One of the reasons I will not tell my kids they are "gifted" or "smart" is because research says this can actually be detrimental to kids and they perform worse. Kids do better when they are praised for effort rather than innate characteristics or labels such as "good", "smart", "talented", etc.
I like the book "Nurture Shock"--it describes the research and says not to over-praise kids or tell them how wonderful they are.
I think there's a difference here in the basic question though - I too don't believe in parading my kids around and proclaiming how smart (or athletic or beautiful or whatever) they are, and I wouldn't ever sit at the dinner table and tell my ds "Hey, you are smart!" just to build his self-esteem. That's different than sharing information honestly as kids ask about it. My ds, starting at around 5 years old, really wanted to know why other kids (and sometimes adults) didn't understand what he was talking about - it was frustrating to him, and a simple explanation of the different ways people can be smart, one of the ways he was smart, and where that ability was for him relative to most other kids really helped him feel at peace with what had been very frustrating. All kids are different, of course, but having that bit of age-appropriate knowledge about his own intellect didn't lead him to be unmotivated or perform poorly in school - he's always tried very hard in school - which I personally don't think is related to giftedness or to how he was parented or anything external at all - I think it is who he innately is.
I also think it's important to realize our kids *are* smart, so they're going to start seeing/feeling what that means even at an early age - as well as having other people (adults and children) tell them they're smart. Giving them some info that explains what their particular type of "smart" is in quantitative terms, like the bell curve etc, can help them navigate through understanding why they have people telling them they are smart and help them understand why they sometimes may feel a bit out of place among their same-age peers. I think if my ds could have skipped ages 3-10 or so, he wouldn't have needed to know what his scores are (for those reasons) because by the time he was 11 he had enough emotional maturity and intuition to figure out where he was on that bell curve all by himself. At 5, however, he didn't have the life experience or enough social interactions under his belt to understand that.
On a slightly different note, as a twice-exceptional teen who needs accommodations going forward in school, I believe that having knowledge of his test scores and what the ups/downs/discrepancies etc mean is really important.
polarbear
