Yes, I did the same thing - have a print-rich environment.

My ds7 is 2e and was born with some severe special needs. I've actually had the child with global developmental delays (feeding, fine, gross, speech, vision, etc). I know how mothers feel with a child who can't do something 90%+ children can do.

He was in special needs for 5 years until I withdrew him and put him in a private gifted school. Within 2 1/2 months, I was told my ds7 was possibly pg and the gifted school could no longer accommodate him (no one mentioned that part about the gifted schools...sigh). Next gifted school said something similar and ds lasted a little over a year. I'm homeschooling/unschooling this year as a result.

I'm in the middle of reading Teach Your Children Well. I like the term cruise or camp director for the parents who want to provide umpteen extracurricular activities. These parents follow a calendar of activities that would challenge a cruise director. They tend to have a pervasive sense that one is not doing enough unless they are scheduled up the kazoo with activities (usually adult-directed) and enough academic rigor.

Every grade, every interest, every activity, every pursuit is a step toward or away from academic success, it seems with the cruise directors. Everything is externally driven and externally motivated.

What's ironic (and interesting) is that internal motivation is highly correlated with higher academic success and lower levels of emotional distress. The driver of lifelong learning, curiosity, persistence, and engagement with material stems from internal motivation as well. Unstructured play provides the greatest opportunities for kids to be curious, creative, and spontaneous - not the life created by the cruise director or adult-directions.

My ds7 like many pg kids is motivated more by an internal mechanism than an external one. And yet, he is born with hypotonia (low muscle tone) and dyspraxia (motor planning) and does not know how to tie shoes, for instance. Too many steps for him.

Next time I run into this cruise director mother or another parent, I'll have some questions and comments for the ready:

1) My son struggles with effort and persistence at times. How do you address it? Does your son/daughter know how to tie their shoes, swim, or ride a bike without training wheels (all of which involve motor planning!)?
2) What does your son/daughter find so exciting or engaging about x, y, or z?
3) How are you working on character building and caring for others? How do you rein in their impulsivity/ self-control?
4) How are you addressing unstructured play? How much time do you give it and what does your child do? I find my child is better with far less, then more (of toys, activities, etc.). Far less meltdowns too (thought I'd mention).
5) How do you encourage opportunities to try, fail, and pick yourself up again? I don't like failure either, but it is part and parcel of life. Yes, we've got perfectionists in our household/family too. Still, I'd rather have ds7 fail at something in elementary school age stuff than as a twenty-something adult.
6) How do you know how much to push and when to back off? How do your admire their tenacity and their willingness to experiment?

By the way, what do you do for fun?