I'd love to hear how your child or your parenting have been misunderstood and how you dealt with it. I've come to learn that there is a lot of wisdom on this board and look forward to what each of you share.
The optimist's reading on our situation: DS9 has in some ways gotten a bye in both directions. Even in preschool, other children were excusing his extremely odd behavior (later diagnosed as Asperger's Syndrome) as due to being "smart" because it was obvious to all of them that he could do things they could not. Really-- even four-year-olds had theories about him, because he warranted explanation. He still gets a bye from peers sometimes for this reason; the "eccentric genius" idea really does let a person get away with a good bit of odd behavior.
But it is also true that we have rarely had to explicitly discuss "giftedness" (a word I pretty much never use) because it is so obvious that DS's needs are so extravagantly unusual due to his disability. In general I need to do much less bragging than excusing ("pardon us, he's a little autistic"). Lots of people know about his peculiar math placement, kids used to stop him in the halls to quiz him, but it appears to be just part and parcel of the larger oddness of the situation. Whether he's disappearing to special ed or gifted pullout, who can tell?
The pessimist's reading: in some ways, he's a walking stereotype of both giftedness and AS, and that can work against him in multiple ways as people make unwarranted assumptions. And it can mitigate against genuine understanding, though we've worked especially with peers in school to help kids understand where DS is coming from, to great effect.
The silver lining of DS being so easily misunderstood is that we have been ignored by some people in our community whom I would not enjoy spending time with anyway, whether they avoid us because he's unusual or because we are probably horrible parents to be raising such an odd child or because the comparison to their kids makes them feel funny, I don't know. Probably not the latter. Those who can tolerate difference appear to like us okay, and we do all we can to cultivate relationships with them.
We all try hard to maintain cordiality... which requires great care.
DeeDee
Edited to add (public service announcement): Most people with AS are within the average range of intelligence: the HG+ folks with AS are as much outliers in the autism community as they are in any other setting. It *is* a stereotype.
