When Renáta Rottová's son Johan turned 2, she discovered that he had taught himself how to read. At 3 he began asking questions like, "Are cells made up of molecules?" and "Does each cell have a nucleus?"

It didn't take Rottová long to realize that her son was special, and intelligence tests further proved that he was profoundly gifted, with an IQ higher than most people.

But her son's intelligence brought a tremendous responsibility with it. "I knew right away that I would have to try very hard to find him appropriate schooling," she recalls. "I didn't want to waste his talent."

The parents of gifted children don't have it easy. This is especially true in the Czech Republic, where, in spite of recent efforts toward improvement, the public school system remains rigid and favors the mediocre.

"The options are very limited for children who somehow stand out," says Eva Vondráková, director of the Association for the Talented and the Gifted.

In its most recent survey, the analytical department for the Czech School Inspection says 4 percent of 715 schools do an excellent job at accommodating gifted students. They provide challenging extracurricular activities for them, tailor study plans and offer more overall attention.

A law passed last year seeks to boost improvement. According to the law, teachers must try to accommodate gifted students and work out individual study plans for them. Talented kids can now also skip grades or work at higher grade levels in subjects they excel at.

"Now at least gifted children are being talked about," says Vondráková.

Hiding in plain sight

This has given hope to Mark Powell, an American with a Czech wife, whose 9-year-old son, Nick, is exceptionally talented. He should be in the fourth grade, but he attends an alternative school for gifted students in Denver, Colorado, where he works at the eighth-grade level. Nick has 11th-grade math skills.

Powell's family will be moving to the Czech Republic this fall, and Powell has spent endless hours researching options and talking to experts about his son's education.

He says educators continue to misunderstand gifted children. "Many people think they're super already so they don't need any extra help," he says. "But it doesn't work that way."

Šárka Portešová, a psychologist at the Masaryk University in Brno who specializes in gifted children, says many teachers aren't able to identify them.

"Talented kids often aren't instantly recognizable," she says. "Some even have learning disabilities."

According to Vondráková, the biggest problem that remains unresolved is that teachers are not educated enough about how to deal with gifted children.

"Every school should have a specialist for gifted children," she says. Ideally, she says, teachers would have opportunities to further their own educations and to learn how to teach gifted children.

The dilemma

But even in an ideal, perfectly flexible school system, parents of gifted kids often struggle to find the best schooling strategy.

Vondráková says that all children benefit from being able to interact with peers of different abilities. But in some cases, talented kids are better off if most of their schooling takes place with kids who are at their level.

It's a dilemma: Left at their grade levels, gifted kids become bored and may lose interest in learning all together. But when placed in classes with older students, talented kids may have trouble socializing. They may be smarter than others, but not necessarily more mature.

Rottová faced this problem with her son, who is now 5 years old. He was bored in kindergarten, where kids his age were learning to name colors while he was already reading. When he was in a class with older kids, however, they teased him and he wasn't able to defend himself.

Rottová is considering placing her son in special public school classes with other talented students when he starts the first grade in the fall. Powell is likely to take a different route: He is leaning toward enrolling his son in a public high school here in September, which will place Nick in regular courses with much older students.

"I think it's really important that gifted children learn to interact with people of all abilities," he says. "Nick may be smart, but he's really just a normal kid."

Whatever schooling their parents choose, gifted kids need flexibility and freedom to explore, says Vondráková. Many parents continue to complain that the system here is rigid and authoritarian.

Traditionally, Czech teachers never encouraged class discussion and do not like being questioned. They would emphasize memorization at the expense of creativity.

That's the legacy of communism, Portešová says.