In Ella's second year of nursery school, the nursery school teacher and special needs teacher decided that they had nothing more to offer the girl and that she should move on to primary school. "We were unsure, but followed the recommendation," says Ella's father Daniel Carniello. Ella started school a week later. "It was a bit much all at once," remembers mum Béatrice.

Ella didn't have any problems making the leap. She quickly found her feet and mastered school with ease. "I hardly have to study," says Ella today, "I prefer to play floorball." Everything went smoothly until the end of third grade, "but since middle school," says her mother, "Ella's enthusiasm for school has visibly waned". The nine-year-old is no longer interested in maths, which she has always excelled at, out of boredom, she says. When asked why this is the case, Ella shrugs her shoulders.

The reason why the parents don't dismiss their daughter's behaviour as pre-pubescent is Ella's twelve-year-old brother Cyril. He was in second grade at the time and suddenly complained of stomach pains. When the complaints didn't stop and the doctor couldn't find a physical cause, the parents sought help from a psychologist. The result was a chance finding: cognitive giftedness. In the end, Cyril skipped third grade. "His stomach ache," says his father, "disappeared into thin air."

"That made us wary," says Ella's mum, "and so we went to talk to the headteacher and Ella's teacher. She saw no reason for a gifted assessment. Our request was unsuccessful." The parents then financed the assessment out of their own pocket. The assessment also revealed that Ella was intellectually gifted. The parents knocked on the teacher's door again. "She felt cornered by the findings," believes Ella's mother. "In any case, we were met with a blank stare." As parents, you are quickly categorised as the over-ambitious ones who push their child, says father Daniel: "What we want for our children is as normal a school career as possible."

After the summer holidays, Ella's class is due to have a change of teacher. Her parents are happy about this coincidence. Ella's test results have now also prompted the headteacher to look for solutions. What these might look like will be discussed after the holidays. So far, Ella has attended two lessons a week in the school's internal gifted and talented programme, which is open to all high-achieving pupils. "I like going there," says Ella, "I like handicrafts and gymnastics even more." And she has a passion for talking: "That's why I want to be a radio presenter."

Juri was five years old when his intelligence was tested for the first time. The results left his parents empty-souled. "But we were also relieved," says Juri's father, "because the result was the catalyst for so many efforts that the school made on Juri's behalf."

The parents quickly realised that their middle son was different from his peers. At just two years old, Juri was solving 100-piece puzzles, and at four he was reading stories to his little brother, which he simultaneously translated into dialect. "The wave of books," says Juri, "hasn't died down to this day." The eleven-year-old reads whatever he can get his hands on: Disney's funny paperbacks, novels, newspapers, non-fiction books.

Juri also loves numbers, and he knows lots of tricks. If you ask him about a date from the past, he can work out the corresponding day of the week in no time at all. Numbers were an early pastime for Juri. While his classmates were combining their first letters, he played arithmetic games, and later he transformed sentence problems into equations.

"As a pupil, Juri was a conformist," says his mother, "as soon as he got home, he started screaming. He couldn't tolerate any more externalisation and had the feeling that he had no time left for his own mental work."

The school endeavoured to find solutions: From then on, the first-grader attended maths and gifted and talented classes with the fourth-graders. "That stopped the screaming," says his mother."

In third grade, a retired physicist and a secondary school teacher worked with him. At some point, Yuri's need for support began to exceed the school's resources, and his parents observed with concern the balancing act that the boy had to master between the different places of learning. They wanted him to have a permanent place in a class. This led to the decision in favour of the gifted school, which the canton of Lucerne finances through a special school ruling for the highly gifted.

Juri starts grammar school at the end of the month. He will miss his old friends. He is disappointed with the gifted school: "I had hoped that the teachers would cater to our interests, but instead everything went according to plan." Juri speaks like a shot from a cannon. "If the pace in class is too slow, I get antsy. Then I start thinking out loud and making jokes." His teacher felt provoked by this, "he thought I was doing it on purpose".

Juri prefers to acquire knowledge on his own. This is difficult to reconcile with school, says his mother: "All we really heard was what Juri was doing badly - or not according to plan. I would have expected more openness from a small public school."

Juri really likes animals. "I don't eat them either," he says, "that would be a shame." Juri already wanted to become a farmer; the non-fiction book "1000 Questions for Young Farmers" is on the shelf. A budget calculation put him off the idea. "Maybe," says Juri, "I'd rather become a programmer."