It's funny, becoming so much more comfortable with myself as a gifted individual over the last couple of years has had effects I never would've dreamt of, one of which is the fact that my mom has, several times in the past six months, been moved to tears by a sudden realization of something she did wrong. Unfortunate I don't have any younger siblings. (Since it's hard to tell in print, I'll clarify: that was humorous appreciation of irony, not bitterness.)
GeoMamma, that's exactly the point - there's no way a gifted child will reach the age of eight without realizing they're gifted, but realizing that all the ways they're different are interconnected and they're all okay is another matter.
Mag, it's not as hard to talk about this stuff as you'd think. Despite everything, I had a happy childhood, and it brought me to the pretty damn good place I'm in right now, where, among other things, I can support a gifted young girl who's not getting what she needs at home (and may have some serious health problems to boot, we discovered this week; at the moment, I kind of wish I weren't agnostic so I could pray for her).
I do have one more piece of advice: the reason my dad did so well with me was always that he didn't quite know what he was doing. He grew up in an orphanage and had no experience of family life, so everything he did with me was a response to ME and OUR SITUATION. I recognized the value of this from about age nine and often commented on it to my mom when she was in one of her "this is the way a family works!" moods. I think going in with no preconceptions about how things should be or how you should act is probably the best thing a parent of a gifted child can do.
