Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Underconfidence in gifted girls

Sure.

Some people like methamphetamines, too. That doesn't mean it's healthy.

Girls are often taught that choosing NOT to do so robs them of all value. Inherently, I mean.


As my DD put it...

So... dumb guys go for dumb girls. Check. Smart guys go for girls who are dumber than they are... check. So remind me again what is left for "smart girls?" RIGHT. Cats; that's what.

She's sort of nailed this one, unfortunately. The response from other adolescents when she shows them who she really is... is overwhelmingly NEGATIVE, and sometimes even hostile when you get right down to it. Because just by being herself, she tends to stoke the flames of others' insecurities, and other adolescents respond by sniping at her and cutting her down. Nobody seems to want a friend that is better than them (or at least their equal) at almost everything. Girls are particularly nasty this way, but romantically interested boys tend to do it to her, as well-- probably because they automatically assume she's out of their pay grade, but it still stings to know that WHAT you are is unacceptable to others.

So yeah.

I think that boys who excel in the fine and performing arts face some of this same battle, actually.

Haven't you written that she is not applying to places like Harvard because the students there are too competitive? There would be more men there who are not intimidated by smart women.

In my meandering experience, hypercompetitive people don't like to hang around with people who might remind them that they might not be #1 every time. Especially if the hypercompetitive ones are male and the other ones are female.

In her experience, the smarter the guys are (or maybe more properly, the more intrinsically they identify as "smart") the more extreme their fear of her tends to be. That has been her experience with 90% of the small number of other MG+ peers, anyway. I strongly suspect that part of her decision to NOT apply to super-elite colleges is tied up in that. But not all of it-- she also genuinely has concerns about family dynamics and living apart, and an aversion to that hyper-competitive intensity.

I have to say that this (somewhat) reflects my own experiences, too-- and those of my smart female friends. Most of us didn't find people who weren't threatened by our mental horsepower until college or, more likely, graduate school.

Some of it seems to have been a maturity issue-- but the damage done by this social buffeting can be pretty intense when it overlaps the search for personal identity that happens during adolescence.

It also makes such people vulnerable socially to pretty much anyone that seems to accept their true selves.

It's true generally for hypercompetitive men, I think. I still remember one of my neighbors being relatively upset that I had a higher SAT score than he did. He really though of himself as #1.

Amusingly enough, the only person who I encountered in middle school who was faster at math computation than I was was a girl (from some other school...I have no idea who she was).

I was more surprised that someone *could* compute faster than I could than the fact that it was a girl, since I was used to sandblasting soup crackers with no effort prior to that.

Granted, I was already used to the idea that there were people who were more intelligent than I was, but then again my neighbor and childhood friend was the national spelling bee champion.

I understand that spelling bee prep which includes etymology, especially Greek and Latin prefixes, word roots, and suffixes, is helpful as a foundation for the vocabulary of science and medicine, especially Biology, Anatomy & Physiology.

Oh yes. Last night my 9- and 11-year-olds both figured out what the word "exophthalmos" means because they knew the two root words. Other words they've figured out include macrocephaly, microcephaly, and microdontia. It's very educational for them to discover that big complicated-looking words are really just quite simple.

Yes. I've never formally studied either Latin or Greek, but I've also never needed specific instruction in terminology (medical or scientific) and many of my peers have needed such assistance.

@ HowlerKarma — Interesting, I'll update in favor of spelling bees .