Originally Posted by Val
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Being parent to another 13yo, I mean-- I am amazed sometimes at the relevant information that she can overlook/omit in relating interpersonal interactions. Some of this is adolescent thinking, I'm afraid.

Agreed. I think some of it is also HG+ thinking.

Being intelligent means that I can remember a lot of stuff from my childhood and analyze it as an adult. Over the years, I've thought about why I might have rubbed kids or teachers the wrong way as a kid.

When I was very young (K-3rd grade or so), a lot of the other kids would accuse me of "thinking I was so big." This expression means that I thought I was looking down on everyone else or thought I was better than them. I had no idea why anyone would accuse me of that, because it wasn't true. confused

Many years later, I realized that it was my vocabulary, probably combined with school being so easy for me. I used words like "ambidextrous" casually when I was six. What others saw as "big words" were just part of my everyday speech. I had no clue then that the other kids didn't understand those words, or that they probably didn't understand me a lot of the time. Looking back on it, they may have thought that I was trying to show off or make them feel inadequate (which I probably did, without knowing it).

Additionally, HG+ people also don't really think like most others, and I suspect that my thought patterns and the associations I made when speaking didn't always resonate with other kids and some teachers. It is possible that stressed out teenagers or non-gifted teachers may react viscerally to a 15-year-old who read Dante's Inferno over the summer because she picked up a way cool edition with engravings by Gustave Dore' for 50 cents at the local book fair in July. It wasn't that I went around talking about this. It was that I mentioned it in class (something about harpies in the woods behind the school, IIRC).

Since then, I've had to learn to temper what I say and when I say it (unless I'm with another giftie). I don't want to make others feel inadequate or whatever.

I totally agree with this! When I was in high school, I THOUGHT that I was being sensitive to the other kids, not sharing my SAT scores or bragging, but now I realize that just the way I talked was different.

Also, I THOUGHT that the other kids in my honors and gifted classes were similar to myself. I THOUGHT they just 'got it', but now talking to a girl who was in the gifted program and all the honors and AP classes with me, and who was so mean to me that we had a major falling out until just a few years ago, I've realized that I was very wrong. They might have been getting good grades, but they were working hard for it. When they said that they were worried about the test results, they weren't making it up.

As to the original question though - it sounds like it could be more than just his giftedness, but it's entirely possible that the teachers had it in for him from the start. I was once put in a lower math and reading group because the principal didn't like how I asked if they had a gifted program at the new student orientation. Maybe I came off as stuck up. She later said I had to be put in my place, but I was 8, and that was the only thing I said to her as far as I remember. I also had a guidance counselor who I hardly ever interacted with, who told me that just because I had an IQ of 150 doesn't mean I can just do anything, and refused to put me in AP computer science because 'girls aren't good with computers'. That's how I learned my IQ - from his unprofessional comment. He made me take basic computer science first, even though it wasn't a required prerequisite. I showed him - I went on to get a 5 on the AP test and go to Carnegie Mellon for computer science. I'm a software engineer now.

Sorry for the tangent, I'm just saying this because there ARE mean, petty, racist, sexist, etc people who are teachers and administrators.