Like sweetpeas said, as with all people the gifted subset also falls into different categories. You can google different combos of gifted kids categories/profiles or whatever. It's different than the "levels of giftedness" it's more to do with temperament and such. As always it's possibly best to take what you can from all the articles/info and add a huge grain of salt, and go from there.
My DD is 8 1/2 and she's always been very strong-willed, creative and intense since birth. I always say when people make comments "well, I guess I wouldn't call her a 'wash-and-wear' kid!"
But these are the future leaders and trail blazers, so as their parent you have an awesome responsibility to keep them on track somehow or other over the years.
No pressure...LOL!
Mine also had a tough adjustment to preK. The only reason she only went to 2 and not more is that we didn't send her at 3 (she was very hard to contain, shall we say) and by the time we did the 2 different preschools at age 4 it was time for K.
I guess when I first used to read about the different types of gifted kids and realized she fell into the "Rebellious Rebecca" one (that's from a SENG webinar I listened to a few years ago) I was scared, but not surprised. I had an uncle (deceased) who was very much like her, but he was very athletic (DD is pretty strong but not particularly coordinated), and rebelliousness does pop up here and there in the genes from a long time ago...There are many bright people all over the family tree but once in a while a more extreme one pops up.
When she was tested in K, the tester did say that, looking on the bright side, the acting out kids do at least get attention and therefore you are more likely to keep track of them...where the very quiet and introverted ones might appear to be adjusted but things are brewing underneath and might just all keep building up inside of them until they can't contain it anymore.
That's just one opinion of course. If you're having a very challenging day, it might make you feel better to think of this??
The best advice I could give it just to make sure she always keeps learning and never accept any "excuse" for having it withheld from her. I think some school mentalities fall into the category of trying to work on the child's challenges until they get them where they think they need to be on a social/emotional/behavioral level, before they provide the appropriate academic level of learning for these kids. Or maybe it's just an excuse...whatever you want to think. Either way, it's never appropriate to withhold learning from any child if that's what they crave and deserve.
But keep her out in the world as much as possible as she grows up, outside of school. I've found that people who are talented and smart who work in local theatre, music, museums, teach art classes etc. can be so wonderful with helping develop a child's talents that certain "outside the box kids" always seem to get short-changed on in a typical (public) school setting.
Hope this helps!
