My son got complaints in 2nd grade that the teacher didn't see his eyes while she was talking to him, and she percieved it as disrespectful. I just taught him to make fake it, and practiced that a few times, and then he was able to. I think that for a child who is really taking in a lot of the world every second, it can be distracting to look at faces while concentrating on a complex task of any kind.
When she is a bit older you can teach her to fake 'eye contact' by looking at the corner of a person's eyebrow while they talk.
I think she's too young to introduce the concept now, perhaps only to start teaching her to 'spot' like a ballarena while doing things that are really 2nd nature to her. When I learned to spin around in Ballet class I was taught to pick a spot on the wall to focus on while I turned so I didn't get dizzy.
Example: 'Lets sing Happy Birthday song, can you do it while holding your eyes on that kitchen chair?' Not on people or anything scary or moving.
It sounds to me like she is trying very hard to comply with what you ask of her, and is doing what she needs to do to give her full attention. Cool that she figured out how to limit the distractions. Is it a bad sign that she needs to do that? Maybe and Maybe not - it's really hard to know at this stage.
As for the antisocial behavior, how many hours a day is she expected to be with other 4 year olds? How does she do with 5 and 6 year olds? Must be very tough with the expression difficulties. Two things that are often tested as part of IQ are 'Working Memory' and 'Processing Speed.' You DD is almost certainly showing you bottlenecks in either or both of those qualities.
Processing Speed is how rapidly her brain puts the pieces of a mental puzzle together. One steriotype of gifted people is that they are the first one to put up their hand and blurt out the answer - and some gifted people are like that(like me) - but by no means all (like my DS and DH)and it's wrong but common to mistake speed for intelligence.
Working Memory is how many pieces of a mental puzzle can be 'kept in mind' while problem solving. This one is a bottleneck for me and I have to write everything down or -whosh - I get to watch it fly off the mental worktable and have the nagging feeling that I was supposed to be thinking about something. My DS's WM is strong, and he can visualize glucose molecules being metabolized as if he was reading the reactions off a blackboard. I'm so jealous!
This will at least give you something to think about while you are waiting for your DD to swivel her eyes back to you and do what you've asked.
I'm wondering how your brother and sibs and MIL and DH's rest of the family 'turned out,' although it may be too personal to post - be sure to at least journal about your self assessment and judgements about the folks on both sides of the family. We Gifties are great at being picky,(perfectionism can be directed outward as well as inward) and worrying. Often we have excellent reason to worry as well. It's a funny mix. And we almost never get a chance to talk about it with anyone who 'gets' where we are coming from. So try to get some venting done here or somewhere.
Hugs,
Grinity
