It's been interesting to draw from my own childhood and that of my husband's as I've struggled to raise three gifted kids, one of whom is 2e.
I've never had my IQ tested, but having raised three gifted kids and been married to a gifted husband for 24 years, I'm pretty sure I'm not gifted. I was adopted, so I grew up with the unique view of never comparing myself to anyone else in my family. I remember learning to read the titles of my mother's books when I was taking afternoon naps in her room, and I was probably about three then. I was a voracious reader, having consumed her entire collection of Zane Grey novels numerous times by the time I was 7 or 8. Looking back, I'm astounded at the vocabulary that man used in his books. I wrote my first "book" in third grade. I started selling magazines door to door when I was about 8 and had a job from that day forward. I sold newspapers, started babysitting at 10 and started working full time at 16. I finished high school a year early but wasn't allowed to graduate early, so I took one class in the morning and then managed a retail shop in the mall during my senior year. I took piano lessons for several years at my mother's insistence, but I didn't like playing - which created conflict with my sister who would practice for hours every day. I would practice the week before our state contests and get unanimous superiors from the judges, but it never really felt like an accomplishment, because I didn't work for it. I got along well with my peers, was quite out-going, and had friends across all walks of life from the stoners to the jocks to the geeks to the outcasts. I really don't remember anyone in school that I didn't like. I rarely studied, got A's and B's without trying and was happy with that so didn't try harder. I don't think I got a grade card in elementary school that didn't have a note to my mother that I needed more self control for talking in class.
My husband, on the other hand, started school when he was 3. (We now know his IQ is somewhere above 185.) His mother says she put him in school because he overwhelmed her with questions that she couldn't deal with. He can remember having a cousin tie his shoes for him even when he was in fourth and fifth grade, and one of the teachers stayed after school with him for a year to help him learn to read and write when he was older. We're pretty sure he had dysgraphia and dyslexia like our son. He was definitely oppositional to authority, but he said it was more out of thinking what they were doing was ridiculous rather than for some need to rebel. He experimented a lot - they were really, really poor, but he was climb on the roof and test new paper airplane designs. When he moved out, his mother discovered an entire drawer of awards and honors he'd earned in school that he'd never even told her about.
And I'm grateful that I have my husband's insights into my own children, because they haven't cared about grades, have felt different and awkward at school at times, and have had struggles completely different from my own background.
