Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Neurotypical Giftedness?

Gotta say, my life resembles big bang theory for quirkosity. "Cept my friends' quirk s are less steriotypical. There's a great story about a 4yr old navigating her parents to a destination. Asked later how she knew, she explained that she'd "followed the people who were wierd like us, at least the ones who weren't lost like us"

Oh my Michaela that's priceless!!

SynapticStorm - just be aware that girls aspie obsessions more often aren't wheels of toy cars or train spotting, they are horses or literature or other far more acceptable special interests that fly under the radar. I know nothing about your DD, just commenting because you seem to be saying you would acknowledge a "special interest" if it were something weirder... My DD also seems to change special interests every few years.

That is my strategy when there is an unplanned detour in an area I am unfamiliar with (like for an accident that just happened not for road work where the detour is planned)...I follow the people in front of me who look like they know where they are going and look like they were trying to get to the same place I was. Works 90% of the time.

Reminds me of a comment I got from somebody though. "He seems too normal for an IQ that high"

Puffin I don't think that comment is necessarily about behaviour/quirks (of course you know the context and maybe in that case it was). I know I have had very similar conversations with the (very limited) friends we have discussed miss HG+'s IQ with - I clearly recall standing there watching all of our kids scrabble around in the playground and my friend saying "I don't know how to say this, but she seems perfectly normal to me", she wasn't implying that my kid should seem weirder, just that she couldn't see any real differences. She was not being snippy or rude at all, just stating the truth - my HG+ child is not one that stands out like a sore thumb in a playground, particularly when playing with the bright to gifted children of our friends. Particularly at the age she was when we had that chat (4.5yrs old). Do I avoid ever mentioning the speed at which my child is learning academics compared to this friend's same age child? I do. Can you see the difference between the two of them in the playground, not really.

The superficial knowledge we have of other people's kids means, depending on personality, that some high IQ kids do seem perfectly normal to other parents...

Mana, that is exactly how my DD has always been. Precisely.

We've also heard the kind of awed "She seems so normal" asides from other people. Then again, this is usually followed with "until I catch myself talking to her like she's a peer, and I realize... heyyyyyy, wait a minute..." We started hearing things like this from my work colleagues and my DH's when she was about three, and those comments haven't ever really stopped.

They mostly mean the "normal" comment as a compliment on our parenting, I suspect. They attribute it to us treating her "like a normal kid" and not hothousing excessively, which is true. Which-- I know, I know, that really isn't where quirkiness comes from. I know. But they don't, and I've more or less given up explaining that she just seems to have come with the infinite social flexibility hardware already installed at birth. LOL.