I center this discussion around the idea that lots of people have special talents. One of our son's best friends is seriously agile and physically gifted. He was swimming and riding a bike without training wheels at age 3. At 8 he can walk around on his hands. I can imagine him in Cirque de Soleil, or the X-Games, or...something like that! Another one of our son's friends is quite possibly a musical prodigy; she plays a difficult orchestral instrument well enough to attract notice from international experts in this instrument. Our son knows that while he has certain strengths that others don't possess, the reverse is often true.
When he was reading at 2 and wondered why friends weren't also reading, I used the refrain of "everyone develops at a different pace." Now he's 8 and most of his friends are reading, so the playing field in that regard is leveling. Although his friends aren't reading the same books that he is - but they can all read the signs on the hiking trails, so he no longer needs to answer their questions about "what does that say?" and "read that for me." He's way ahead of them in math and a few other subjects, but just tends not to discuss those things with them. I have had to explain to him that he shouldn't say things like, "that's so easy!" when a friend tells him about his single-digit addition math lesson, because it's not "so easy" for his friend.
We homeschool, and that makes it a bit easier to avoid comparison situations - the kids tend to meet up for leisure time and do most of their hard-core lessons at home.
Tara
