To my mind the most useful way for parents of the children we talk about here to think is probably "My child's IQ is never likely to be the factor that limits their achievement. So what else matters, and how do I remove the obstacles that might otherwise limit my child?".
Unfortunately, for some, the child's IQ does become a factor that limits their achievement, because our society may only be interested in teaching to a different strata.
To clarify, my point is that many parents on gifted forums report experiencing schools which are focused on teaching lower-achieving students while gifted students are faced with benign neglect.
During the school day, gifted students may be socially isolated, expected to teach themselves, and/or pressed into service tutoring low achievers, rather than being grouped with intellectual peers at a similar level of readiness and ability and being taught with appropriate curriculum and pacing at their challenge level. The current thread on deliberate self-harm discusses some of the problems which can occur when a child is steeped in this type of toxic learning atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the subject of correlation between early milestones and giftedness seems closely related to this recent thread:
4yo needing constant input which describes the difficulty in keeping up with a child and how exhausted parents can become in supporting the natural pace of learning set by their gifted child(ren).
