Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy other parents and envy/jealousy

Sometimes the best thing we can teach our kids is that it's okay to say to adults "I'm sorry, but I simply don't feel comfortable discussing this with you." Assuming it's a case of the grownups cornering your daughter when she's socializing with their son. Which, fwiw, is just about the height of gaucherie, IMO.

If it's you they're cornering, the same response probably would work, too. Or the ever-popular "why do you ask?" and "I'm sorry, but you seem to be mistaken."

In that case, isn't the appropriate response to say something along the lines of:

"I am profoundly more than you in ways in which you can only begin to comprehend. We have spoken enough for now and I grow tired of your questions. You are dismissed."

I'm confused a bit here. Are the negativity and one-upsmanship problems with the parents of the boyfriend or both the boyfriend and the parents?

If this kind of negativity or one-upsmanship is coming from the boyfriend, I'm thinking that it's time to have a sensitive and gentle talk with your daughter about the importance of getting involved with people who respect you and who treat you with respect. And the equal importance of avoiding "friends" who make you feel bad.

Agreed, Val-- and eldertree, too. Gaucherie. Yes. JonLaw, my DD is probably fully capable of actually saying that, but probably not with a straight face. We've been gently exploring the fact that being asynchronous means having different peer groups for different things, yes... but it doesn't mean DENIAL of the other parts of yourself for others' comfort. True friends will not ask that of us.

DD has been distancing herself from the entire situation over the past few days, and this is a part of the reason why. The other reason is that she's... just... not.. THAT... into him (and he is VERY into her, which she is beginning to find mightily irritating).

The parents are one thing, but nobody needs this subtle stream of "you're not really as good as you think you are" from peers who are theoretically "friends." Of any sort.

But then again, I think that some of it may be coming from the parents... as in the peer in question may be feeling that DD (a rising 11th grader) is a bit of a... er... well, that she might be out of his league or something?

And maybe his parents are reassuring him that this isn't so by delegitimizing DD's very real intellectual standing?

The reason that I wonder is that this didn't start until after the two of them let on to parents about the budding relationship. Our approach was "Hey-- that's really cool that he's not intimidated by the grade difference," but then that seems to maybe have not been so true after all... since now it seems to keep coming up, and I can guarantee that it isn't DD bringing it up.

Interesting also that the mom made a crack about DD to my DH over the weekend that really had him steaming. He was dropping their DS off after a social thing, and it was just an opportunistic jab. Weird. We aren't the ones thinking that our DD is "too good for" their son... but they seem to be downright determined to act preemptively just in case.

It's turned into a downright odd situation.

I really appreciate everyone's insights into this one. It is helpful to get some additional ideas to impart to DD.

While I suspect that your dd is probably more gifted than mine and more accelerated, a lot of what you've said in this thread and this part, in particular, resonates. Mine is 13 and just started her sophomore year of high school (she'll be 14 fairly soon). She, too, compares herself to the most advanced sophomores in her peer group/grade although most of them are 15-16. There are about 500 kids in her class and it is one of the highest performing schools in our state so the top 10-15% of the class are 4.0+ students and taking a plethora of AP, pre-AP, accelerated classes and many taking "zero hour" classes so they can fit more hard classes into their schedule.

Dd doesn't see herself as particularly special in comparison especially b/c she opted not to take two science classes this year as she did last and isn't enrolled in a 6 a.m. zero hour class. She probably recognizes that she is better at English/reading/writing than many of her grade peers, but weaker in math than some/those for whom math is a strength as well.

We've seen a lot less of the issues you describe in regard to cutting her down to size since she's pretty much stopped socializing with age peers, though. In regard to the boyfriend issues that is a problem in and of itself b/c, the one boy she was dating briefly in her grade was much older and that creates its own set of problems. There was no need to downsize her in his mind or his parents' minds, though, as far as I could see, but once she let on that she was 13, which he didn't know, that was kind of the end of the relationship (which, honestly was fine given some hesitations I have about her dating older boys).

I have mixed feelings about letting the good majority of dd's friends be very bright older kids, but it does seem to have worked better. When she was younger, we too heard a lot of stuff from parents of kids her age about how their kids could skip grades too, etc. and, like you, knew that this was implausible if we were talking about the kids really being successful b/c these weren't HG kids (or often every MG kids). She kind of shut down these relationships herself in favor of hanging out with her grade peers over time.

I apologize if I've missed this in the thread earlier, but are you running into these issues with grade peers and their parents as well or just age peers and their parents?

Cricket, it seems to be just agemates.

The reaction from grade peers is a shrug, usually, and the reaction from their parents is curious awe (tempered by how socially astute they are).

We've tried to not 'force' DD to abandon age peers, but to explore for herself which peers are for which kinds of interactions and friendships. Our reasoning is that we can't possibly know which people have the capacity to meet which needs for her, ultimately.

She doesn't have a lot of natural interactions with age peers, though, and most of the 'natural' relationships that do develop with them seem to involve those who are technically not really age peers, but seem that way via placement in extracurricular activities. They often turn out to be about 2y older than DD, but are roughly compatible in terms of overall developmental levels. She has only three friends who are close to her in age-- one is nearly 14, one is 14 already, and one just turned 15. We consider those girls to all be "agemates" for DD, though she just turned 13. The one closest to her in age was 'grandfathered' in by virtue of a work-based friendship among parents, and the others just turned out to be compatible in terms of interests and temperment.

You've perfectly captured how DD sees herself. "Nothing special," basically. Her school almost treats her like a celebrity... but she doesn't really see it, because obviously the teachers aren't talking about her in front of her (which is good, of course-- she'd be mortified). Similar kind of academic peer group; filled with chess champs, INTEL science competitors, math Olympians, and semi-professional musicians/writers. I actually love that group of kids; they're really great people and they do a lot of community service projects together and as individuals.

She "hangs" with all of them and winds up in about the top 10% of whatever class she's in. However, many of her high school teachers have expressed open delight to me that they've "been waiting for years" to have her in particular in their class, or that "they always hoped that they'd have the chance to work with a student so gifted" as teachers.

Even DD picked up on this last year and was giggling after the school picnic that Ms. {12th grade Brit-Lit teacher} seemed pretty crestfallen that Ms. {Barracuda that has a mutual love-fest with DD} was going to "get" her in AP Lit instead this year. Sweet girl now says to me... Well, maybe I could take 12th grade Honors after AP, so that I could be in her class...

So clearly she is something different even from her peers in that setting, though she doesn't see herself as being exceptional. She is quite willing to label pretty much anyone older than herself in comparative and favorable terms-- often just taking their words for their competence, in all honesty. If a 17yo friend-of-a-friend tells her that they are a science geek and flash a little of what they (think) they know, well, she's happy to report that the person is "way smarter than I am." In other words, at 13, she hasn't yet figured out that saying you're a budding Einstein isn't the same as being one; a lot of these kids are mostly talk.


ETA: Now that I'm thinking about this more, though-- maybe she has figured out that these people are fulfilling some inner need of their own, and she's calmly-- and typically-- putting that front and center, accepting those statements and even reflecting them flatteringly-- in order to put others at ease. It's one of those things that she does as a social Jedi. Maybe I need to ask her some questions about this particular aspect of things, which hadn't occurred to me. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't really think that someone who "doesn't like to read" and found it "hard to learn" couldn't have actually completed a double grade skip.
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(We tend not to overtly correct her, so much as ask probing 'why do you think so' questions.)

I'm just wondering why her self-image seems to be so vulnerable to this kind of thing. It's mystifying to us.


I've read your own posts about the dating issues here, Cricket, and I agree-- it's rough either way. We were initially really pleased that the agemate thing seemed to be working, and figured that was preferable to a first boyfriend being four years older. (Now, of course, we're seeing the downside of this version of Boyfriend 1.0.)

DD tends to assume that her classmates will see her as "a little kid" (and maybe that third year in the gap makes the difference), though if it does we've not noticed it. Agemates that aren't academic peers are really intimidated by her. It's still a taboo to have a girlfriend who is this much smarter, apparently. I really wish sometimes that she didn't have sibling-type relationships with the handful of HG kids she knows well. They're a better peer group overall than either agemates (which they aren't-- quite) or grade peers (which they often are). When I mentioned one of those young men to her recently, though, she wrinkled up her nose and told me that "He's like-- MY BROTHER, MOM." (Complete with teen glare of outrage.)

At this point, she's pretty much writing off the entire "boyfriend" thing, though, so that may be an ultimate side benefit to this situation. LOL.

We see pretty much the exact same thing with our dd13. In math in particular, she's convinced that she's "bad" at it partially b/c she has friends who are in pre-calc this year and she's not, but again these other teens are 15-16. I recall last year that pretty much all of her teachers were shocked to learn that she was 12 at the start of the year b/c they assumed her to be one of the older students and I've had many teachers over the years tell me that she's one of the most gifted kids they've ever taught.

I see her willingness to view herself as "typical" gifted/bright as both a benefit and a drawback of grade acceleration. On the benefit end of things, she at least doesn't have a big head. In 4th grade, her GT reading class had an end of year poetry reading in which they read their own poetry and a dedication they had written. No fewer than two students had dedications that started with something like, "there is this girl in my class, [dd], who inspired me..." and, one of the moms, when she heard that dd was my child, went on and on about how she's heard some of her poetry and was amazed by what she could write. 6th grade the next year was much better in terms of her not being hero-worshiped.

The draw-back, as we've both seen, is that the child compares herself to what she views as her peers (high ability much older kids) and doesn't realize how special she is even in her weaker areas. I always remember what dd's 3rd grade teacher said to me, [dd's] "weak areas are other people's strong areas." (i.e. if other people's strongest suits were things that were interpersonal weaknesses for dd, they'd be really good at that area.)

Yes, exactly! That is precisely the same statement that we've heard from the gifted specialists. (Though my DD's weaker skills include written communication, at least unless she's having an 'on' day.)

The obvious problem outside the context of this situation is that DD still isn't challenged to that ideal '80%' level even among this peer group-- thus the interpretation that she's "about average" and that apparently everyone else doesn't work all that hard at academics, either, combined with rampant task-avoidant perfectionism and procrastination as a motivational tool-- but this is about as far as we're comfortable pushing things on the social front. We definitely don't want her to become the class mascot, as she's very sensitive to feeling like a circus freak. She desperately wants to "pass" in her peer groups, and mostly does.

We're all hoping that the boyfriend just sort of goes away after school starts at the end of next week. DH and I because of these concerns, and DD because he's kind of not taking "no" for an answer regarding unwelcome physical advances (which she's given him factually valid reasons for, and hard boundaries about), and he's super clingy-- almost obsessively interested in her. He's way needy, constantly texting-texting-texting her and bugging her to "see" her daily. Well, good heavens, she is BUSY. She's really just not that into him, and less so as he continues that behavior. He's now employed the typical junior-high technique of calling in his "posse" for backup, which... well, let's just say that this has seriously failed to impress DD.

Ugh. This reminds me of when I was around 6 years old and my mom dropped me off to hang out with a classmate. The parents were drinking beer and mockingly telling me to show them how well I could dance to their Bon Jovi music. I was in dance class at the time. Even at that age, I knew what they were doing was messed up and that I was being mocked. I was in dance class and I don't think their daughter was... There was a jealousy element at play (maybe because I lived in the nicer neighborhood or maybe the mom just didn't like my mother) and they were trying to bring me down a notch. I was 6!