I still don't have this one down - I think I probably have gone too far to the other extreme. I don't really praise my kids or discuss their abilities. While I believe that their self-esteems are intact, their assessments of their abilities are considerably off or at least were last year.
I had both DS8 and DD8 take the SCAT last school year. Both of them did well enough to not only qualified for JHU-CTY, but qualified for the awards ceremony with DS8 qualitfying by a large margin. Anyhow, SCAT has this questionnaire that requests the kids' assessment of their abilities in different subjects. Both my kids chose "average" as the answers to almost all the questions. When I ask DS8 in particular, who had been accelated two years in math, how he could possibly think he was average in math, he said "Oh, yeah -- but, I feel average".
