Welcome to the board. I have a very similar situation on my hands. My DD is 3 born in August. Our state's cutoff date is September 1st so DD is one of the youngest in her classes. She was our mindblowing infant and shocked the heck out of us and by age two had mastered all of the kindergarten criteria along with some of the 1st grade.
We, too, decided to place her in a social preschool since social skills tend to be issues for the gifted. HUGE mistake for us and for very similar reasons to what you described. DD was a shell of herself and since she was the baby of the class, the teachers treated her like one and she played along. It was really eye opening for me to realize that we won't be able to follow the typical path which was my dream of public school. I never thought I would be the parent to do private school or homeschooling. Over the summer DD went to a Spanish Immersion summer camp and the director was blown away with her abilities. She, who had never had Spanish before, fully comprehended it by the third day. So when we realized our mistake we considered the Montessori programs and this Spanish Immersion school. The Spanish Immersion academics is about 2 years ahead of public school so at age 3 they are learning kindergarten level but all in Spanish. Even this is eye opening since DD is still ahead of that curriculum but since it is all in Spanish she isn't bored. At least not yet! And the school is willing to work with us so if she needs to be moved up they have no problem doing this. When I called them asking if they might have an opening; they bent over backwards to take her. This could get long winded with issues we had recently so I won't go into it but as of now she is super excited about her school and was talking about all they worked on today which clearly reinforced our choice to move her.
Now, I don't know how bad it is for your daughter in the social preschool but it seems like you are seeing a lot of what we experienced. My daughter has been a very verbal child from a very young age and by 15 months was talking in very complex sentences equal to a 7-8 yr old. Having her in the social preschool she quickly dropped to short 2 to 3 word sentences and just wasn't herself. I suspect she was clowning around and smearing her food all over her face to make the other kids laugh but the teacher saw this as a baby and assumed she couldn't feed herself. They just had no idea. This was a kid that has had amazing fine motor skills since 6 months and has been able to feed herself, including twirling spaghetti on a fork for ever. It wasn't a hard decision to pull her. JMHO, if you are seeing similar things and feel that it isn't the right fit ... definitely pull her because the potential of setting the stage for her early education as an under achiever is already being molded.
And as for Kindergarten ... we have come to similar conclusions that we really can't risk going through the public school system; even though the school she would go to is the best elementary school in this metro area. We know that it would be hard for them to be flexible enough to really do DD any good. Luckily for us ... the Spanish Immersion school is a private school that goes through Kindergarten and will be adding a grade every year until 5th grade. This is of course great so long as the school is still a good fit for our DD. Crossing my fingers this will be the case.
And now that I feel I have turned your post into one all about me!! Sorry ... I just wanted to share that you are not alone and you will find a few members who have similar situations.
