We heard this from DS7's pre-school and kindergarten teachers: "He has a hard time focusing on the task at hand, and sometimes he will sit and roll his pencil back and forth rather than do any work. Perhaps it's too much for him and/or he's not ready for this."
We saw a very different child at home -- one who could focus on areas of interest for more than an hour at a time and knew ALL of the kindergarten sight words by the age of 4. Having been a teacher, I knew that if he was gifted but we tested for any kind of learning disability first, the giftedness might never be recognized. So, I put my request for gifted testing in writing to his school at the beginning of first grade. We weren't surprised when the test score revealed that he was gifted, but we were surprised by his level of giftedness. I'm so glad I went with my gut. We've since changed schools and it's clear that we have a very gifted boy who was not going to "go along to get along" and be satisfied with being bored all day. He's also not one to willingly repeat work he's already done (hence the rolling of the pencil and not doing classwork).
