During bedtime tuck-in last night, my ds6 said in the gravest tone, "I wish my friends liked what I like." Have your kids ever found and connected with peers with similar passions? My ds is a chameleon socially and plays super hero/spy/ninjago per his friends. But those are not his things. He has no one but his dad and me who will marvel at an atlas or help him build a double helix dna model.

I get that part of any childhood involves lonliness...do you find your kids are especially vulnerable? Beyond gifted programs, how have you found like-passioned friends?

Davidson Informal Gatherings

This.

It also is perfectly possible to cultivate interests in common with peers. DS had no natural inclination for sports, but having worked on it, it's been a valuable way to connect with other boys at recess. He has broadened his interests over time, without losing the more unusual ones, which I see as all to the good.

DeeDee

This is where the gifted magnet has made a big difference for us. I need to stop and appreciate that more often. DD fits in so much better there.

Thanks for your input everyone.

Dee-Dee, my ds is VERY lucky that he pretty much "passes" for your typical 6 year old boy (well, lucky with peers NOT with teachers). He's not extremely sporty, but plays soccer with a team full of school friends. He has several kids in the neighborhood that he can run around with like a mad man. I think he really enjoys his friendships.

Where I think he's lonely is that he never really gets to "pick" the fun. If he offers an idea (I watched him suggest to his friend that they play with his globe one day), he is usually met with a scoff.

I asked him more about this yesterday. He said that he's really disappointed that there is "abosolutely NO science, history, real math, or geography at school...and I mean at ALL, Mom!"

MON...yeah, I think he's getting a clearer picture that there is something that is fundamentally different with him compared to most of his peers. He is dually proud and grim about this.

We've found that a lot of extracurricular 'learning' opportunities around here have more kids with PARENTS interested in them learning than KIDS actually interested in the subjects. He was really bummed by a recent science "group" at the library which had very basic science concepts and a lot of goofy kids who just wanted to play outside. He is finally getting mature enough we might be able to push him into some higher age groups for activities.

Yesterday, he suggested we make posters: WANTED - boys who like science, math and Lego Star Wars. LOL!

Evemomma-
I can relate so much to this post. I actually tried talking to ds teacher about it (not sure why). My ds also conforms at school to fit in with other kids, but never plays or asks about those things at home. We were at a museum bookstore recently, when ds started looking at adult books about animals. He said, "I know these are for older people, but when can I start learning more facts about animals?" Made me think that I probably should look into some of that. Ds would love it.
I don't have any advice, as I keep thinking my ds feels different. He has not told me that, but has "no friends" according to ds in his class and has asked lots of questions about when he can go to 1st grade. In the past, I know my ds was allowed to read to the kids in his class everyday which helped. This year, he is not asking for play dates and seems ok with spending time with me, dh, and ds2. He just finished soccer and had friends there. He also swims and loves it. I've been told once he gets put in gifted, it will help cuz there will be more kids with higher level thinking to pick from. We'll see.
I can say if my ds saw the poster you ds made, he would be calling the same day! Good luck. Hang in there. These are hard life lessons to learn...and watch. If you gain insight, please share.

lol, expect another responder from my DS6.

I wonder when telepresence will be invented.

I do wish we could pull a Star Trek and teleport our kids for playdates! Today, my ds6 said he wanted to discuss the electoral college with his friends but none of them were interested ...along with 75% of adults in this country

...if not more.

There's always Skype....

Did she grow out of the sadness, loneliness? We are in a similar place with our DS6. I keep hoping that it is a stage in life and the pain he seems to carry will ease as he gets older.

Do any people on this board ever set up regional play dates? I'm just wondering how you could go about that safely and effectively.

I hate to say this, but if anything, I think that it intensifies during adolescence.

PG kids are so asynchronous that adolescence is VERY hard for them. They have the normal needs for social experiences and a shift toward more intimate social relationships with peers... but most of their peers reject them because they don't "fit" well either agemates (who lack maturity) or with academic peers 2-6 years their senior.

I'm afraid that we're living this right now, and it's deeply painful for my DD. She has had the experience of TWO failed relationships just within the past six months... one with a chronological peer who was frankly a real drag because he couldn't keep up with her cognitively and also couldn't STAND that his girlfriend was "smarter" than him... and now again with an HG+ academic peer 3y older than her, who has decided that she is... well, our hypothesis is that now that he's competing directly with her (he switched schools), he is understanding just HOW much harder (well, and just the crushing workload) than most local schools HER high school is...

and suddenly that three year acceleration and 4.37 GPA of hers seems a LOT more impressive... and therefore she's actually a threat to his identity as the smartest person he knows, because she continues to coast even with a jammed extracurricular schedule, and I get the sense that he's struggling a bit. :sigh:

Ergo, she must be relegated to "unworldly little girl" whereas before she was "peer." It's been very very sad for my DD. She's gone to great lengths to try to rescue the relationship, which is probably just doomed, frankly. She's the nicest person I know... and one of the least arrogant/insufferable, so it very definitely isn't her.

He was the closest thing that DD had ever had to a true 'best' friend the way most kids have them. She is heartbroken. And lonelier than ever for having had a taste of this kind of normalcy.

It's making me bitterly regret not working a LOT harder to find DD more ways to understand that there are more people like her in the world, and that eventually she'll meet them and find others who share interests with her.

It's not just a little kid thing, unfortunately. I do think that many PG kiddos must have a recognition of just how different they are from peers when they are 4 to 7 years of age, though. That was really the first time that DD seemed to long for a true peer. She finally met another PG child last year, and while that tickled them both no end, they really don't have enough in common otherwise to actually become friends.

I have no idea (other than summer programs and DYS events) where one cultivates meetups with other PG children. It seems like we've tried it all... but one of the problems is that if you don't live in a large city, your pool shrinks to the point that you're quite literally attempting to find the six to twelve other kids your child's age within a 50 mile radius.

When my 14-year-old son was younger, he used to say that he wished he had a friend who shared more of his interests. He had friends in musical theater because smart quirky kids like my son fit in really well because there were a lot of smart, quirky fun loving kids in the group. They shared some of his interests, but he knew he could not talk to them about a lot of the other things he was interested in.

My homeschooled son had to get used to the lonliness. He sees no other kids now because he had to drop out of musical theater for a while for health reasons. He is staying positive about everything. He says at least he doesn't have to pretend to like things that most other kids like. He can like what he likes and learn what he wants to learn. He has online friends who share his interests. His dad and I enjoy talking to him about the things he is interested in because well, they are interesting. I find talking to my son a lot more interesting than talking to my relatives who only talk about football and other things I am not interested in at all. He was always very quick witted but kids his age did not get his jokes because they did not listen to the news and read as much as he did. His dad, his sister and I got his jokes. His adult sister talks to him every day because she enjoys talking to him. His grandfather has some similar interests and lives next door. We went to the history museum today so they talked about history and the latest political news and about the economics book he is reading, and other things that I don't think most of the kids his age talk about. I don't think age matters to my son. He always liked talking to adults. Even at six. But he learned quickly that a lot of adults don't like to hear the ideas and opinions of kids. Kids are not supposed to listen to the news and be interested in what is going on in the world. I still wish he could have found a place to discuss openly things that he wanted to talk about that he didn't want to talk about with his parents or sister.

I think he did get used to being alone and enjoys being alone now. I am the one that can't seem to get used to it.

Two things helped my D (now 17) with this. One was in middle school; she took the SAT as part of the Midwest Academic Talent search, and we sent the scores to CTY as well in case she wanted to attend there later. She received an invitation to join an online community called Cogito that CTY helps run -- and that is where she finally found her tribe. She was SO thrilled to finally have friends like herself, even if only through a virtual setting. For a couple of years she spent tons of time online with them, and made one "in real life" friend in town from the group as well. Eventually in high school she stopped spending time there, but just this week she mentioned that they all had a little "online reunion" recently.

The other thing that was huge for my kid was attending Davidson THINK. Especially her second year, where she came out of it with a couple of very close friends. She and one friend have weekly standing Sunday night phone calls that they have kept up for almost two years now. I know that he is one of the few people who gets her and can "keep up with her".

She does have friends in school and her activities. Quiz Bowl, Robotics, school creative writing club, and fencing are all places where she has found kids who are more similar to her than she finds in the normal classroom. So middle school and high school can start to offer some opportunities that are harder to find for younger kids.

The youth in our church often get together outside of church to do things like play volleyball, hang out at someone's house playing games like Mafia, etc., so that my kids never really went through loneliness. They definitely knew they didn't fit in at school, but the hodgepodge group of church friends would often range between the ages of 10 to 25, so they're marked maturity in some area went largely unnoticed or was accepted and embraced. It think it really helped keep them balanced emotionally.

They also had friends from their sports world - climbing - where IQ was never a factor. It was all about just having a great time deep water soloing or camping outdoors before spending the day climbing or hanging out at competitions.

I think having circles of friends where the common ground is something that doesn't focus on intelligence is really a big help.

Thanks for all the possible peeks into the future from BTDTs. Though we live near a big city (30-45 away), our local community is smallish enough we haven't found any groups targeting gifted kids. Sadly enough, probably the smartest kid my ds knows (my good friend's ds7) is not very nice to ds. My friend said that he is also feeling very lonley this year in first grade (more so than my ds)...but for some reason our boys haven't really meshed yet. Though my ds almost never argues with friends, they always seem to get into it when we get together. We're hoping that might change as the boys get older.

hi evemomma,
my DS6 complained the kids in his kinder were all babyish...
still, there are several kids from class he has frequent playdates with. they sort of just run around? my DS always seems to be having a good time and i believe he is, yet he wants more than that. he has said before he can't really "talk" to most of his friends. he says "they just look at me, they don't get me"

he went to art camp over the summer, was one of the youngest @ age 5, the next youngest was 7. it was all about art, and all kids were quite advanced in their skills. my DS and him really hit it off, turns out DS thought this boy was maybe 6 & the boy thought DS was just a small 7yo!!! even the boys mom said it...

even after discovering DS still just 5, this boy wanted to remain friends b/c they got along well, and understood each other.

what i should have realized THEN was that possibly DS needs social peers his own age, but also just as importantly--he needs intellectual peers as well... which is what he had with the 7yo.

this would have impacted my decision to put him in kinder vs 1st- only i completely forgot about this experience at the time and could only think he needed to be with his same age peers.

live & learn?!

master of none-
just a thought b/c i do have an older dtr...
and keeping in mind i don't know your family umm dynamics? dating rules, what's allowed etc
i am wondering, since i do not know your DD age, but knowing that if she is old enough to date- i am wondering if perhaps it is more the physical side of a relationship the boy wanted and your DD was unable to reciprocate? because she is younger...
the boy saying she wasn't "worldly enough" well--- one boy said that about my DD when she wasn't ready.
did i just make any sense???

my DD had issues like this- she was the guys match on many levels but being just enough younger that she wasn't ready for what he had in mind...
hopefully you and your DD have a great open relationship where you can both freely speak to one another and that even if this was an issue, your DD would be able to discuss with you...
(and tell the guy to take a flyin leap! she's too good for him!
;)~

When I was a child, I solved this problem with Space Camp. Yes, I was the nerd who went to space camp, then proudly wore the t-shirt to school in the fall. (In fact, my fifth grade picture was taken in an astronaut flight suit!) Yes, I got picked on at school for my "obsession" with becoming an astronaut. But the key was that I met others who were just as obsessed, and it made me feel normal. At the time, we didn't have email or Facebook. And while I have lost contact with many of the people who I met there, I still have several who I speak to regularly. In fact, when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, we had a mini virtual reunion when my facebook and text messages started lighting up just minutes after landing.
My point is that I find it extremely important to find peers with similar interests. It allows a child to embrace being "weird" and feel less afraid of what others think of them.
Incidentally, my own child, also "obsessed" with becoming an astronaut, will take his first trip to Space Camp next year. I hope his experience is as good as mine was.

I'm guessing that this was for me? My DD is 13-- nearly 13.5, and she's physically very small-- but very definitely looks like a teenager... and she definitely attracts attention. She isn't at "dating" by any means, and she is okay with that. She's VERY much intimidated by anything in the way of overt sexuality between herself and anyone else, which is as it should be. This is the reason why the first boyfriend got told to take a hike, (though if he'd been an intellectual peer she might have tried harder to fix things).

She can easily pass for 15 or 16 when she makes the effort; she's gorgeous. I'm really not kidding. I don't think that this was the basis of the problem between these two particular kids, since I think that neither one of them is at that kind of place (and yes, my DD is pretty open with me about this). It seems to mostly be that he's less socially mature than she is, in some respects... he kept sending a lot of signals that said "we should be more than friends" and when she finally reciprocated, he basically told her that he found it incredibly AMUSING that she'd think he liked her "that way," since he sees her as more or less "a little sister"-- but not before kind of making it a matter of public spectacle among their social circle. That is the kiss of death with my DD, who is very private. Evidently, he still doesn't feel that he has anything to apologize to her over, and he's annoyed that she's now backed off and is being completely platonic toward him (and, not coincidentally, a whole lot less cozy with him-- the better to send the social message that she IS NOT-NOT-NOT "his" in any sense of the word). He's still trying to figure out what the heck happened, and she's still seething that he apparently wanted her for a "girlfriend" but didn't want to ADMIT that, or call it that... Every single person who knows the two of them (adults and peers alike) would have bet cold hard cash that there was something going on betweeen them. Which there was-- it just wasn't simple or easily categorized.

The two of them were a codependent match made in hell, anyway-- she's a viciously driven INWARDLY directed perfectionist with altruistic leanings and major Florence Nightingale syndrome, and he's... well, a fairly arrogant but naive/sheltered outwardly directed perfectionist with no social skills, little social standing (there's a shock), and a touch of controlling manipulator. It's just as well, really.

And yes, while she's my kid? She is too good for him. In every way. I'd overlook that, but he's been pretty awful to her and it is no longer a healthy relationship for her.

He probably got embarrassed and doesn't know how to fix it.

That's what I think, too. He seems to be trying to regain the SAME dynamic, but that overlooks the fact that this creates some other social problems (since everyone else thinks that they are a couple, and hey-- they act like it). I've been quietly coaching DD to try changing the relationship's basic dynamic without bailing on the friendship entirely...

because this is some rare practice at that particular skill, and as we've already established in this thread, compatible peers don't grow on trees. In other words, regardless of outcome, the learning experience is too rare an opportunity to walk away from.

Sorry to derail-- but this is somewhat relevent, I think. When a friendship goes south, I kind of think that it may be more important to have our kids 'work through' that stuff, since ditching friendships when the going gets rough is going to lead to a lot of lonely times in life otherwise. Best to practice salvage and recovery now.

it's REALLY hard to know when salvage is the correct approach, and when running as fast as ones' legs can carry one is the correct approach. I don't think I'll ever be in a position to teach that skill... I completely understand what you're saying. I even agree with you. I just don't know how to reconcile that with the fact that I haven't a clue how to tell which is which.