Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy adults assuming "wrongness" about savvy kid

I sat down with my DS when he was learning to drive and went over this in detail. We practiced what he would say if he was pulled over or in an accident. My son does the opposite of what Howler is saying and will turn mute when pushed to talk by an authority figure. He then gets in more trouble because he won't talk with them. I made it VERY clear that if he wasn't mature enough to have a civil conversation with a police officer he wasn't mature enough to drive.

I also do one of the things that spaghetti(?) mentioned. We talk about situations that we see in the news and discuss how the the people behaved and if that the best response and what he should do if he was in a similar situation.

But I don't have a clue how to teach a teen who is annoying the adults because she is behaving too adult.

Yeah-- it can be problematic because as she ramps up their "you're behaving suspiciously," and "different! Different is BAD! Why are you being DIFFERENT??"


her innate reactions tend to make her get MORE controlled, more polite, and more careful still-- in other words, more "adult," and meanwhile, this is (at least on occasion) the very behavior that led to the problem in the first place. It's very scary to her when she is trying to defuse the situation with an adult who is losing their cool, and the more rational she gets, the more emotionally out of control the adult becomes.

"Can you please call my mom/dad" is a really good idea for younger kids-- and not a bad one for teens, either.

I think that maybe coaching emotional statements is a good idea:

"I'm really feeling confused right now."

"Please stop yelling at me-- you're frightening me."

Anything that reminds the adult that she IS still, really, a child-- and has a child's emotional responses, no matter how well she controls them.

DD's response to law enforcement isn't worrisome to us on the one hand-- she's VERY compliant, not at all belligerent. If anything, she tends to be too supercilious and one step ahead of where most adults are-- which, again, can drive suspicion. For example, if you get pulled over, most people would wait to get their auto registration, but I can see DD reaching for it before being asked-- maybe even before the patrolman got out of his own car, she might already have both license and registration out and ready to hand over. KWIM? That kind of Dudley Do-Right attitude isn't always a good thing with authority figures that are suspicious of why you're being THAT cooperative.


The TSA agent thing, well-- that one I made up. She managed that one just fine, and was more than able to zip it with the snark in security lines all over N. America and Europe-- though she later teased me plenty about getting strip-searched over my magnetic socks in British Columbia after being up for 24 hours. (Long story).

But suffice it to say that bending the truth often needs to be worked out ahead of time with her-- that is, telling customs that we hadn't been on any farms when we had DRIVEN through one... wasn't a lie that mattered according to the reason behind the law (agricultural importation of invasives and pathogens), and it did save everyone the trouble of them rooting through our luggage before our connecting (also international) flight.


She's quite SCRUPULOUSLY honest with authority figures. Sometimes too much so-- her verbal precision goes to "Spock" under those conditions, and it can drive gut level suspicion, because she is quite clearly NOT impaired in terms of communication or social cues. She just gives off this "too-knowing" kind of vibe, and it makes gaurdian/enforcer authority figures a bit uneasy.

She's also very afraid of every running so far afoul of an authority figure that they separate her from her rescue meds. That fear drives a certain amount of overly supercilious behavior.

Wandering, for a moment, slightly off the original topic: if only I could teach my spouse not to scrupulously report every dime to customs--one hour later, floor manager demonstrates to half-a-dozen customs agents how to calculate customs duty (which none of them have ever had to do before), because we went over the duty-free allowance, ending with the grand total of $2 of duty, which she promptly waived, because it costs more to process it than to let it go.

On-topic: one of the realizations I've come to in recent years is that, as most of the world is not rational (I expect you all figured that out much earlier!), one cannot rely on reason to communicate with/persuade most people. This is where those with empathetic gifts may need to employ them to determine the actual basis of the communicative partners decision-making, and address that in both verbal and nonverbal communication. For example, run through Maslow's hierarchy and try to zero in on the need most powerfully motivating the other party. Or contemplate some of the most common and powerful emotional motivators, e.g., fear, anger, need for affection/to be liked, insecurity/need for affirmation or respect, need for approval.

And these reflect my much earlier thought, that it may help to reframe honest communication as that expression which most accurately effects one's communicative intent. Which requires code-switching, or internal translation, into the language of the recipient. One is not being dishonest; one is communicating in a language that is comprehensible to the other party. "When you say -this-, the other person hears -that-."

As to being "unnaturally" calm and self-controlled: I suspect that authority figures find this threatening, especially in emotionally-laden situations, as the person who is not overwhelmed by emotion is the one in charge of the situation. (Except, of course, when he/she is not really.) I hesitate to discourage adolescents from managing their emotions in time of crisis, but I do think it may help to recognize that this is experienced by some authority figures as undermining their authority. Therefore, it may be more effective when accompanied by overt gestures of respect and deference.

Do not mean to hijack but we're experiencing this (not at school since DD is still on a honeymoon stage there) and the stress/headache this creates is not trivial.

I was hoping that the problems will lessen with age.

Some off topic levity in response to spaghetti's TSA comment:

Are TSA secret police? I guess something to do with airport security but sounds like secret police.

This hits the nail on the head. In our case, DS is not savvy/socially gifted but he is also scrupulously honest and Spock-like, which drives the adults-in-charge bananas, and results in much ill-will.

For him, it's a matter of appearing not to "care" which translates to lacking a conscience, which is far from the truth. He does, however, reserve his remorse for situations in which he's made a clear moral error and he easily compartmentalizes other situations (if he's broken an unwritten social rule) into the does-not-compute-don't-fret box.

I agree that most people are not rational, to the degree that when one encounters an actual rational, non-emotional, non-reactive person in authority, it feels like an oasis in the desert. Since your DD is able to read others' nonverbals--perhaps aeh's code-switching advice can be assimilated into her Jane Goodall bag of tricks.

Not sure I agree with the threat perception. My take is that law enforcement are specifically trained to look for "suspicious" behavior, which can basically be anything that isn't expected and normal. They have a generalized notion of how a child of a certain age should behave in a certain situation, based on training and personal experience. Because our children are statistical outliers by nature, their behavior will not match. Ergo, suspicious.

Point taken. That nuance on law enforcement has validity. But the strategy of explicitly employing some conventional signals appropriate to the setting remains.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Your kid is my kid. And me.