So, emotional issues, anxiety, lack of exposure or lack of self esteem may make them seem less inteligent. Also, we see these children when our own children are around. I'm sure that the average child knows that the gifted children can out-do them and maybe don't even try.
My daughter didn't want to read aloud until just after her fifth birthday, even though she'd been reading little snippets to us from signs, TV screens, etc. since she was three. We chalked it up to insecurity and perfectionism, and I finally got her to try it by making an appeal to her pride. I pointed out how many ways she was already more advanced than I was at her age... EXCEPT I'd already started reading books to my mom when I was four. Sure enough, two days later, she sat down with her mom and read her a story, and she's been off and running since.
Now she's playing soccer, and she turns into a cone to dribble around on game day, refusing to be aggressive and make a play on the ball when the other team has it. We're pretty sure this is just a manifestation of her strong sense of right/wrong and fair play, because she doesn't want to make a mistake and make someone get hurt. She's playing pretty freely in practice these days, it's just not showing up on game day.
So this week, we're trying to motivate her with bribery... one dollar for a steal, one dollar for a good pass to an open teammate, and five dollars for a goal. We'll see how that works out. With the way she seems to just flip a switch at times, I'm hoping this motivates her, but not TOO much, or this could get really expensive.
Anyway, that's a big part of the challenge... getting in their heads to figure out what we can do to get them to flip that switch when we KNOW they're ready.
