My attitude is that there is a difference between serving a child's needs and catering to a child's every whim.
For example, if my kids get hungry, they act out. Do I withhold food from them to teach them to behave? No! Of course not! The acting out is a symptom of the fact that their needs aren't being met. The need for learning is a need for a GT kid just as surely as the need for food is, and it is possible to disapprove of the negative behavior while still making changes to meet those needs.
I am a firm believer that boredom is part of life--at HOME. It is not my job (or anyone else's) to entertain my child. They can use their imaginations and entertain themselves! That is a good use of boredom in a useful setting: where kids have the power to be inventive and the tools to fix their own problem.
But school is supposed to be about learning. If a child is not learning, then why have him/her there? Their options to "entertain" themselves in school are limited. Some kids daydream or doodle, but that doesn't work for everyone. And it's often kids' efforts to entertain themselves that ARE the bad behavior. (Some teachers won't even let kids read while class is going on!) I think it's not fair to a child to enforce boredom when the child is in a situation that doesn't allow him/her to fix the problem.
I think regular, ongoing boredom in school often teaches kids bad habits. If we want kids who know how to learn, we have to give them chances to do so.
I'm not saying that every second of every school day has to be challenging, and there are many types of learning that a kid can be doing in school. But if a fair bit of the school day is boredom for a child, it seems only right to me that something be changed to better suit the child's needs. There are many changes that can be made. Homeschooling is just one option.
To answer your last question, homeschoolers usually do very well with "the rest of the world." As long as *your* attitude is not that your child is the center of the universe, your child won't feel that way. It is possible to encourage independent work from a homeschooler while mom does something else. I'd call it necessary, even!
