"They're So Smart But....." Descriptions

It's always good to start with the positive before the negative when working with children and cumunicating with their parents. We were always taught that when I worked with kids. I suppose on here you don't have to but it could just be habit. Also some people on here can be pretty brutal. If I asked a question about my child without any positives I can almost guarantee a "well with a loveless mother like you it's no wonder" response.
Just my take.

LOL such a pet peeve of mine too! It doesn't bother me so much except when a parent uses the old "he's not being challenged at school, he's too SMART to be there, that's why he's acting out" line. I've been around enough kids, in groups and in classrooms, to know that's rarely the case.

And yeah, when someone describes their abusive, controlling insensitive jerk of a husband as "dear husband" I just wanna SMH.

As many of you know, I have a boatload of kids. I practically have a 'normal distribution' of my very own!

My kids demonstrate the 'bell curve' truly! One identified as 'extraordinarily gifted', a couple just 'gifted'...a couple dead center of the mass...and one profoundly delayed.

I had the same behavioral expectations for EACH regardless of their individual intellectual status. PERIOD. And, by and large I have gotten it.

I guess I am just lucky!

Interesting question though.

And, with respect to 'advanced degrees'...I have seen, EVEN HERE, people who lay claim to be highly educated...yet their parental instincts really seem to suck.

Just saying!

As someone who works with special needs and behavioural children I must say we do this in schools. When describing the children we work with we start with the positive before stating the negative. "Sally is a very social child, but she has a great deal of trouble following directions and staying on track", or "Bobby is very smart and good at math, but tends to get frustrated easily and act out", "Jill is very bright and loves to read, but becomes very emotional and cries a lot", "Johnny is very good at puzzles, but reacts violently toward other children." Stating the positive first it helps us to like these kids more. I adhere to the theory of multiple intelligences. A child might be brilliant in the "logical/mathematical" but completely lacking in the "interpersonal".

How would you look as a mother if you only say, "my kid is horrible when I take her places, she acts up and misbehaves and I don't know what to do." So before you say that, you want to give an accurate description of how they are ALL the time, over all.

Like someone else said, those of us with special needs kids are used to going to all the meetings and fist listing out all their good qualities and THEN all the challenges they have.

So even though your question is about, "why did my kid do this stupid thing", you don't want everyone to think your kids is stupid all the time so you qualify it by saying that "normally" they are a pretty good kid. I don't see anything wrong with this nor the need to bring attention to it or try to change it. JMO.

Because we all think our children are brilliant. I read something once about how we Americans tend to overestimate our children's intellect, but the article made the point that 'someone' has to be in the the 25, 50 or 75 percentile (and there's nothing wrong with that - we can't all be geniuses), so some people are seriously overestimating their kids.

However, in our case, I've briefly perused a couple other parenting sites, and came away with the opinion that the MP regulars are a pretty intelligent group of women, so it's possible that our kids really ARE that intellectually outstanding.

You never know what button you're going to push if you have the courage to ask questions about your kids' behavioral issues here. If you say too many nice things about them, people will write that you have have rose-colored glasses about your kid and are trying to be their friend instead of parenting. If you don't write positive things about them despite their bad behavior, you are accused of hating your kid.

I think that people are doing their best to describe their child, and if they are smart is one of the first things they think about.

For me personally it's to establish that my child is smart enough that there's no doubt she understand what's being expected of her, and not that I want to prove that I can see positive traits or something like that.
You're right though that it's assumed that a child is neurotypical and therefore not necessary to preface our questions with "so smart, but.." etc. I don't know why we do it, just a habit. Honestly the DD/DH/DS thing is something I only use because everyone else does.

My 4 year old is creepy smart...until he turns on his heel and walks face first into the wall.

I agree with everything you said. As to the why people do it, it's the "special snowflake" syndrome. I'm going to give you all these examples of how my child is advanced, astounding, so much more special than the average child because the problems I'm going to describe couldn't possibly be because my child is actually an average, regular kid. Additionally, the problems couldn't be caused by my parenting because my special snowflake is so much *more* in all other aspects of personality, intelligence, behavior, etc. solely because of me.

People have a hard time admitting that my kid is great, love him/her to pieces, but man-oh-man can they be a real PITA at times. I must be doing something wrong here.

I'm with you Nervy. Usually the issue itself is so distracting that by the time I get to the end of the post I've forgotten that little Suzy is BRIGHT and SPIRITED in addition to being an ax murderer.

We do teach our kids to find something positive to say before delivering constructive criticism. I think it helps the recipient of the advice to accept it in a more open way. Maybe parents are trying to make themselves feel better about exposing their kid's issues in a public forum.

Now if I could just get my intelligent, creative teen to clean up her cesspool of a room and understand the concept of "no parties at the guest house, even if you think we won't find out" I'd win a parent of the year award.

Whole heartedly agree. But I've also read how almost all parents think their children are smarter than average when statistically that's impossible. I find it annoying but noticed its died down since my kids have started getting older. When they were toddlers, every toddler I met was "gifted". As they age the truely gifted stand out. But some mothers on here with older children also constantly point out how amazingly their children have turned out and how smart they are as they criticize the mothering of the poster with young children. It's all relative though. Unless the children are literally Harvard Md's or Phd's I'm not all that impressed. So I wish those mothers would stop too. I think saying your child seems "smart enough" is a good qualifier so people know there isn't an intelligence issue.

ETA: Julie G that is such a generalization and again how so many mothers justify bad behavior. I know kids tested as gifted who aren't socially immature. And I know kids from when I was a kid who were obviously off he charts intelligent who weren't at all socially immature or behavior issues. Most of what I know though is many of the very high achieving adults who make boatloads of money would not claim to be intellectually so superior vs smart enough, hard working and good with people and well rounded etc. Maybe you have a point that gifted people are immature though bc some of the gifted people I know grew up to not be successful at all. Ironic given all the fuss made about gifted kids.

ha ha! i've noticed that too!
it's nice in a way, that parents want us understand that their little monsters aren't *really* monstrous. but there is certainly a degree of pre-emptive mitigation going on there, isn't there?
what fascinating creatures we are!
:) khairete
S.

Well when you have a child that is out of control, you want to start off your post explaining that there is at least one bright side.

Your child is very clever,talented, intelligent , advanced in their education.. or something, so you do not sound like a parent that hasn't screwed up our kid completely!

Our daughter has always been advanced in a lot of ways, but in other ways, a late bloomer. I admit that. But she is so different from me and my husband, we are in awe of her, despite our parenting.

I think this is human resources training that has spread. I think this because I just finished doing employee annual evaluations and when we do them we are told to always use the sandwich method of giving critiques. That is, you talk about a strength, then a weakness, then finish with a strength.

I've been told to do this so many times that its basically a habit for me, even when I would not need to do it, like here. And I feel like this strategy has worked itself into everyday life for many people.

Hey if you saw how my son pulls the tails off of kittens you would know he is gifted!!

Love ya, haven't read the responses but just figured comic relief would be useful.

I have often wonder why not one post has started my kid is dumb as bricks or average. I find it hard to believe that every child on earth is above average because wouldn't that be average?

I would also like to see functional, can walk and chew gum, unless it is raining.

So looking at the other answers two really struck me one being the "twice exceptional" My kid's poor doctor, I remember asking him to please explain. Does that mean exceptionally far behind while being exceptionally ahead. I won't post his answer because I am sure a few brains would explode. My son has a name, I gave it to him when he was born, I don't need stupid terms to make me feel better about the challenges he has faced. I also hate neurotypical. No, you are normal, average, boring....

By the way I am neuroatypical and quite at peace with that.

The other thing is DD and such because everyone else does it? Isn't that part of the problem? Parents looking to other parents to see how to parent your own kids? Um, no, my kids are not like yours, I would never parent like someone else did. Well unless their kids were like mine which happens.

Just want to add and I am done, I hope, so many times these are not parents putting out a positive first. A lot of times it is offering up will be referred to as the excuse for the rest of the post. Kid treats their friends bad because they are not as smart as junior. Kid doesn't behave in school because they were so smart...all excuses. Sorry but I have plenty of documentation, data, to show I am exceptionally smart. Smart enough to quietly be bored out of my mind at school. My kids, also documented, teachers comments, I wish I had a classroom of kids like yours, they seem bored, don't turn in homework. Intelligence doesn't cause behavior problems.

I could never really understand why so many people feel the need to point out how smart or intelligent their kids are to others. I always just kind of nod when another mom tells me that. I mean, I may think that in my head, but I feel a bit boastful saying it out loud.

hahaha - this always cracks me up too. I have been tempted to write a post with a subject like "Does anyone think their kid is dumb" just to see what kind of reply I'd get.

I'm sure lots of moms on this site have "bright" children, as they are so often described. You're right though, that it's used way too often and frequently shouldn't be. :)

I think it's part boasting and part the impression that 'smart/intelligent' kids shouldn't have behavioral issues.
It's like "my kid is smart but does this thing that dives me nuts".
They'd never say "my kid is dumb as a stump and has this issue. What should I do?".
A highly intelligent kid is usually a lot more work for a parent to figure out.
Sometimes the parent is not up for that challenge.
It's tough when the kids run circles around the parents!

Of course there's always the occasional detailed description of what a parent does to deal with issue(s) that to all who read it think that all of the aforementioned is the CAUSE of said issue(s) and then the poster blows up/ flounces off after any hint that backing off on their stance might be what they need to do to fix it.

Oh well - people are people where ever you go.
There's no changing them!

Additional:
There's being gifted and then there's having the drive to DO something with it.
I had a boyfriend who was off the charts gifted.
EVERYONE expected he would go on to do great things with his life.
Turns out he rather resented that people expected anything from him and proceeded to do absolutely NOTHING with his life.
His brains weren't the issue - his attitude did him in.

Sometimes a less talented individual who has a lot of drive will go a lot further than a gifted person who wants to sit there like a lump.

Everyone thinks the D in DH/DD/DS is for Dear - and for most it might be.
But there are lot's of other D words - 'Darned' for instance.
And I've heard people say DH sometimes stands for D*ck Head.

Hahaha I realized that I've done this with questions about my middle son. However, when I do it, it's a question about school and I suspect that although he hasn't been evaluated for anything (our state has no G&T programming and kids only get evaluated if they are showing signs of learning disabilities) that being "smart" is relevant to the behavioral issue.

I know I'm late to the party on this one but I thought it funny & wanted to chime in...I think I have the answer:

We all feel the need to qualify this upfront in hopes of saving ourselves from the (well meaning) answers, all in a row, inquiring as to if we've had little Suzie Q. Or Johnny B. "tested" or "checked" by a professional!

LOL!