Assessment is in order when a child's behavior is interfering with his functioning. Even though your son is doing well academically and socially (with his peers), his behavior is disruptive enough at school to disturb his teacher. If this teacher is having trouble controlling her class in general (in other words, she's having trouble with all the kids, not just yours), then you can ignore the issue for now. However, if past teachers have expressed similar concerns or if others have noted your son's behavior, you might take the bull by the horns and have him assessed. It is possible that he is gifted and is acting poorly in class because he's under-stimulated. However, if he also behaves poorly at home, it may be that giftedness is not the issue. Sometimes a child has ADHD - Impulsive & Attentive Type. In this version of ADHD, the child CAN concentrate in class. However, he tends to pop out of his seat, call out his answers and engage in other impulsive, disruptive behaviors. The youngster can be gifted, average or below average academically. It's the pure impulsive, disruptive behavior that results in the diagnosis. The only way to know whether this diagnosis applies to your son is to arrange for a proper assessment. There are natural, alternative, behavioral and medicinal interventions that may help.  Sarah Chana

If a teacher advises an assessment it's always a good idea to consider having it done. It doesn't necessarily mean something is wrong with him, but as he has trouble listening to what is said an assessment could give you an indication as to where this behavioral problem comes from. Perhaps he simply has trouble focusing on things for very long. Also due to his according to you high intelligence it could be that the boy is simply seeking out something to entertain and challenge him. In holland we have a different grade system from you so grade 5 to me would be a child around 8-10 years of age? I'm not sure how old English/American children are in grade 5 though. Anyway try talking with your son. Ask him why he won't listen if there's a reason he is showing this for you annoying behavior.

As for assessing him it's the advice of his teacher, you don't have to have him assessed but it's not a bad idea to have that done. From your post I get the idea that it's nothing really serious just a very smart boy with a short attention span who needs stimulation and challenges.

My advice is to try and talk with your son see if he can tell you why he won't listen and consider having him assessed. The assessment will not take a lot of time and the outcome could be beneficial to both you and your son as it might help discover where the listening problem comes from when your son can not tell you and how to go about solving this. I believe though that it's not ADHD as SCR said because my brother has ADHD and these things you mentioned are POSSIBLE reactions of a person with ADHD. I believe that it might just be that your son simply doesn't have the span of attention to listen to his teachers and parents.

I see a lot of things I had when I was a child. I was smarter then most kids of my age too, but I just couldn't concentrate long enough to listen to my teachers and within a matter of minutes after the teacher started talking I was already distracted and talking to friends or doodling. My teachers luckily were very good at that time they had my parents take me to get assessed and it turned out that I was bored and had the attention span of a fly so to speak I couldn't focus on anything for more then a few seconds if it didn't interest me in some way. Because of the assessment my teachers now too had something they could work with, they could adjust how they worked with me so I would stop distracting the others.

If it's the same with your son then his teacher will have told you to have an assessment done because it is in the best interest of the child so I advice that you at least consider taking your child to be assessed it will always be beneficial for the child to know early on if there are any problems. It won't do to wait long and find out later because now he is still influencable and you can easily aply a new methode of getting him to listen then when you wait and he becomes even less capable of listening