As an example, my son is performing in Macbeth this week. A couple weeks ago, a college student (from a small but respected private liberal arts college) was brought in to talk to the cast. She said that she was majoring in Shakespeare. She told us a bit about the Bard; when he wrote Macbeth; when it was first performed. THEN, she went on to tell us that King James was the son of "Bloody Mary". I could hardly stand to listen to her after that. I waited politely until the end of her presentation, and then raised my hand for the comments. I said that I had a minor point to correct, and went on to say that "Bloody Mary" was Mary Tudor and she had no children. James's mother was Mary (Stuart) Queen of Scots. The young woman then said that it was Elizabeth who had no children! ARGH! I was ready to tear out my hair. So I very nicely repeated the facts, and she refused to entertain the idea that she might be wrong.
Lorel, I think the worst part of this is the inability to admit when you're wrong. I think part of being really willing to learn, is being willing to admit you learned something that isn't true and to take on better information (or you just got mixed up!). (I LOVE TO BE RIGHT, but statistically, it's just not always reasonable to expect it!
As to the difference between my kids and others, we are fortunate to run with a mostly gt crowd, cousins, neighbors, the people we gravitate towards are a pretty clever lot, so stuff doesn't stand out too much, but I had this come up yesterday: I was at the dr's office with ds9, and dd3 was waiting with me in the play area. A very nice girl came in, got excited about the play stethoscope and blood pressure cuff and said she had both of those things at her house. I said, "oh cool, what are those things?" "Doctor things!". (dd has known/been able to say 'stethoscope' since age 2)
They played nicely together, with dd offering her things and asking if she wanted to play with such and such, and vice versa.
Granted different kids are interested in different things, but I later found out this girl was about to turn 5, and it really did make me wonder about how dd seems a lot like a 5 year old (but possibly with a bigger vocabulary?). That is sort of scary.
