I had a hard time with this when my son was in kindergarten. I remember wishing I could talk to other moms about my son, but I quickly found out I couldn't. On my son's first day of kindergarten parents who had brought school supplies were handed a list of instructions on where to put the different items. Instead of reading it myself, I had my son read it out loud and put the items in the appropriate place. One of the reasons I asked him to do it was because the kindergarten teacher, after the kindergarten readiness screening a few months earlier, had determined that he wasn't ready for kindergarten because "he didn't follow directions" and had "verbal overflow." I wanted the teacher to see that he could both read and follow instructions. I didn't realize other parents were watching and that none of the other kids could read more than a few words and that he was the second youngest in the class because redshirting was very common. So from the first day of kindergarten we were asked questions about how he learned to read so well and what his IQ was. I felt very uncomfortable being asked these questions, especially when one of the other moms was a teacher.
The only people I found that I could really talk to were parents of other gifted kids in my son's musical theater class. I could talk to them because their kids were smart and quirky just like mine. My child was just a little more extreme in some ways. Being outside the box seemed to be the norm for the kids who did musical theater so my son fit in well with this group that ranged in age from 4-19.
He never really had any friends his age (except for one gifted friend) because he just didn't fit in with kids his age. When we started homeschooling I didn't have this problem as much, except for the woman at the insurance agency whose kid is the same age as mine who would always ask me what grade level he was at now and when I was going to let him go to college. Homeschoolers with kids close to my son's age didn't want to be around us and he felt shunned by them. Public schooled kids his age thought he was nerdy because he was smart and didn't do sports. His public schooled friends told him he would be bullied because of this. He would beg to stay home instead of going to cub scouts, except when they had races of some kind and Cub Scouts is the only thing he is involved in with kids his age.
Other people just watched or listened to my son when he spoke and usually didn't say anything except they would sometimes tell me he talked like an adult. My son told me yesterday that he often noticed people turning around to look over in his direction, without looking straight at him, whenever he started talking, as if they were trying to see what he looked like without being obvious about it. He was always aware of being "onstage" when he was around other people. As a person with lifelong social anxiety issues this was hard for me to get used to but people watching him didn't bother him as much as the feeling that they didn't accept him because he was not like other kids.
It was such a pleasant surprise yesterday to meet complete strangers who knew what it was like to raise a gifted child. My son and I went to Denny's for the free breakfast that was advertised during the Super Bowl. The line was really long and my son joked about the recession and how we were already standing in food lines. He also talked about how much the Super Bowl commercials cost and wondered how Denny's could afford to pay for the commercial and also offer the free meals and whether this strategy would pay off by getting more people to come back to Denny's instead of going to IHOP. An older, retired couple noticed us and invited us to sit with them and because I was afraid I would be late bringing food back to my parents, I gladly accepted their offer. They told me that their son had learned to read on his own by age 3 and was telling time and counting change before starting kindergarten. The way they described their son sounded so much like mine. They said he went to public school but he was very bored and became the class clown. They said they wished they had homeschooled and thought we were doing the right thing. It was so good to hear of another example of a person who survived gifted childhood to become a successful adult.
So there are BTDT people out there who will notice your child and understand and sometimes you meet them when you least expect it.
