What do you consider "gifted"?

[Arcadia]

Yep. I just moved to your area. Right next to a Harker school. I'm already being drilled at the park by parents on why I homeschool (shock)...they cannot understand.

My "backyard" is Oracle and Intel. It is a surreal microworld here. If you drive, check out ParkHoppers (homeschool group) as they do park days (playdates) in your area on Mondays.

Check out SJSU Martin Luther King library. The collections are great and parking is free on 4th street garage after 6pm weekdays and free on weekends. Lawrence Hall of Science has homeschool classes. Coyote Grange has classes too for homeschoolers.

You are near Kinokuniya if your child wants to pick up Japanese. The B&N at Stevens Creek has WWE, FLL and the other homeshool stuff.

ETA:

If you mention your child is gifted, some parents might assume you mean in the public schools gifted program. Here there is no stigma on gifted, LDs or 2E.

[mathwonk]

Here is a detailed article I found somewhat interesting, comparing different definitions of "gifted":

 

http://www.mishawaka.k12.in.us/documents/HA%20docs/EDPS%20540%20articles/Module%201%20-%202%20(January%2026)/Renzulli.pdf

 

 

In my personal opinion, it is all kind of relative. I might have seemed comparatively advanced in my second grade class, but for the past 30 years or so, in any gathering of professional research mathematicians in my field, I have frequently felt like one of the duller birds in the room.

 

Actually, although I am almost always among the least knowledgable, sometimes I come up with an observation that has escaped the others, and maybe that is my gift, the ability to occasionally see something that was right there but unnoticed.

 

So there are many gifts, treasure your own and develop it.

 

It just dawned on me that in my case, developing my gift of mathematical intuition, might mean working on those aspects of math that do not come as easily to me, computing examples, expanding my knowledge base by reading, following the details/formulas in lectures...

 

So paradoxically one may strengthen ones gift by bolstering it from nearby areas where one does not feel as gifted. Perhaps those of us who pursue only what comes easily may represent that phenomenon of the gifted person who does not succeed fully. E.g. I would probably have benefited from disciplining myself to work through more of the important papers in my field. Clearly there is some balance between following ones passion, and leaving oneself limited in the scope of ones mastery and understanding.