Isn’t there a danger though of running into differences between oneself and others and concluding that the cause is oneself being “weird” and not the inherent difficulty of bridging the intelligence gap and correspondingly different ways of thinking? Like I could see a very bright kid ending up with low self esteem due to being different if they aren’t told that the differences may be due to their intelligence. Like someone with average intelligence may have difficulty understanding and modeling someone with two or more standard deviations above average intelligence, and all social groups are definitionally numerically weighted towards the mean and away from the edges so absent some filtering the very bright kids will be unusual.
Do you mean that there may be some harm in "hiding" from children their intelligence? I can see that maybe at early ages, but certainly they'll eventually catch on with grades and such? I don't know when different parts of personality manifest, maybe some child psychologist can chime in. But my hunch is that maybe not saying anything until grade 2-3 could potentially help. Above all, I think the key is to tell them that it's trying hard that leads to getting what you want. Obviously that's a bit of a lie, but I think acceptable until a later age.
I don’t think grade 2 or 3 grades will paint the picture for them. Elementary school grades saturate quickly, there isn’t enough dynamic range. What IQ do you need to get perfect marks in elementary school? Sure, you’ll know you are above average, but the social experience for someone with a very high IQ is extremely different from someone with a slightly above average IQ.
I think the real problem is not providing enough challenge, so they get used to succeeding without trying and never learn the emotional side of trying and failing, until they can’t keep up anymore, which for really bright kids may not happen until they are basically adults.
If you praise for doing what they can do without trying, you get this problem. If you meet them at their level and actually challenge them from a young age, while also praising them for being clever, I suspect you won’t see this problem.
By analogy, is it harmful to tell a kid he’s naturally good at soccer, while providing the resources and coaching necessary to take advantage of the potential? I imagine the dynamics should be similar from the skill acquisition angle, the difference is just how the activity to perform is generated.
