Most gifted kids are highly compassionate and patient with others, but the ones I know who are arrogant (not saying yours is at all, I actually think he is just sad right now) are really and truly intolerable. It is really our job to help them engage with the world in a balanced way.
Cat
Opps Cat - over the line here! Or do you have references for above?
Your main idea that we MUST get help for these 'at risk' children is totally right on, though.
Some gifted kids are highly compasssionate, but there is no evidence that 'Most' are, or that this is a hallmark of giftedness. It is a common myth though.
http://positivedisintegration.com/Ruf09.pdf(especially page 10)
Lets face it - very few of us are 'easygoing.' I think 'really and truly intolerable' is somewhat eye of the beholder, and I haven't seen that.
What I have seen are children, usually boys, who happen to have the type of personality where they are very sensitive to being 'disrespected.' If they are surrounded by work and expectations that are too far below their 'readiness level' then they experience their worlds as shaming places.
Before my son was born, I didn't pay much attention to the difference between guilt and shame. In listening to an audiolecture about 'The Illid' I heard that in that culture, a Man's Reputation was based entirely on what other's thought and said about him, so that to strip Achilles of his 'war prize' diminished him personally. The fact that he knew that he was a mighty warrior didn't mean a thing in that cultural time and place. There was no 'heaven' that good people went to - there was only reputation, standing in the other men's eyes. (who knows what the women were thinking?) Shame was defined as the experience of being tarnished in other people's eyes. Guilt was our internal knowlege that we as individuals have 'missed the mark.'
This blew my mind, because it fit all these odd data points that I hadn't been able to make sence of. My son, at age 5-8, couldn't really be expected to function like a self-actualized adult at all moments, able to generate his own sense of his internal worth without any positive feedback from the school environment. That's why the first social reports from first grade were 'Bob is the fastest runner, Jim is the strongest, Billy is the funniest, John knows the most bad songs, I read the fastest, except for a girl, and girls don't count.'
So I do think that being 'held back' by being placed with agemates is percieved as shaming if the 'readiness level' gap is large enough, and if the child is predisposed by their personality to think in this way. So children will internalize their unhappiness. Some will act out. I am so grateful that my son's tendency was to act out, becuase that's what was needed to get him into a better fit situation. But it was painful and embarrassing (wink)
Love and More Love,
Grinity
