Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion SMH - the world is crawling with little geniuses

I have never encountered anything like the OP is describing.

BTW what is "SMH"?

I learnt it only last week from a teen - SMH = Shaking/Scratching My Head...

smh = shaking my head

You know, in a way, I envy these parents. They are so in love with their children that they are completely delusional. I snapped out of that stage within a few weeks of DD's birth.

:rofl:



Only "snapping" implies a level of alertness that simply wasn't possible on so little sleep and so much cognitive dissonance. For me it was more like dawning awareness of the yawning abyss in front of me.

Just yesterday I got the details for basketball league for January. DS8 is so excited to join his first league. I am sure he is a future NBA star. I know this because he is slightly tall, he only double dribbles on occassion, and he makes about 1/5 of his shots when there is no one guarding him and is close to the basket. I feel like being an NBA player is possible because I was a teacher at the high school where Vince Carter went to high school and I watched him play. So I know it happens to real kids. Now for him to put down the book he is reading and get 10,000 hours of practice in.

There is such double standard when it comes to bragging about kids in sports, music, or just about anything other than academics. For some reason, it is okay to brag that "Junior made the all-star team and is going to be on the travel team because he is so highly advanced at baseball," but if I said "6 yo DS is being instructed by the gifted teacher at school, gets higher level math sheets and reads high school level science books for fun," I would be ostracized.

Instead I have to teach my children not to tell anyone that they are in the gifted program so as not to hurt other's feelings, and when people ask how they are doing in school I just give vague answers. The real answers are just too complicated.

I hear similar sort of stuff once in awhile, but it is usually from one or two people who I have come to expect such statements from.

What I experience more often is that I cannot feel free to comment on my DD at all because her "normal" so far exceeds other kids normal that it seems to make people insecure. And I am not talking about bragging, I am talking about answering a simple question, like if my neighbor asks me what reading level my DD is at, I can't answer because if I do answer truthfully, I get some horrified look of disbelief or feel like they think I am the person who is ranting and raving that my child is gifted.

So, we just keep all achievements on the down lo over here, while everyone else gets to over celebrate the small stuff. LOL

so true, kelly0523... that chill you describe happens over the simplest things, too - innocuous questions like "what grade is she in?" when DD5 drops some crazy vocabulary or randomly calculates something in front of them. it used to be so difficult to say "Pre-K" to that... it was a total conversation killer and people would make the craziest (false) assumptions about us. that we had a tutor for her, or a truckload of flashcards, or some kind of creepy Clockwork Orange setup... which is natural, i guess, but it was pretty hard to make friends with other parents when DD was in school when they came loaded with so many preconceptions.

mercifully, now that we're homeschooling what amounts to a triple+ grade skip, it's a lot simpler. we just say, "oh, we're homeschooling so we skip around a lot." it's the exact truth - and delightfully non-specific. people then usually follow up with "oh, wow - what's that like?", and they completely forget to ask more about the actual grade! whee

YES!! this is us too and it is delightfully so much easier! It's also easier to explain to my kids that age/grade levels are merely loose guidelines that work for some kids.

Back on topic: I feel that every parent should have the right to share their child's achievements and be proud of their kids. Of course as has already been pointed out in this thread, we don't really get to enjoy the same privilege. What was mentioned at the beginning of this thread though is just absurd!

A lovely example that made me giggle out loud: When Aiden (now 7) was little I was "friends" with a woman who had a child about 3 weeks younger. All was well until Aiden was approaching age 2 and at a moms and toddlers picnic Aiden spent about 30 minutes dividing his smarties (like m&m's) over and over - by colour, by number, by parents, by kids... he kept at it with all the possible variations. Of course it was accompanied by a running commentary. After that her and I were shaky. Then her son and mine started swimming lessons at the same swim school (run by her mom and sister). They were in the same little class initially, then he surged so far ahead so quickly and she smugly pointed this out to me over and over that her son was going to be bigger and better in the pool. It was toned down right at the end with the "of course he is taught by his aunty and gran so that will help him too".

I really didn't mind and over the years as we spoke less and less I heard randomly about his swimming prowess as he achieved badges etc faster than Aiden. Now just 2 weeks ago, they both got their latest swimming badge within 2 days of each other - the same badge. And this was shared with the news that he will be starting 1st grade and that his mom believes he is a shoo-in to be the star of the 1st grade swim team. It made me giggle - its the first time we have seen each other in nearly 3 years and this is how she chooses to "catch up" in the 10 minutes we were near each other...

I just smiled and said that I hoped he enjoyed the schooling experience..