S/O bragging or not

[blondeviolin]

How do you even manage to keep it under wraps? It's very obvious that my kids are different and know things other kids their ages don't. I'm sure some assume it's just because we homeschool, but not all. No promoting or bragging is necessary from me because, at times, it is painfully obvious they are different. (At least the older two are "accelerated," and I wouldn't be surprised if the 2yo is. At this point, it's my assumption.)

 

Example: Yesterday a new acquaintance asked Abby how old she was. She replied, "71 months. And Emmett is 54 months and Ellie is 33 months." She thought that was hysterical, but all of the other kids (5- and 6-year-olds) were all :001_huh:.

[nellecv]

I don't even bother try. I don't go out of my way to talk about my daughter's skills, but people ask anyway. For example, this year people kept asking me how my daughter liked kindergarten. I'd say, "She isn't thrilled with it yet because the reading is too easy for her." I'm not going to lie.

 

But most of the time, my daughter does the "bragging" herself! Someone asked her what she did yesterday and she told them, "I went to the art museum to see Mr. Monet's paintings. But I like Chihuly more. He made a giant icicle out of green glass."

 

I also share the other side of my daughter's personality. The other day she said, "I wish there was a book called Laughing Farts. That would be perfect for me because I always fart when I laugh!" No one can call that story bragging! :lol:

[StartingOver]

Kids will be kids, I usually just smile. You can't keep it under raps. Kids have no filters, they just are. ;-)

 

If someone really asks I will usually just say that they are individuals and we are following their interests. If they need to know more, I might give more but that usually doesn't go well.

[jennynd]

when kids say something, that is cute. but when adult put their words in. not so much...

[Crimson Wife]

I work with them on being modest rather than show-offy. DS hasn't quite learned the lesson yet but oldest DD is usually pretty good about it.

[Kathy G]

Yeah, someone asked me last week which math class my 7th grader would take next year. I said Precalculus. She said - wow- how does he do it? I just said "Oh he likes math alot" That seems to be my line for whatever. "Oh he/she really likes whatever subject. The mom who asked was very nice and didn't mean anything by it. Even for those who are not so nice I just leave it at that so I don't give them any ammunition!h aha

[Runningmom80]

I just let DS be who he is. I thought it would be pointless to try to tell a 2 year old to stop reading words out loud in front of people. :lol:

 

 

People know from go that he is different. We had a speech pathologist come to our house to evaluate my twins, and after a few sentences were exchanged, she said, "Well he belongs in 4th grade, huh?"

 

 

So I'm not going to worry about it. It's not like he goes around saying he's smart or anything. :auto:

 

 

ETA: He requested the car. LOL.

[TracyP]

when kids say something, that is cute. but when adult put their words in. not so much...

 

Exactly.

 

I will also add that not all gifted kids are obviously gifted. I suppose there would be no need for outside testing, teacher recs, blah, blah for gifted programming. It would just take a few minutes of talking to them. Possibly true for some, not for most.

 

And some gifted kids would prefer to growl at strangers and tell them that they smell good enough to eat, rather than showing off their more intelligent side. (that won't happen again)

[Kathy G]

 

 

 

ETA: He requested the car. LOL.

 

 

Funny! Love it! When DS was 2 he learned to read an odometer. I changed his carseat to the other side so he would quit telling me I was speeding!!!

[LisaKinVA]

I don't make my children "hide" who they are. I do get some :001_huh: from people, occasionally, but for the most part, my children are happy to play whatever with whomever. My older kids have learned to accept that their friends aren't learning what they are...and that is OKAY. For the most part, their friends don't talk about what they're learning...and neither do my children.

 

And yes, it is really cute when a 5yo answers the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and they answer, "Paleontologist." It's different when the child is 11 and "bragging" to friends about how they hacked Norton when they were 5. :glare: The first one will get a "pass" the second one, the child needs a talking too (can you tell we've had this conversation?)

[mommytobees]

Honestly, I think you just have to fly with it. If you are comfortable with someone, you might be able to discuss it and then ask, does that sound like bragging, 'cause I'm trying hard not to brag.

 

But, be prepared for strangers to give their own opinions.

 

When Lori was 3 she yelled (she was a loud child........still is really) at her brother (aged 6) that he was "being inappropriate and disrespectful" when he was playing with the bras in the woman's section (my dh was "watching" them :glare:). This lady walked right up to her and told her to "speak with inside voices and to use age correct words".

 

Well, I happened to just be on my way to tell her to use her inside voice, but stopped when the lady addressed her. (This was a military store, so I wasn't upset with someone else correcting her.) Snicker, my off-the-growth charts 3-year old (she was the same size as her smaller-older brother) looked at her coldly and said, in a perfectly normal voice, "Why would I use little 3-year old words when my vocabulary is larger than that?"

 

I then had a 5 minute lecture from this lady on how I needed to get her into school or else I'd have an over-educated brat on my hands. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

Still am.

 

Good luck with your 71 month old.

 

Kris

[SKL]

I don't worry too much about that since, around other people, my kids usually act like they don't have the brains they were born with. (Echo - I am sure my mom said that to me when I was a kid!)

 

On Wednesday we were at the kids' part of a museum and my kid read a book about dragons to me. Then she went off to play while I read with her sister.

 

An employee came up to her and she said in her best baby voice, "I'm five." Like that is the most amazing thing she could possibly share with someone. (Her birthday was in January, so no, this is not her latest news.) They then had a brief conversation which was most unremarkable. But hey, at least she didn't just sit there mutely like she usually does.

 

However, there have been rare occasions when she's "let it slip" that she knows stuff. Like the time (at 3 or 4) she loudly announced in the grocery store, "Mom, that bottle says NAKED juice! NAKED, ha ha ha!" :glare:

 

I recall reading a kids' book called, I think, "Just Plain Fancy." It was about a little girl raised in a culture where anything fancy (clothes, etc) was to be carefully avoided. Then along comes a peacock (IIRC) and the little girl is very concerned about this affront to the rules. Her mom explains that some things are "just plain fancy" and since God made them that way, that is nothing wrong.

 

Some kids are just plain smart, and it's OK - letting them be who they are isn't showing off.

[FairProspects]

It's different when the child is 11 and "bragging" to friends about how they hacked Norton when they were 5. :glare: The first one will get a "pass" the second one, the child needs a talking too (can you tell we've had this conversation?)

 

:lol: Ds did this too! Except it was on a friend's computer so it was even more embarrassing. Fortunately he hasn't bragged about it. Yet.

[Dmmetler]

I've got one of those, too, and I think the reactions from others have done a better job of teaching her when it's appropriate to rein it in. That is, having adults comment "She's reading already? Get out of here!!!" didn't exactly make DD feel good about reading in public, so she tended to stay a little more subdued, even at 2 and 3, until she figured out whether or not a person could be trusted and how they'd react. Being treated like she had a third head when she tried to convince other kids that diagramming sentences at co-op was fun convinced her quickly that no one else enjoyed discussing split infinitives. It's a hard lesson, I suppose, but it's been a necessary one.

 

I have noticed that for her, the hardest thing to rein in is whatever the newest interest is. So, while she's given up trying to find other people who love grammar, she has a harder time restraining herself when it comes to math right now. Next year, it will probably be something else.

 

Fortunately, she's also getting better at finding other people who share at least a subset of her interests. There's one 10 yr old in our homeschool group who's very mathy, and willing to sit with DD and play with problems to their hearts content, and another little girl who LOVES animals and life science and will happily talk to DD for hours about frogs, lizards, and snakes.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

However, there have been rare occasions when she's "let it slip" that she knows stuff. Like the time (at 3 or 4) she loudly announced in the grocery store, "Mom, that bottle says NAKED juice! NAKED, ha ha ha!" :glare:

 

:smilielol5::smilielol5::lol:

 

That tickled my funny bone :D

[catz]

I don't worry too much about that since, around other people, my kids usually act like they don't have the brains they were born with. (Echo - I am sure my mom said that to me when I was a kid!)

.

 

LOL - that is my kids too. My oldest ALWAYS blended in with his peer group when we were out in the world as a preschooler. I knew nothing about GT at the time so I figured all kids were as verbal and intense as he was when they were in the their comfort zone. Both my kids are extroverted too and work to find common ground when they are with groups of kids. They're all different. When an adult would catch my oldest especially one-on-one then they'd get the back story and see his true colors. :tongue_smilie: My daughter was very shy as a preschooler, so not so much for her. Now that she's older, I remind her it's not her duty to manage the world. She can be a bit over bearing and bossy in some circumstances and definitely prefers older kids.

 

It's actually very good that we are able to homeschool our kids because they probably would never be stand outs in the classroom.

[Tarreymere]

My dd is naturally very low key about what level of school work she happens to be doing, and tends to prefer to present the appearance of being interested in what the other girls are interested in when she is in a group. She is pretty quiet around adults she doesn't know well. She 'blends'.

 

We've done some talking together as a family about intelligence and what it is and what it is not...we have a family member who is 'not smart'. I guess the take-away for the kids was that being smart isn't nearly as important as being a good person, and that everyone has value. Dd absorbed that, and is sensitive to allowing the person she is interacting with to set the intellectual level of the conversation.

 

Ds, however, is more of an extrovert and already at age five is starting to cause some comments from people outside the family. I want to smile and give him the reaction from me that he is looking for when he does or says something especially clever in front of other people, but I still feel a bit awkward as though I was somehow encouraging him to show off or something. He isn't, though, he is just being himself.

[nova147]

It's getting easier to "hide". When DS was 3 and reading in public, people noticed. If people spend enough time with him now, they will discover he's different, like a few weeks ago when my babysitter was sick and the kids went to Bible study with me. He read a chapter book while we were there. The whole thing. And then told me he was done and bored. People noticed.

 

I don't much care what other people think. I don't bring it up, but if people want to talk about kids and academics, I'm not shy.

 

As far as DS and other kids, we've talked about everyone having strengths and weaknesses. And about sharing conversation time between talking and listening. And about how to tell if the other person is interested in what you are saying. And we do lots of work on knowing how other people are feeling. That seems to have helped him not brag, though he wasn't trying to before, it just came across that way.

[SKL]

I once had someone in a homeschool group ask me if I realized how smart my son is. No...:001_huh: I swear she made it sound like she thought I was in denial or something.

 

This reminds me of last fall, when my head was exploding over the push-back I was getting about putting my dd in KG. She was still stuck in pre-K at the first parent-teacher meeting, when the pre-K teacher started *trying to convince me* that "she needs to be in KG." LOL. No kidding, ya think?? Tell your boss!

Edited May 11, 2012 by SKL

[serendipitous journey]

My dd is naturally very low key about what level of school work she happens to be doing ...

We've done some talking together as a family about intelligence and what it is and what it is not...we have a family member who is 'not smart'. I guess the take-away for the kids was that being smart isn't nearly as important as being a good person, and that everyone has value. Dd absorbed that, and is sensitive to allowing the person she is interacting with to set the intellectual level of the conversation.

 

 

LOL - that is my kids too. My oldest ALWAYS blended in with his peer group when we were out in the world as a preschooler.

 

:) I totally never have to worry about Button outing himself: he's so introverted, and also has learned not to compare himself with other people out loud ... it is sometimes clear that he's different, but not so that it seems, ahem, an above-average thing. I think he takes after me temperamentally, and folks are nearly always assuming that DH is much much smarter than I am; somebody once asked me how I managed to talk to such a brilliant man. !!!

 

We've also had conversations about what "being smart" means about a person, and their value (that it is not related), esp. b/c Button would overhear his father talking about folks' intelligence in regards to his work -- this is specifically related to searches for university faculty, where being quite clever is a job skill. So we've talked about the need for a certain kind of thinking well to be a scientist/professor, and the need for other skills in other jobs, and also about people who are excellent in terms of thinking & are prestigious scientists but are not fine persons. I think it's taking. I hope!

[MomatHWTK]

My personal opinion is that no one cares if a child in the course of normal conversation (or what is normal for that child) says something that sounds clever or demonstrates and "advanced" knowledge. It would appear to be bragging to me if the parent prompted the output, instructing the child to talk about things that the parent knows will demonstrate their advancement.

 

I also think that a parent can go too far in drawing attention to a comment after the fact. Sometimes you have to comment because of the response of the other adult, but in most cases the kid just says what the kids says and then it's over. No need to say anything.

 

I do tend to fall back on the "Well he really likes [insert subject]" or "He's just always been good at that." But that's only when the other person is responding positively.

 

We don't ask our children to self-censor, but we also don't encourage them to talk just for the sake of talking. Beyond academics, I feel the same way about sports or any other achievements. It's great if someone asks, but I really don't like it when the parent prompts the child to talk about their successes in a casual setting. It is a tough call and probably a very personal one though. Some families are more outgoing and more sharing than this introvert momma is anyway. :D

[3Blessings]

I've got one of those, too, and I think the reactions from others have done a better job of teaching her when it's appropriate to rein it in. That is, having adults comment "She's reading already? Get out of here!!!" didn't exactly make DD feel good about reading in public, so she tended to stay a little more subdued, even at 2 and 3, until she figured out whether or not a person could be trusted and how they'd react. Being treated like she had a third head when she tried to convince other kids that diagramming sentences at co-op was fun convinced her quickly that no one else enjoyed discussing split infinitives. It's a hard lesson, I suppose, but it's been a necessary one.

 

I have noticed that for her, the hardest thing to rein in is whatever the newest interest is. So, while she's given up trying to find other people who love grammar, she has a harder time restraining herself when it comes to math right now. Next year, it will probably be something else.

 

Fortunately, she's also getting better at finding other people who share at least a subset of her interests. There's one 10 yr old in our homeschool group who's very mathy, and willing to sit with DD and play with problems to their hearts content, and another little girl who LOVES animals and life science and will happily talk to DD for hours about frogs, lizards, and snakes.

 

:iagree:Yes, I found that dd7 is now actually resistant to sharing knowledge with others. At 4/5, she was ready to tell the world anything. But the reactions were :001_huh: and she started to shut down. It is actually a little disheartening. She does still share with me and dh. We've learned to roll with it. I look forward to the day that she finds friends with similar interests and can talk with them about it nonstop.