Hi Suzanne, and welcome, too
Sometimes it's hard for parents of gifted kids to understand that their kids are not entirely normal, because the parents too are unusual in a lot of the same ways.
I didn't have a ton of friends either, I read before k, I am not a numbers whiz but have extroardinary logic and very strong visual spatial ability, and my vocabulary is, well, really good. So, when the testing doctor asked why we think our ds has a good vocab. or might be very visual, not many specific 'wow!' scenarios came to mind. Part of my answer to that one was that he's able to keep up with us, and we're not dumbing down our speech around him. Also, a few other people have remarked on his speaking and vocab. And, it's partly that he's interested in and asks about the meanings of some pretty unusual words. It still sounds somewhat lame to me...but are most 8 year olds asking what a chimera is, or what is the etymology of 'dragon'?
He definitely asks when he doesn't know or can't figure something out, but still he doesn't have many questions when reading...does that make sense? (he's figuring a lot of stuff out by context or other clues, taking in info). When we sit in the car and he isn't reading or day dreaming (he is a big time dreamer/drawer) he will have lots of out-there questions.
Further, there are definitely levels of giftedness - 143 is nothing to sneeze at! (but tests do vary, and numbers from one test/one year to the next can be very different too)
Also, giftedness is more about potential and sometimes that potential takes finding the right level of challenge and subject matter, if you keep reading around here you will find out more about that. Just curious if he is in a gt program or accelerated at all now? Is he doing ok/happy?
We (I) started looking into this because I didn't understand why this incredibly cool kid (imho) was having such trouble making friends, of all things. If he hadn't had that particular problem, I might not have done much in the way of finding out about gt, but once I started reading, it did seem to fit in a lot of ways and he has been much happier this year since being in that program.
