Wonderful post, Taminy. You put my thoughts together much more cohesively and with much less emotional rambling. I am more bothered by those issues of younger kids being brushed off when compared to older grade peers due to seeing what that exact thing did with younger dd. My oldest managed to be so obviously different that it was hard not to recognize her as gifted even with a fall bd and being younger. My youngest blended in more with the bright kids and wound up being tracked such that it has taken much longer for the school to realize that she was unusual. As a result, her image of herself has been really set as someone who isn't that bright. It certainly wasn't helped by a year with a teacher who was convinced that she wasn't that bright and let dd know that, of course, and that had much more to do with a poor teacher than anything else.
