My DS will solve a math problem quickly in his head and for awhile I assumed that it "couldn't" be correct because he did it "too" fast. We have had this embarrassing exchange a few times:
Me: that's incorrect
Him: it's right
Me: no it's not (thinking hard)
Me: yes it is
Me: sorry
Him: it's okay
I can point to several times when my DH has had this conversation with DD-- including some fairly HEATED exchanges when she was 9-10yo. He was making a sign error or something in HIS head, and SHE wasn't-- and he assumed (with his PhD) that he had to be right, and she had to be wrong, since she was showing so little of her work.
So it's not just "not gifted" parents who run into this set of issues. My DH is HG, and in the high end of the range. I'm EG, and just
that difference is enough that I "get" things about my DD's learning and thought process that elude him, or that he thinks of as alien/impossible.
I can see
that she's doing it-- I'm into a close enough range that I know she's really doing what it appears that she's doing, I mean-- but I can't really do it the way SHE does it.
She's clearly beyond me. It's not just that she's beyond me
at her age. She's just... beyond me.
My mother was NT, and my Dad was PG. (Yeah, that's another story...)
My mother thought that I was a space alien from the time I was born, basically. She could NOT relate to me. At all. My dad, who was otherwise not that fond of children, found me a delight, and he and I related to one another very well. His areas of expertise were not like mine, however-- he was much more strongly verbal than me, and I have STEM ability that he lacked.
