Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by ABQMom
I think the one I find most annoying is when someone describes any of my kids as "freakishly smart". A compliment and insult all in one.

I have found that other parents, strangers and kids are much more comfortable with the extreme talents with my 2e son than they were with my high gifted son who was gifted in all exceptionalities tested. Seems human nature is more willing to embrace superiority when it is also served up with struggle in something else. It's ok to be able to recite from memory, including side effects, complete audio books at the age of three if that same child has a speech disorder.

A popular defense mechanism is for people to generalize all HG+ individuals as severely handicapped in some other way... ie "Rain Man," "Revenge of the Nerds," etc. They accept the genius of Stephen Hawking because he's in a wheelchair. Einstein flunked math. Da Vinci hacked off his own ear. Etc, etc.

So yeah, if you're not showing off the ways in which your child is tragically flawed, you're threatening their view of the universe, and people don't tend to like that very much.
Yes, and we've seen the unfortunate playing out of this in using one child in the family who is less obvious about her giftedness being downplayed to make the other child okay. For instance, my 2e dd isn't as obvious about her gifts and isn't grade skipped so I've had parents who are rather competitive downplay her as lesser than her sister. It seems to make them feel okay that one of my kids is smart if the other isn't that far out there (although dd11 may actually be more able). That is really hurtful understandably.

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