Not like him? He really thought that. He thought that because of his dysgraphia and dyslexia and the challenges he has due to the learning disability that he wasn't one of the smart ones.
It's hard with the 2e kids. I ran into this with DD9 who also is dyslexic and dysgraphic. She periodically asks me questions trying to figure out how she fits into her gifted class. She asks me if I think certain kids are smart. She then asks whether her being able to grasp a math concept (or whatever else) more quickly than those kids means that she is smart too. I told DD that she is very smart but the things that she is incredibly good at are not honored in elementary school, i.e seeing complex patterns, spatial reasoning, etc.
We've also run into an incredibly rude parent who still can't understand why my DD is in the gifted class when DD reads at a lower level than this woman's kid. Oh, I admit it was so tempting to brag about DD's IQ scores to her but I kept my mouth shut. I just smiled and said that obviously DD's strengths lie in different areas.
On a brighter note, DD9 recently had an achievement that high-achieving, hard-to-live-up-to DD11 has not done yet. You better believe that DD9 got lots of recognition from the family for that one.
