Originally Posted by Bostonian
One reason to send a gifted child to academic gifted summer programs is to help him refine his own estimate of his abilities. He may be clearly be in the top 1%, but interacting with other one-percenters will let him know if he is in the top 0.1% or 0.01% .

Academic competitions should help with this as well.

I remember some math competition thingy I did in middle school, although I can't remember its name.