative. Maybe they analyze plumbing systems. I think parents that aren't thinking about GT behaviors don't see GT behaviors. I don't think it just manifests itself in one way, especially in young kids. I didn't see them until DS went from not reading to being the best reader in his class over the course of a year and got some shockingly high test scores from the NNAT.

So suppose you have a PG child and that child is read to 2 hours a day from birth. Suppose you took that same child and put them in an environment where they were read to 30 minutes a day. The child when placed in the first environment is going to read faster than the if he is placed in the 2nd environment. Does that make the child less GT? It really depends on the education the child gets afterwards and what other learning opportunities the child is exposed to IMHO.

My child also doesn't scream HG+ by any means! He can blend well and kids of all ages.