Yes, that really resonates with us, as well.
That sense that someone like me or my DH could totally fly under the radar around here given the local distribution (about 30% of the school district identifies as GT, and that is top 5% here). DD is easily still top 1-5% (depending upon the day and the context) even among peers several years older than she is.
She feels out of place a lot even in the best fitting environment we've been able to concoct for her... and for most gifties, it'd be an exceptionally good fit, I think. It certainly would have been for everyone I knew in my own peer group growing up.
I also have the sense of wanting to tell my friends (many of whom do have GT kids, identified by the school district) that they really should not be comparing their kids to DD. But I have yet to figure out a way of having that come out sounding anything but insufferable. So I just offer genuine enthusiasm for their kids' very real accomplishments, try to encourage them to talk about their kids, and keep quiet about DD.
I have nobody IRL to talk with about the kinds of asynchrony issues that dog our every parenting decision, however. I think maybe that is truly a problem related to LOG.
A lot of advice from other parents (even educators or other child-development experts) is inappropriate to our situation. It's a bit isolating, and it definitely requires good social skills on our part to smile and say "Thank you" for the (otherwise thoughtful and well-intended) advice... after all, "Use your words" wasn't useful with a toddler who already had a pretty significant vocabulary and no 'off' switch. LOL. Just like "oh, there's parental control software for that" isn't now that my 12yo knows how to hack most of it. When I mention things like this to counselors and school administrators, they just kind of go "blank" a lot of the time. Occasionally, I'll describe something that DD habitually does and they'll become very excited to finally know a child that really "does that" since they heard/read about kids like her. So yes, I think she must really be that unusual.
We didn't exactly live in denial-- more that we didn't want to be "those" parents. The insufferable braggarts whose kid isn't that special. So we tend to downplay what DD does rather than over-estimating it. We're both physical scientists, too, which makes us hypercritical and skeptical of subjective data, but also of numerical data, for that matter. We don't tend to put a lot of stock in labels and testing, believe it or not.
Yes, we expected that our child(ren) would be bright-- probably gifted, even. We both are, after all. I didn't really understand some of the things that my extended family had shared about raising the PG member of my family until the light dawned re: DD when she was a few years old, though. Then I finally understood the odd mixture of terror, exasperation, exhaustion, and pride evident in those recounted anecdotes.
