This post is not necessarily directed at the person I'm quoting. But I'm quoting this because you will hear this argument a lot, and it's a false argument. This post is for any parent who has a "different" child. I know the pressure you are under if you have a "different" child and I want to provide a new perspective for you to consider. I was going to respond originally with this point but I didn't and even though it's like 4 months later I decided I'm going to.
Suppose there was a society that invented the toothbrush. Yet instead of using it to brush their teeth they used it to clean the toilet. It's small and maneuverable and the bristles would work well cleaning something. Now, suppose I took you to this society and you didn't know about their toothbrush use. I told you I was taking you to three psychology "experts" and they were going to assess your sanity. The first psychology expert took you to a bathroom and gave you a toothbrush and asked you to demonstrate how to use it. So you start brushing your teeth. What would the first expert think of you? Now suppose the second and a third did the same test. Would you say those three "experts" are wrong when they assess you as crazy for using a toothbrush to brush your teeth? Or do you admit these "experts" are wrong?
THIS is the problem with the argument "that 3 schools who have independently seen your son...". It's not "3 schools" it's one train of thought. All of the public school personnel went to college for the same things, hung out with the same crowd, took the same classes, and have the same work partners. OF COURSE they all think the same thing about my son. The school psychologist who abused my son majored in dance in college. DANCE! And she thinks she can assess mathematically gifted kids? No, she can only asses whether a kid likes to have a conversation.
My niece was going to be a "neuroscientist". That was her life's dream. She went to college, couldn't hack biology and changed her major to psychology and now she's going to graduate school and will probably end up working as a school psychologist. Yet SHE is going to assess young kids (primarily boys, look up the stats) who are scientifically/mathematically gifted? She can't relate to them. of course she'll think there's something wrong with them.
I was born in 1976. In 1993 I had friends in high school who built computers. They took a bunch of hardware, put it together, wrote the OS, and built the freaking thing. They were "weird". Do you know anyone who built a computer at 16 years old? Do you think anybody at my son's school knows someone like them? Of course not. We tend to hang around people like us. So people who work at an elementary school hung around non-technical people. They don't understand technical people.
My son is exactly like me. I am highly analytical and I "get" math the way Michael Jordan "gets" basketball. This morning at breakfast I asked if we were going to take down his birthday (Feb 9) signs on February 1st (I meant to say March 1st). He said "dad, February first is 344 days away. I think we're going to take them down on March 1st". Now, a "normal" person would have pointed out that my February 1st comment was wrong and I meant March 1st. But my son doesn't think like that. Instead he calculated how long until the upcoming February 1st and told me it was 344 days away. How many 10 year olds do that? My son taught himself multiplication at 8 years old. How many 8 year olds do that?
If you give my son a date within the next 3 years he will tell you the day of the week. So if you say "John what day of the week is August 3 2023" he'll tell you it's Thursday in about 20 seconds. I can do this. But until my son started doing this a couple months ago I'd never met anyone else who can. My previous boss thought I was a carnival sideshow and would start all of our team meetings asking me the day of a week for a certain date in the future. She thought it was amazing I could figure it out in my head. My son can do this too at 10 years old. How? It's all math. I do the same thing. It's knowing that the day of the week changes by one each year, then knowing that each month has 28 days which is 4 weeks so those cancel and then you add up the remaining days and get the answer. So here's how you figure out August 3, 2023. March 3 2022 is 9 days away which is a Thursday (the 7 days cancel so you have 2 days + today is Tuesday = Thursday). Then you know March has 3 extra days, April 2, May 3, June 2, July 3 so that is 13 extra days. 14 days cancel so you subtract one day from Thursday and you get Wednesday for August 3 2022. Then you are asked for 2023 so you add a day (365 is 52 weeks + 1 day) and you know that August 3, 2023 is a Thursday. But no one taught me how to do this. I just know how. No one taught my son either, but he just knows.
Mark Zuckerberg had to testify in front of Congress years ago. Facebook hired someone to teach Zuck how to be "normal". Things like how to dress, that he needed to look people in the eye when speaking to them, to wait for the other speaker to finish before he began to answer (look this up if you don't believe me). If Zuckerberg were born in 2010 he would have been placed in an autism special education classroom because he doesn't maintain eye contact while speaking (the school told me that's a red flag you're autistic)
Yet this comment at the top of this post is the "normal" way of thinking: "I think you need to consider if you truly, truly, truly feel that 3 schools, who have independently seen your son..."
Yes, I truly feel that even a million people who majored in English, who are afraid of math, who have never built a computer, or even taken one apart to see what it looks like inside, lack the ability to assess my son. I truly feel that people who quit math at Intermediate Algebra and can't tell you anything about basic stuff like what an integral measures and what it's used for lack the mental skill set to assess my son. I TRULY believe that. I don't say that to be insulting. Rather my point is that we are all different. And you can't assess someone who is radically different from you. You just don't understand them. You don't know how they process information and how they think. I can't assess someone with a language-based brain just like a language-based person can't asses my math-based brain.
To finish up, This post is for people who have a "different" child. You need to entertain the possibility that the people who are assessing your child just don't understand him (or her, but it's 90% boys, again look it up). You need to realize your child has gifts that others can't see or refuse to see or dismiss out of hand.