I was identified as highly gifted around that age as well, but my parents prevented me from participating in my schools' GATE programs. It is not hard to see how that decision cascaded through my life and led to a lot of avoidable painful outcomes.
I was so far ahead of my peers that school was unbearably tedious by grade 7 and I became a "bad kid". I did the bare minimum in high school so I could pursue my interests away from class. My GPA reflected that level of engagement.
Because my academic record screamed "truant, not motivated, difficult", I was locked out of top quality universities and scholarships I should have easily obtained. I graduated from a mediocre college with avoidable student debt and access to lower quality career options than I would have had through a better school.
I course corrected in my 30s and have had a nice career and family life, but there were 10-12 years of missed opportunities and unnecessary suffering.
Access to opportunity is like compound interest in that early success leads to more opportunity. Invest early and your life will more likely have positive social and economic outcomes. Missing opportunities early can be very costly.
I don't know if gifted kids are being pushed too hard or not. Sometimes, in an effort to provide early opportunities, parents lose sight of what it means to be a kid. That is sad, no question, but challenging gifted kids is important, because not doing so can lead to avoidable personal and professional difficulties. My life is proof of that.
> My four year old daughter is exceptionally gifted (generally), and profoundly so with visual-spatial intelligence and math.
And? These are test results. They mean nothing. Sometimes the argument delivered to 'gifted kids' is that they have a gift and thus a responsibility to use it, which is, as previously stated, bullshit. I have no gift aside from existence, the same as every other person. I say this because you can't interpret test results as a reflection of the brain --- or _intelligence_, whatever that is. Tests are limited in scope, innacurate, and probabalistic. They're determined by so many factors that aren't intelligence, and so many subsections of intelligence are excluded or included arbitrarily. Pretending I or your child has more of a nebulous and immeasureable quality is a factually innacurate burden that makes living harder. I won't give parenting advice, but I will give my perspective. I hope it's helpful.