I was one of those kids with excellent "sound judgement". I read well ahead of my grade level so I had an good grasp of functional grammer. That is I could recognise and use complex sentance structure. (I enjoyed breaking the "rules" by knowing the exceptions eg you can start a sentance with because.)
Unfortunately I went through school at a time when teaching traditional grammer such as knowing the names and definitions uses of past imperfect and gerund and participles was not done and, to read my written work, was not needed. I would have disliked learning that way so I thought it was great. Until I tried to explain to a Japanese friend when to use "ran" vs "had run" vs "had been running." I knew when to use them but didn't realize they were different tenses rather than common vs uncommon uses.
Learning a second language could have been much easier for me as well. When the teacher spoke about using a certain phrase only in the past perfect or in a subjunctive clause I didn't know what she meant.
Like many things in school the child may not value the information right away but that does not mean there is no value.
