raoulpetite,
regarding "We tried a few times to speak with DS about his presumed giftedness. It ended with him saying that his intelligence is useless. "

I’m going to try and write about this, but my wording might not be that translatable...

My daughter (age 8) started saying similar things last year. I came to believe that if she's looking at it from the school's perspective (and parent's perspective, since they are "forcing" the schoolwork) she might come to believe that her type of intelligence is useless in that environment. For example, such a rich imagination, or creativity. This is not rewarded in a standard educational philosophy.

I tried to find things that connect working adults to the type of intelligence that she is so strong at (building, creating, imagining). Sometimes DVDs have a “behind the scenes” special features where the adults are seen drawing, creating, voicing characters to create the whole production. My daughter loves these. Here are adults acting silly, creating voices, pretending...and look at the result.

LEGO has a DVD that came with the autumn 2011 LEGO club magazine with adults working “behind the scenes” at LEGO. It is great. The adults are “playing” with LEGOs at their desks, fixing structures at the playlands, creating instructions on their computers, testing the instructions. This even inspired my daughter to pay more attention to my nagging that she organize or “rein in” her LEGO pieces. More time for productivity, less time finding each piece.

Generally speaking my daughter does not accept blanket statements like “you are smart” or speaking about her intelligence. However, she does bask in specific comments about having a very good idea that improved how we do things, thinking of others and not herself, helping out with directions in the car. I believe she still considers herself “dumb” from a traditional schooling standpoint, but for now I am happy that she thinks herself worthy in some other ways in the big picture of life. Once we are able to complete a more thorough evaluation of her to understand her strengths and challenges, I think I might have more information to guide her with regard to schooling.