It's great to say everyone has talents, but what if your older's strengths while great compared to most people, pale compared to your younger whose strengths appear to be on steroids?
I think in that situation it's very important to have a discussion about the statistics of giftedness, or the elder child can take a serious confidence hit. I think there's a tendency for some children to make their EG or HG sibling a standard for what it is to be "smart". Anything less exceptional than their sibling is considered less than smart. And anyone less than smart shouldn't focus on academics, nor expect to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a scientist, a professor, etc.
In my own family, my brother may have been a natural born engineer. When he was 7 or 8 years old my parents found him with a pile of parts that used to be his bike. They flipped out, worried that they wouldn't be able to get it back together, but they didn't need to. He put it back together by himself. He was certainly mechanically inclined, and academically talented as well scoring above the 90th percentile in math and reading on standardized test. But he's not an engineer... I am. My brother spent his childhood avoiding strategy games (aka the embarrassment of losing despite being 3 years older), and always hearing how I was the one similar to our grandfather (who was an engineer, and as my father put it "a mathematical genius"). Is it any wonder he didn't pursue math or engineering? What would he have done if I hadn't been there? Would he have heard for 18 years how he was like his grandfather?
