We homeschooled-- hoping that by third grade (when services for GT are officially ""offered"" in our district...)-- well, it didn't work out for a variety of reasons, obviously.
We didn't really understand just how quickly HG+ kids burn through material, obviously. If we had, we'd have done further-out-of-level testing 18 months later, after a year of more or less unschooling punctuated by attempts to find something that fit her level. We thought that by unschooling we would "slow her down." Yeah, we had been fed that line by 'expert' educators-- the one about evening out by third grade? That one. Didn't work that way, as DD actually jumped another 2-3 grade levels in math and science, and far more than that in social studies and literacy just by doing her preferred activities day in and day out-- reading for 8-10 hours a day and peppering us with conversation.
I don't really regret homeschooling, though as I've noted elsewhere, DD probably wasn't well served by our unschooling mindset during that period of time. The skills vs. readiness/needs gaps that were opening during the time we officially homeschooled were downright shocking even to us, and even with the benefit of hindsight.
In the moment, I think I gaped like a very distressed fish, and it certainly wasn't until later that I truly absorbed what the teacher was telling me. It was a lot to take in, given that our friends all RAVED about how awesome the schools here are. And-- for bright-to-MG, they probably are. SHE knew what our DD was before we did, basically. She specifically said, in a horrified whisper that I can still hear a decade later; "Do NOT put your child in any kindergarten classroom in this city-- public OR private." Just from one look at her-- she was sitting amidst chaos unfolding around her, quietly reading a very fat novel on her lap, while her legs swung gently (not touching the floor).
This is one of two people who provided Cassandra-like advice to us in a moment of (in retrospect) crisis in our raising of DD. The other one was a kind emergency room physician who gave us shocking-- and terrifying-- advice, which was one of the luckiest things ever to happen to DD, in hindsight. Both were messages of "I'm telling you-- DON'T/DO this. No, really."
