Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Woohoo wrong answers!

We've explicitly told DS5 that it's a social convention that you don't usually tell people you're good at something. We've told him it's fine to tell us he's great at something, and fine to tell other people he really enjoys it, and (harder for him to grasp) that a good response to someone saying "wow, you're really great at X!" is "well, thank you, I do really enjoy X". He's pretty comfortable with the idea that social conventions don't always have to make sense :-) Actually, though, although we've made a point of discussing it, I think he'd basically picked this up already.

That's good. DS4 has made progress in that when someone says he is good at something or he is smart, usually he will say thank you. For a while there he would say "yeah, I know" really enthusiastically. It's funny, he is not at all intending to brag...just things he is stating a fact. But we still work on social conventions thing in that area. It will be interesting to see how things differ when he starts school in the fall and is in first grade.