Do you ever wonder what it's like to have a normal child?

[RoboJesus]

I always imagined having a normal child and I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Having a gifted child definitely changes things. Obviously I love my child perfectly as they are though. Does anyone get what I mean?

@Iwasjustabouttosaythat that list sounds just like my child. I think that's actually pretty good at showing the differences. The differences aren't necessarily negative but different nonetheless

As a parent of kids with sen, i imagine having typically developing kids must be so easy. But its led to me being incredibly intolerant of them, in terms of expecting perfect behaviour because they have no reason to not be able to sit still and listen

OP you will be better off on an American site. For some reason the British tend to be very anti achievement.

But truthfully as someone who has a 174 IQ it is difficult and it can be different and sometimes you do watch people and wish that your brain worked like everybody elses

You see the looks when you have worked something out far quicker than anybody else, when you correct them and then you stop doing it and hide yourself to fit in. Then you feel you have lost part of yourself to do so

The hatred and dislike of it on this board - the gifted and talented board - is exactly what is like in real life.

The choice is fitting in or working to your complete potential - you cannot have both.

I've never seen any 'prejudice towards gifted children' on MN. Only annoyed reactions to parents who start smug or insensitive threads about their gifted children.
Being highly intelligent or gifted is an advantage to be grateful for, not a difference to feel worried about (unless it's accompanied by non NT attributes, in which case you might find more support and sympathy on the special needs board).

Implying that any child labelled “gifted” will be the sole beacon of enlightenment and sophistication in a sea of barbarians, in any situation they may find themselves in.

You must have missed my second example? Not surprising. I get the impression you miss a lot.

Both examples are real.

I had no idea ds was clever (no proud grandparents ), until a handyman I had round said he was astonished that ds was polishing off a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. He was 3 at the time. I just thought he liked jigsaws.

I notice from that linked list that being very good at jigsaw puzzles is a sign of being “gifted”. Who would have thought?!

Ds fulfilled his promise academically at a bog-standard comp, and he is quite “normal” socially - although woe betide anyone trying to have an argument/debate with him: he is brutally logical !

Ime (large extended family of various degrees of giftedness/non-giftedness + lifetime of teaching HE), I see absolutely no evidence of a direct correlation between moral rectitude/perfectionism/sensitivity and IQ.

Well there are only about a billion studies online. You could look some of them up for more information rather than constantly relying on your own experience?

But these threads almost always go in this direction until OP and genuinely interested people ignore all the pointlessly nasty people on here. I just don’t get why they bother.

Maybe I’m not gifted enough to follow your ridiculous reasoning

OP you will be better off on an American site. For some reason the British tend to be very anti achievement.

^This.

The hatred and dislike of it on this board - the gifted and talented board - is exactly what is like in real life.

^And this. It can be really hard for very smart adults. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine it’s even harder for children.

It's not anti achievement. Most of us doesn't know what OP wants to talk about.

For example, I have a extremely sensitive/emotional child who can't cope seeing someone else cry. He cried when he saw a beautiful sunset or listen to the organ music at the church. He gets taken for mug easily. I was/am really worried, so I started a thread, and had tonnes of helpful advice.

"Having a gifted child definitely changes things." is just to vague to have any sort of useful discussions. In what way? positive? negative? I don't know what OP wants to talk about.

"Having a gifted child definitely changes things." is just to vague to have any sort of useful discussions. In what way? positive? negative? I don't know what OP wants to talk about.

I think the OP just assumed people would understand because “gifted” means something else overseas. It causes a lot of confusion on these threads.

Is op overseas? What does gifted mean outside the UK?

Do you ever wonder what it's like not to be smug and annoying OP?

I used to teach and I was always a little unclear as to what gifted actually meant.

Is this just a post you made to stealth boast? Surely that's better suited for FB or something

Kingkiller wins sensible comment of the day for me. My db is gifted and so is my dad and apparently my dd1. Never faced prejudice or difficulties, just been thankful for possessing intelligence. Maybe people aren't hostile to the gifted child so much as the smug insistence by many parents of gifted children that they are somehow not "normal"

Is op overseas? What does gifted mean outside the UK?

I don’t know where she is but if her preschooler has been identified as gifted by a psychologist she won’t be going off the popular UK definition.

The link I provided earlier gives a more thorough rundown but here is some info from a US website:

www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-a-gifted-child-1449130

OP do you ever wonder what it's like to be respectful to others, to not be big headed and look down all the time at everyone else?

Meh. My 4 year old was several years ahead of his peers (still is a few years later) AND musically gifted too. He’s incredibly normal. His academic and musical stuff is one part of him. It’s not who he is at all times. He’s a normal six year old who annoys me, can be cuddly, has told me endless ‘knock knock’ jokes this week and is relatively popular amongst his mates. He is shit at football, can swim competently, runs like a giraffe with its legs tied, has an incredibly memory for statistics and is a very kind and loving big brother who lets us lie in on the weekends by reading endless books to his brother.

Mozart's parents must have struggled.
Gifted these days means better than most children. Not prodigy.

It’s interesting that the op is at such pains to separate her child out from the herd. My 4yo with a 140+IQ and cerebral palsy was clearly ‘different’ but we spent a great deal of time trying to have her included.
I’m not sure what to do with this. It’s interesting.

BTW as an academic I think if you have a bright kid then the two things you can do for them (other than reading to them etc) is to teach them grit (because if everything comes easy then one day it won’t and they don’t know how to handle it) and also to teach them to engage/argue/take information and analyse it. You can start simply. So I was discussing with mine whether a protest for Trump’s visit is a good thing or not. Or whether we should spend so much money on a footballers when the world is full of poor people (given the World Cup) Nothing massively sophisticated but something to get them to think outside the box, to use a cliche and to apply all this stuff inside their head to useful things.
You get lots of Maths/Physics prodigies with high IQs but ask them to deal in grey areas and with nuance and they don’t have a clue. It’s a good skill to acquire when very young and to hear adults say ‘there is no one answer to this question.’

It is possible for very small kids to finish the primary Maths curriculum (mine has at 6) but it doesn’t mean much per se. In many ways I am prouder of him for struggling through a difficult violin piece yesterday evening. It took him 45 mins to perfect 4 very difficult lines but despite the occasional wails of ‘Mummy I will never ever do this’ he persevered. And again in the long term that’s going to stand him in better stead than advanced calculus at 10 or whatever.

And this is why OP’s child can’t be in a secondary classroom because while he may be able to do the Maths, he would simply not be able to do the other stuff that requires more complex critical thinking/life experience at this age. So he wouldn’t be able to write an account of a time he overcame adversity in the same way a 16 year old might. And this is why the whole ‘oh my god my kid can do secondary level maths and is profoundly gifted’ is misleading. My son meets many of the criteria on those lists. But as I said he’s just six. He worries about monsters at night, gets upset when he loses a board game and was arguing this morning with his toddler sibling who wanted to follow him to the toilet!

Quartz2208: But truthfully as someone who has a 174 IQ it is difficult and it can be different and sometimes you do watch people and wish that your brain worked like everybody elses. You see the looks when you have worked something out far quicker than anybody else, when you correct them and then you stop doing it and hide yourself to fit in. Then you feel you have lost part of yourself to do so

Many people are skilled in areas that the majority of others are not, now just raw intelligence. Sure, I have to dumb things down a little when I am not with my super smart colleagues. I don't always correct people who I think are wrong because it would make them feel bad and spoil an otherwise pleasant social exchange. I don't veer into topics I would much prefer to talk about because I don't think others would relate to it.

People do this as part of normal social interaction. I have never thought I lost a bit of myself in the process or felt myself special for it as those people would know much more about Love Island that I ever would.

That is not a positive or a negative, normal or abnormal. OP could just be inventing a problem so she can reverse brag about it.