Oh mizzoumommy, we had something very similar happen to our DS who was 4 at the time. He was in a Montessori preschool and was already reading and doing math at an advanced level. He kept begging his Montessori teacher to give him lessons on the bead chains and other higher math skill lessons. She kept telling him that he couldn't do that stuff until he turned 5 (when I asked her why privately she said she was afraid of running out of curriculum for him for next year when he would be there for Kindergarten because he went through lessons so fast). He had never ever been told he couldn't learn something especially because he "wasn't old enough" so for almost 6 months all we heard from him was that he wished he was 5 year old smart so he could finally get some interesting lessons. This whole thing seemed to take away his innocence and he began to immediately see ages on everything - board games he liked, levels on books and he grew concerned that he wasn't supposed to be doing any of that stuff because he wasn't the right age. It was a real bummer and it was really stressing him out that he was so different. When he finally did turn 5, right on his birthday, he stormed up to his teacher and said that he was now 5 so could she please give him the lessons he asked about...he was crushed by the end of the day because she didn't give him a single lesson. Needless to say, he no longer goes to school there...but it took us a good several months of homeschooling to get him to understand that it is okay to be doing things higher than his other friends.
