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But dd has a deep understanding of herself, other people and existential issues, the extent of which I sense I don't yet fully understand as she's not yet able to process or articulate it herself. The only way I can think to describe it for now is as a 'knowing'. All of which probably sounds completely ridiculous and new age-y, which I am not, but I don't know how else to describe it. I would say that this is where she demonstrates her PGness in a way that I haven't seen in the few much more obviously 'PG' kids I have met.

Wow-- Yes, yes, yes.

This is DD, as well. There's just this "old soul" aspect of her that is so socially intelligent-- truly prodigiously so-- and has been seemingly from birth.

Even in the typical disagreements with other children, she just has this level of self-possession and grasp of the social motivators and weaknesses of other people.... it's just freakish.

She deliberately chose NOT to one-up another child who was actively taunting her on the playground once when she was about four. When I asked her why she was just taking this child's (untrue) taunts and not telling her that she knew how to ________ and ________, DD quietly just said to me that "Saying that wouldn't make things better. {child} would only have felt worse about herself, and then she'd have been even angrier. It didn't make any of it TRUE just because she was saying it. Besides, she needed to make herself feel better today, and this was the only way she knew how."

Not kidding about that. I was so blown away in that moment. Truly stunned. Most adults would have needed a week or so to come to all of those conclusions. My 4yo DD did it instantaneously while another child was mocking her and trying to humiliate her in front of a peer group.

I know that this is innate in her case, though, because she certainly doesn't get that from DH or I directly.

I have some social smarts like that, but DH doesn't... and we're much more the academician types, hashing out concept and theory for math and science concepts, exploring meaning in literature and art, etc.




Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.