I find this interesting with a 2e pg son and thinking about the childhoods of people such as Stephen Hawking and someone who I knew briefly that worked at a very high astrophysics level (ie. helped discover the Higgs Boson and worked at the CERN, etc.).
I haven't read Hawking's bio, but I believe that Hawking didn't show much aptitude or display his remarkable abilities until much later in life. Ditto for the astrophysicists I briefly knew. I asked his recent widow if she knew whether her husband was like my son (ie. flying through algebra at 8 yrs old) but she said that he wasn't like that at all as a child.
I'm not sure if these two individuals (Hawking and the other astrophysicist) just didn't display pg signs, if they were late bloomers, didn't put up a stink in school or something else was going on. But it's somewhat hard for a mere mortal to wrap their head around. I know the astrophysicist, who I knew, was a very unassuming, shy, quiet, gentle man who did not wear his achievements on his sleeve. So it's entirely possible that perhaps he just slipped under the radar with his earlier education and then excelled once at university and as an adult. I don't know.
Cdfox, my mind's awhirl with your post, because it raises some very interesting points. My guess is that the learning style and interests(hands-on, VSL, creative, taking things apart) of these people were probably not recognized in the classroom with the focus on auditory-sequential learning in areas outside of their domain of strength. In fact, the very nature of how they learn was most likely viewed as a problem in the classroom and their spatial strengths regarded purely as a mechanical or practical aptitude. Maybe late blooming is really just late recognition once they are finally able to enter university.
As to how to remove the obstacles for your DS and other strong spatial learners, it seems like a systemic problem. Despite the growing focus on STEM, advocates are still in the stage of making a case for the importance of spatial skills and inclusion in selection criteria and assessments.
According to the Vanderbilt study listed below that shares your concern about how many spatially talented students are missed by talent searches, "70% of the top 1% in spatial ability did not make the cut for the top 1% on either the math or the verbal composite".
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Wai2009SpatialAbility1.pdfIs there an opportunity to get help from someone experienced in gifted advocacy for your DYS situation? Perhaps someone such as Linda Silverman at GDC, who specializes in VSL research and understands learning challenges. My PG 2e science loving DS and I will be trudging up behind you and your DS in a few years, so please leave big footprints and a flashlight
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/162888/1.htmlhttp://www.spatiallearning.org/
