I don't think showing them a normal curve is a very good idea at all. It does not represent them as a part of their immediate peers and community at all, and it exaggerates the rarity of the high scores.
Assuming my family is similar to yours, then our children, as relatively affluent children of highly educated parents are going to be surrounded by relatives, family friends and classmates who are largely affluent and educated - these correlate with higher IQs. I doubt any of my friends children have an IQ much below 120 or 130. The real balance of the curve, the people with IQs below 70, are not going to be in your children's classes. And for a PG, their counterpart at the other end of the bell curve with an IQ of 55 would not even be at a public school (I assume, don't know that much about special ed).
But the kid you're showing that bell curve to doesn't understand that and would get an inflated sense of their own brilliance.
this pic illustrates it better than my words do
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NTpL_Vt8y...iAbNLCBA/s1600/100622+IQs+compared+2.JPGWell, it depends on the extent and nature of the discussion. For my DD, it
definitely included a discussion of comparisons with people she DOES know, and an appreciation for the fact that look, this is the slice of this curve that you live in day to day, and this is where you seem to be...
If anything, that discussion failed to prepare her for what her SAT scores at 13 suggested statistically within the TIP cohort.
(I posted about that moment earlier this month, I think).
So no, the normal distribution discussion, handled carefully, was a means of granting her the gift of understanding that she IS different from most people she knows in this one way... and not so different in some of these other ways. See, we didn't stop with cognitive ability in terms of a normal distribution-- but also talked about artistic ability, athleticism, height, etc.
Actually, the growth curves are a great jumping off point for older gifty children-- because it helps them to understand that their developmental ARC is different.
