Hi, Smidge. Welcome! You're in the right place.
I'm so sorry you and your dd are experiencing such a painful response to your dd's sensitivities and abilities. I wish people would realize how damaging this kind of shunning behavior can be. Particularly when they try to "bring her down a peg" by focusing on the negative. Ugh.
I don't have any advice on how to deal with their rudeness. You can't make people not feel threatened by precociousness if they are. I would suggest trying, through this site or something similar, to find true peers for your dd whose parents can appreciate, understand, and not be threatened by the special challenges that come with parenting a child like her.
And you're right. Society is so odd in this way. Parents feel entitled to brag about their child as long as the child's accomplishments aren't *too* out of the ordinary. But there's this unspoken rule that we mustn't acknowledge or speak about the talents or abilities that are really out there--unless they happen to be athletic or musical. Anything but intelligence.
And sensitive children are not respected in our society either. My ds finds some peer behavior outrageous. He gets put out by cheating and lying. In his peer group of kids he's known since kindergarten, (and these kids are gifted as well) he's the one who's ostracized if he responds to the other kids' bad behavior. This double standard, the expectation that people not lie and cheat, but it's okay for his peers, baffles him. And the other parents? Time and again, it's easier for them to make ds the scapegoat than deal with their own children's bad behavior. It's easier for them to assume ds is too sensitive, too emotional, too righteous. Or often they take the attitude that boys will be boys. Whatever their conclusion, it doesn't seem to be that perhaps the others might have a lesson to learn on fairness or honesty.
