3DMom,
I assume your child is in 2nd grade? Is he in public school? Just curious. Anyway, I'm a gifted teacher. I service students from grades k-2. I don't blame you for being confused on what to think about your son with so many different ideas being thrown at you. I do want to tell you that a regular education teacher has no idea of what a gifted student looks like. I do many observations and assessments of k-2 students and when I point out a student to a teacher, sometimes they will say to me "Oh, he's not gifted, he has behavior problems", or he is too "quirky" to be gifted, or "he never does his work, he can't be gifted." I could go on...my point is, that most gifted students are quirky, have behavior issues, don't do their work, and/or get bad grades. It's not the acievment that gifted teachers look for, it's the child's perspective on things. Not how well they can add, subtract, multilply or divide. We don't even consider that (unless the child is in kindergarten and able to do calculus). Gifted teachers look at how a child learns. Gifted students are "gifted" because the learn in a different way, they see the world in a different way, they process information in a different way.
I don't want to ramble (too late!!) but I wanted to comment on your post because there are so many misconceptions from teachers, I just wanted to make you aware of that. Please ask away if you want to know more.
