Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Other drawbacks to being gifted in regular classes

I went for the actual academic destruction approach rather than mere avoidance. Although it was more of a college GPA perfection issue more than anything else. After all, once you were no longer able to get a 4.0 did anything even matter anymore?

By the end of undergrad, I had basically given up on life.

Fortunately, I was able to get tons of loans for law school!

What I've seen with two of my kids when they are with their same-aged peers is that they tend to do this nurturing thing, as if they are dealing with much younger kids. For instance, gently directing them to where they need to be, explaining things in a more simplistic language, explaining something because they assume that the other kid doesn't know about it, etc. So far my kids haven't had any negative effects from doing this, but it drives me nuts to see them do it, and I could definitely see how it might bother some kids who feel that they are being talked down to, even though this is definitely not my kids' intent. I think they just get used to being the only ones who know something already in situations like school (prior to accelerations) and they just assume that things are the same outside of school. Does that make sense?

Makes complete sense to me, mnmom. Had a younger nephew visiting, and saw my DS6 doing that talking down thing all in a pseudo-correct way mimicing an adult. Found it pretty disturbing. I wonder if they find a stronger identification with the teacher in the class and riff from those behaviors.

I hope it isn't the seed that in adulthood turns into micromanagement and being "that" person who can't tolerate others' mistakes.

Exactly the same for my DD9. Her grades are fine and she's quiet, so they're "not going to worry" about the perfectionism, lack of focus, sloppy work, etc. Thank heavens my son's language issue red flagged him. DD9, however, is being swept under the rug because "she's fine."

(light bulb moment) oh my goodness... that's what I do to my poor husband, LOL

Not sure if this is common or uncommon, but when I was in the regular classroom, I always thought that I was missing something and didn't realize I was as smart as I was -- If the teacher asked a question, and I thought the answer was obvious but no one else raised their hand, I figured it must not be the obvious answer, and so I must be dumb, and so I didn't raise my hand. For some reason, I thought this a lot, even though the obvious answer ended up being the correct one. I did not quite get that everyone else didn't automatically come up with these answers. Even though I was in gifted pullouts, it never really occurred to me that my mind worked any differently than anyone else's; I thought I was just "good at tests".

I finally got over this in law school, when I got fed up when no one would raise their hands, so I just answered all the questions. Lo and behold, I got them right.

So if you have your kiddo in a regular classroom, and there's any chance they have this odd side effect of being gifted like I did, please explain to them how everyone's brains work differently.

St Pauli Girl, I had a similar experience. I think it led to imposter syndrome, but of course I don't know which came first. It's possible that I interpreted my circumstances that way because of some underlying disposition to low self-esteem and that may be the explanation for both phenomena.

YES. This is it exactly.

For my son, that first grade experience in helping the kid at his table who was a little slow on the uptake has panned out. He's the only freshman in pre-calc this year, and has a friend/classmate who is struggling a bit. Said friend is a senior, and feels a little weird about being tutored by a freshman, even with the stipulation that "well, okay, it's Frodo, but still...". If ds hadn't developed the ability to help gracefully, it could have ended badly. And since this friend is his section leader in band...

I chimed in earlier in the thread and haven't read through all of the replies so please forgive me if anyone has already mentioned the topic below.

My eldest being a first semester Freshman in college, I've noted a gifted issues that is perhaps not a disadvantage perhaps but at least a double edged sword.

DS took Algebra 1 in 6th grade...fast forward Calc II first semester of his Jr. year. He then decided to move to some other math classes like AP Stats and Discreet Math. After being admitted to the college of his choice the college required every student to take the ALEKS math placement test. It had been 4 years since he'd done much Algebra and 2 years since he'd done any Calc. Needless to say he was pretty rusty and ended up needing to do some heavy review and taking the ALEKS a second time.

A similar situation happened in Chem. which he took his Soph. year of HS, pretty rusty by the time he hit college. If he would have needed to take the ALEKS placement test for foreign language he likely would have been quite rusty with that too having completed his foreign language studies early as well.

You get the point, done with the HS curriculum early, forget some of it or get rusty in a subject, then needing to go back and relearn what you've already done in order to move forward again.