Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do You Brag (Or Do Your Friends Think You Do?)

I've been thinking about how talking about your gifted kid could make other people feel bad or inadequate. As Iucounu said, people don't want to think that their kids are limited in some way, and if someone mentions that Joey skipped two grades or started reading when he was two, it can remind others about something they can't give their kids.

Put another way, a very wealthy person might stay quiet when other people are talking about how they're going to pay for college. In this case, the person is being polite. S/he has something the others don't, and keeping quiet in this situation avoids making them feel bad or inadequate. Speaking up would just remind them about something they might already feel rotten about.

So in this context, I can see that keeping quiet about giftedness is appropriate (most obviously if the talk is about a child with developmental delays, but even if everyone else is just average-ish).