DD is 3Y5M and attends Pre-K3 class at a local preschool. She's been in class for 5 months, and we already hear her teachers complain about what they think are her not-like-other-kids traits.

Here are a few of their observations, and my comments on what DD actually does.

�When we are reading a book, the whole class listens, but she appears distracted and sometimes goes on to play something else independently on her own�

- The fact is, DD is not interested in reading any fiction book. She loves books which are fact-oriented. As of this morning, her current obsession is on �Solar flares� and keeps asking us to read with her the "Sun" pages in National Geographic Kids First Big Book of Space. She�s also been asking questions a lot during the past few days about Gravity, about why everything would float in moon and fall on earth, asking if she holds her Helium Balloon by the thread would she also float up, and has been making a claim that there is hot water deep inside Mars. I guess you got the general idea. While the teacher predominantly reads preschool stories in class � which all the other kids in the class seem to enjoy, DD chooses to ignore it.

�She sometimes appears lost in thoughts, and we at times need to repeat instructions to make her return to this world and listen to us. Might be slow processing power.�

- DD does Daydream. We see it at home, where she would gaze randomly into nothing in particular and remain in that state for several seconds. I know this could be a known trait in Gifted Children, but I�m lost on how to explain that to her teacher. Or what measures we could suggest the teacher to take to address it in the most appropriate way.

�Sometimes what she speaks is out of this world. But then at most other times, she tends to be very quiet in class�

- DD has an advanced vocabulary, she could speak all the alphabets and 1-20 in sequence at 17 months old, and at 22 months was speaking compound and grammatically correct sentences. And has very good memory. While at home, she could be highly energetic (or even hyperactive at times), loves to argue based on logic and fact, loves to ask an avalanche of questions (�What happens if I jump very high on Earth?� �I want to talk about Bat in the night time and Bird in the day time�) � she chooses not to do any of that at school.

�We see her often playing with Geoboards while others are playing with many other things�

- She seems to have developed an intense interest in Geoboards. When we saw her play with it at school, we got one for her at home as well � and she continues to spend long times on it, making different shapes connecting the rubber bands on the Geoboard. While she usually tends to quickly get frustrated when things don�t fit or connect well with her other toys, she would literally spend several patient minutes working through the rubber bands. Even when they splat into her tiny fingers, she�s intensely patient and keeps connecting it making different shapes and imaging scenarios with it.

The teachers indicate the above as traits where DD may be lagging behind others in the class. My questions are �

1. What is the best way to explain her behavior to the teachers � and the fact that DD is not really �lagging behind�, but just has unique interests and capabilities not on par with rest of the children in the class.

2. The teachers are not trained on Giftedness. DD is too little for a formal psychological assessment � but all her traits that we�ve observed since her infant days (including her emotional intensities, perfectionism, sleeping less than her peers etc) seem to indicate a possibility of Giftedness. So, given that we�ve not done any formal assessment at this age, Is it advisable to open up the term �Giftedness� with the teachers and talk to them about it?

3. Would you recommend anything we can suggest the teachers to do in the classroom to help DD enjoy the class better?