Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School kids embarrassed by DD's interests

Decided to write this out here as this board is the only place where people get what I'm saying about DD! On the weekend we took DD4 to the Museum (the ROM). She had a great time. She's still very much into dinosaurs, fossils and geology.

We asked her if she was going to talk about going to the museum with her friends in school or teachers and she told us that she can't talk about things like that with the kids at school because it will make them "embarrassed." I guess embarrassed means they are not interested and won't have anything to add to the conversation? I don't know. This is not the first time she's mentioned the kids being "embarrassed" by her interests. DD seems to be getting along well socially at school and has friends. I think it's good that DD can recognize and adapt to the social situation she's in but it is sad that she has no one to talk to about her interests on a daily or weekly basis except for us. I don't like the idea of her having to hide her personality all the time to fit in.

I think I will definitely have to try and find a group of peers that have the same interests for her so she doesn't have to be "embarrassed" to talk about them.

I so get what your child is going through. My son though he is a Aspie has had to learn to not get into any detail at all with his classmates when talking about certain things otherwise they look at him as if he has 2 heads. His brother who is not an Aspie has run into the same exact issue. He has been asked to not get into to much detail to spare hurt feelings of classmates.

I chaperoned a field trip to a kids museum and my 5 year old wanted to try everything. Asked for paper to write some things down and really wanted to talk to other kids about some of the interesting things, but he was hurried along by the teachers so the other kids could climb and play on the giant climbing walls and equipment. When we got home he told me the field trip should have been to a park instead because nobody wanted to look and learn at all the things in the museum.

This is why U.S. high school trips to Mexico, Spain, France, England, etc. are really either trips to the mall or to the bars.

Do you think it is a girl thing? My ds has some friends who are girls and are just like him, with similar interests in space, fossils, robotics, etc, but I can see that their interests are very different from the other girls in his grade.

Does she have any friends who are boys?

My dd6 has said for a while that she doesn't want to mention certain things at school because people wouldn't understand about them. I was encouraging her to self-advocate when they got to a topic she's enjoyed and studied, so the teacher would know what she knows... But she worries it's over the heads of the other kids and therefore pointless and possibly upsetting for them. I'm like hey maybe some of them will enjoy learning about it, you are still learning about other stuff!

I so agree about the field trips and honestly it's like that sometimes just at school. Some kids are so excited by the real academic stuff but then it gets watered down with "engaging" aspects that aren't good multi-style learning things but just puffery. They skim and then do a broadway show about their skimming.