I'm the mom of an only, but as I count so many DYS parents as friends, I feel like I've had a good chance to observe.
Here are some ideas:
1) Join the DYS program but don't allow your oldest to participate in any DYS activities, don't talk about it with your kids. Of course at some point the in the natural course of things you'll have to have some way to talk about whatever real differences there are between your children, just like there can be differences in height, athletic ability, personability, etc. If it is real, it'll have to be talked about on some level, but I wouldn't use the DYS experience to force a conversation that your family isn't ready to have.
2) Join DYS program, but only allow your oldest to participate in activities that the whole family is allowed to attend, such as local get-togethers. Don't talk about it.
3) Join DYS program, allow your oldest to participate on a case by case basis, but don't talk about it except as relates to the particular activity.
Most of the DYS activities are support for the parents of the kids who have special needs, because the responsibility for getting those special needs met is still squarely on the parents. Make sense? Before I joined I worried that my son would be taken up to 'space academy' like in the Orson Scott Card book, 'Ender's Game.' No such luck. ((humor alert!!)) It's just not like that.
I think a lot of families use DYS as a short hand way to explain to their kids what makes them different, but that is sort of backwards to my thinking. It's the difference that allows you to participate in DYS. I've seen a Highly Gifted siblings of DYS kid refer to herself as 'I'm not gifted because I didn't get in to DYS.' Hopefully that was for shock value. I also know another sibling of a PG kid who isn't in DYS, who refers to herself as 'nongifted' because she is MG, and compared to her brother, she feels dumb. They aren't involved with DYS at all, because they believe the best way to deal with giftedness is to avoid talking about it. So there it is - heads you lose, tails you lose.
Hopefully there is some wonderful parenting technique where a parent can promote a particular kind of family pride and this whole issue gets sidestepped. But so much depends on the personality of the kids involved. To me, it' seems like a good time to take a giant step back and talk about every child is a gift and it's the responsibiilty of each kid to figure out where they get to make their contribution to the world. Tests don't measure every important part of a kid, that is for sure! Character will always be more important than inborn traits.
Good Luck!!!
Grinity
