My hunch is that you haven't done anything wrong with your DD, but that
1) Even MG kids may be seriously underchallenged in the regular classroom.
2) shy might be way more gifted that you or the schools think and is underachieving because she hasn't been offered as much academic challenge as she needs.
2) NT girls are famous for 'blending in' and over many years of not being pushed, has a lot of built up 'feelings to face' whenever she gets pushed at all. So the bad reaction might be a healthy venting of bottled up feelings - not fun, but perhaps necessary.
My impression is that some kids have natural drive, and don't need to be pushed. Other kids need to be in classrooms where they are given the old 'balanced push' - I picture it as the right hand there to support the sternum, and the left hand pushing firmly on the middle of the back. I usually see this as an 'Introvert' vs. 'Extrovert' thing.
I've been thinking about this a lot. I think she's challenged now, though in the past she definitely wasn't and it manifested itself in a 3 months of her making herself sick.
I do think we made some of the praise mistakes with her that were mentioned in Nuture Shock, and her academic career up till 5th grade practically mirrored the example in the book.
I had to actually pull her out of school entirely in 4th grade for the sake of her mental health. We did some unschooling and a little bit of homeschooling, but it was mostly a break year. She made up the lost time within 2 weeks in 5th grade. She had a great teacher in 5th grade though, so he started challenging her more as the year went on. She handled all of this well, but now that she's in 6th grade (in middle school), I don't think she's getting the support she needs from a couple of her teachers to rise up to the challenge. I'm not really blaming them - they aren't bad teachers -- just too busy with 6 classes a day to give that level of individual attention that she craves.
Because of this, she's struggling in math. I think she's actually one of the better math students in the class, but whenever there's a topic she actually has to work to understand, it results in a melt down. The other day she screamed about not needing to know how to calculate interest. She had the opportunity to do the assignment the next day instead and she did it really easily. It's like she needed to sleep on it. But obviously that's not always practical when the assignment is due the next day.
I think the other problem is that besides potentially trying to blend in (and I do believe she has done that because she's not the best at making friends in the first place - she's a little socially immature, though not aspie) she's now got the added issue of puberty and boys and all that. And she thinks about it a lot. She asks me every other week when I'm going to let her start dating (like my answer will ever change).
So it's a lot to think about. I'm still not sure what to do with her. She doesn't throw temper tantrums anymore, but she does have "teenage episodes." I'm thinking of just waiting those out before I try to push her much further. It just seems like her brain isn't ready for the challenge because she's so afraid of failure. We've done our best to work her through that, but I think she's also just at an age where failure means something more socially than it did before. She needs to feel good in her own skin first.
