I also feel that HK's assessment ring true, particularly for my own childhood. I will add that my ODS lays it out as obvious while YDD is quieter, in part because DS was so much more obvious and talkative, and he's older. It's taken a lot more encouragement to make her see that he's not "smarter than" her, they just express it in different ways that aren't always obvious. I feel like she's concerned about being like him -- he's always felt different, and he mostly embraces that, and I don't think she feels comfortable with standing out. I see her potential for masking as super high. So far, she still has a strong independent streak, and she plays with boys and girls rather than a girly group (she's not into girl drama, which there is in other circles I know about from mom-friends), but I am so torn about how to support her. I think she'd be better off home schooled, but she loves people so much -- classmates entertain her.
Looking back to last year (1st grade), before I knew better, I feel like I respected DD's teacher and I thought she would stay on top of DD's needs. The teacher's passion is reading, which is fine, though I found out later that she was giving a boy in class math extension work (upper level worksheet packet, which didn't appeal to DD, who prefers direct interaction) but not DD (despite pointing out to me how intuitive DD was) until I mentioned that DD had totally withdrawn. It seemed like quite a blind spot to me. We had a huge setback in her love of math.
DD didn't consider herself particularly strong at math, because she said that boy was the math wiz in class. She's finally confident in math again and considers it her favorite at school, but now literacy has dropped to least favorite, because this year's teacher gives her math support (thanks to the report that really stressed this), but DDs verbal abilities are under-supported.
I feel like at our school there are a lot of advanced readers early on, while the district overall centers on math in their gifted extension (meaning, they offer an accelerated path in math, but only enrichment and differentiation in other subjects, with AP ultimately in HS). Even at middle school level, there's no advanced literacy class. The best way to work at a higher reading level is to accelerate a grade-level.
So girls being strong at verbal abilities are going to get the short stick, really, in terms of nurturing their high abilities. If you were just treated as a top-group reader, with slightly deeper reading material for in-class instruction, instead of gifted in verbal abilities, you might not feel as confident in your giftedness as the math wiz. It's as if the high verbal abilities are second-tier appreciated.
