Thank you for your response. Yes that's exactly what happened with my boys. Informally pulled out until 2nd grade and then classified gifted and talented. I am a teacher myself but I teach K ina different district and we do things differently. I have a daughter as well in K but she is an average student I could swear my oldest has ADHD but it has never affected him at school but he can not sit still!! Studying with him is the worst. I have asked teachers and they said he fidgets a lot but it does not interrupt his work.
There are magnet programs available for middle school and high school that I would like to look into. My husband is not as interested. We are big into sports and he wants them to have a normal high school experience and I want them to get the best education possible.
If you suspect any ADHD, that's a strong reason to do IQ testing. A discrepancy between specific subtest scores on the WISC-V test can indicate ADHD. (ADHD is a diagnosis of elimination, since sleep disorders and other conditions have overlapping symptom patterns.) My son's teachers in elementary school scored him very low on ADHD behavioral assessments and were convinced he was " a typical boy" who was "good at reading". I would not trust his classroom teacher's assessment. However, if your son's testing did not suggest ADHD, then you would likely find "psychomotor overexcitability" to be an interesting theory. (The work it's from is outdated and not evidence-based, and the overexcitability concept is plucked grossly out of context, but it's still an accessible way to discuss differences in the way people experience the world.)
If sports are a big part of family, you might ask potential schools about subject acceleration versus grade-skip acceleration. Advanced children who are active in sports generally fare very well emotionally in school, and acceleration may limit the number of years he could participate in sports. Subject acceleration might meet his academic needs without limiting his access to peers and sports.
My husband is also of the opinion "just put them in normal public school" and he's just starting to figure out that's not going to work. It's tough to deal with that type of conflict. Raising advanced children is tough work, making education decisions is often gut-wrenching, and to do it with a skeptical spouse makes everything more intense. I feel for you there!
