My experience is that around age 11 the hormones kick in and kids are more motivated to have friends at school, and more able to handle that type of interaction. This is a huge generalization totally based on my own experience, but I think that we are somewhat programed to have an early need to explore how the world works up until puberty, and then we are somewhat programed to explore the worlds of other people for the next 10 years, so that if academic challenge isn't part of the regular diet by the tween years, it becomes difficult to introduce at that time. I saw the 'gates' of my son's academic interest start to close around late 9, which prompted me to take drastic action, but I feel he would have been much better off with an early enterance or earlier skip.
Now he loves the academic challenge, and I can see that spark of learning back in his eyes, but 'in theory' at least, he wishes he was going back to his old school with his old grade to be with his old friends. To some degree I think that this is a 'grass is always greener' problem, but I think that there is more to it than that. He is very outgoing, so if it wasn't for the Gifted Issue, he would be in full swing peer-oriented tweenagerhood, for sure. For some kids the pull of hormones and the call of peers isn't noticible until age 16 or college age, but I think the idea is the same.
Not that we want to throw out the old ideas of developmental norms only to create new 'half-baked' ones! I'm just speculating! There are probably 27 typical patterns for development for gifted kids - and I'm only talking about one of them. Shall I hit the delete button? Shall I trust you to toss my words if they make you feel bad? Ok, I won't hit delete, but only if you promise to do it yourself if you are seeing one of the other 26 patterns - ok?
Giggles,
Grinity
