To preface: I'm just using that term because I'm blanking another way to describe it! No offense intended to anyone!
My DS3 has been pretending not to know how to do recently gained skills. He's been making great strides on getting dressed himself and potty training, to the point where I am now just supervising with the exception of helping with a pullover shirt. He now even knows which shoe goes on which foot, but nearly every time he puts on his shoes, he puts one shoe on wrong and shows it to me asking if it's 'on the right foot'. He's consistently "wrong" every time, so I know it's a purposeful choice.
He's also started purposely saying random letters when I ask him how to spell his name, but only if we are in front of others. He's known how spell his name for a few months and we work on writing it pretty often. This week, we worked on a 'name rocket' activity at our preschool group and I was counting out a piece of paper for each letter. Each time I asked him to tell me the next letter of his name, he'd give me the wrong one; yet when it came to writing his name letter by letter onto the squares, he had no issue. So, again, I'm pretty sure it was a choice to 'not know'.
We've never really made a big deal out of him being advanced, so I'm not sure he knows he's ahead of others. I know full well that he might just be advanced right now, rather than truly gifted, so both DH and I are careful about what we say around him.
Is it possible that he's picked up on this anyway and started pretending like he doesn't know things while in front of other parents/kids? Has anyone else dealt with this in younger kids? And should we do anything or just ignore the behavior?
