I'm wondering how many who visit this site have never been identified personally as gifted (or else know that they aren't) and feel intimidated by the board.
It's been difficult for me to follow some conversations and I admit I feel out of my depth here. But I just know in my gut my son is gifted, and so I continue to read threads...sometimes without logging in.
Is there a "good 'ol boys" mentality within the gifted community that (inadvertently?) exclude the average intelligent parent of a gifted child?
Hi Ametrine,
I think that you may have inadvertently hit on what a lot of gifties experience commonly. Like you, I also feel very uncomfortable in a group of people who think very differently than I do. I often don't know what to say and end up staying mute or walking away.
So it's possible when you feel out of place in some ways here, you've experienced what gifties also go through. TBH, this forum is one of a very few places where I feel completely comfortable writing in a way that's really me --- meaning that I don't have to be careful about things like vocabulary.
When I was a kid, other kids would get angry at me and tell me that I "thought I was
so big." I didn't understand what they were talking about until many years later when I realized that I was using "big words." The other kids a) didn't understand me and b) probably thought I was trying to show off and make them feel inadequate. But I wasn't. I was just a kid and was speaking naturally (for me). And I honestly had no clue that other kids didn't understand some of the words I used.
I don't know about the mentality you wrote of. Yet I suspect that a person could think it's there when people are communicating and it's hard to understand them. A person might feel like the gifties are showing off or trying to exclude others. But (IMO), in a forum like this one, people are just feeling comfortable enough to write in ways that are natural to them.
So don't feel excluded. Everyone is welcome here --- even people like me who get very passionate about certain subjects!
Okay, hope that helps.
