Secondly, I feel like phrasing it as a difference of aptitude, interest, pace, and readiness is very much more practical. We all encounter people whose IQ might be way lower than ours but who know things we don't know and have skills we'll never master. I want to teach my children to appreciate that, and them. And even if someone is less accomplished and knowledgable than you in all ways, they can still be fun, or interesting, or whatever.
You can think that IQ is a meaningful quantity and is normally distributed and still share the above sentiments.
Agreed. Kids raised and educated in the company of intellectual peers may be more fortunate than most gifted kids. Forums are filled with painful experiences of gifted kiddos (especially PG kiddos of the DYS variety) being rare in their classrooms and schools, causing these kids to be outliers, aware of their differences in learning, interests, making connections between concepts, etc. In such cases, these gifted outliers may incorrectly believe there is something "wrong" with them, and having information about IQ and/or normal curve may help them immeasurably... possibly first and foremost by realizing that they are not alone (even though they've not had the experience of being surrounded by intellectual peers IRL).
Gifted kids who are raised and educated in the company of intellectual peers may never experience the sense of being outliers and therefore may not have the questions which outliers have.
