I’ve been dealing with an interesting challenge lately. Gatito is very verbal for his age, particularly for a boy. He has spoken in full sentences for months and has an extensive vocabulary. He knows all his letters, numbers, shapes, colors, animals, car brands. (“This is a Porsche car, Mommy!”) I recently taught him what a “doppelganger” was. (Don’t ask.) He sings along with the Beatles.
Actually, I have no idea if this makes him advanced, since one of the things about being a working mom is that I don’t get to see other kids his age very often. But everywhere we go, it seems people are telling me, “He’s so smart” or “He’s really verbal” or “Wow! He’s only two?”
I’m used to him getting attention for his height and his red hair, and I’ve learned to deal with this:
Yes, he’s very tall.
He gets his hair from the Irish side of the family.
What I have been struggling with is how to deal with the comments on his intelligence. I don’t love that they happen in his earshot, but I figure there isn’t much I can do to prevent people from saying what they’re going to say. But I don’t know how to respond without seeming like I’m bragging, insulting the other person’s child, or putting my own child down.
One instinct is to try to kind of even things out by pointing out his “flaws”, e.g., he’s very verbal but he’s less advanced physically. “In fact,” I found myself telling one friend, “he won’t slide down the slides at the playground.” Not very nice or fair to Gatito.
Or I’ll talk about how being developmentally advanced has nothing to do with actual intelligence, a fact that I believe is fascinating and true, but again isn’t that nice to Gatito.
Another option is to say something like, “Oh, we’ve been singing the ABC’s as a lullaby before bed,” of “We count his fingers every time his arms go through the sleeves to make sure they’re still there.” But those things probably have little to do with his current abilities and could make another parent feel badly, like they aren’t doing enough. I once mentioned to a woman with 8-month-old twins that Gatito had gotten a late start talking (in the context of recommending signing) and she assured me that her kids would be early talkers since she talked to them all the time. I was like, “Are you implying that I didn’t talk to my kid?!”
The only thing I can come up with is, if the other child is present, to compliment something about them. But if I don’t know the kid or he’s just sitting in the grocery cart or the kid isn’t there, I’m at a loss.
My mom recommended a modest “thank you”, and I thought that was a good idea. Simple. But I’ve tried it out a few times recently, and it doesn’t feel right. I still feel like it comes off as obnoxious. Like by accepting, rather than deflecting the compliment, I am somehow bragging about my child’s genius.
Do you get this with your child? Do you say it to other people? How do you respond, or what do you think would be the appropriate way for someone else to respond?
