Hmmmm... I wouldn't have labeled myself as unusually gifted, especially after reading through these forums. If only because I haven't ever been very creative, and the social context was different.
I grew up in a country where parents try to "greenshirt" their kids -- push the ones born a few months after the cut-off forward a year, rather than what seems the commonly accepted red-shirting in the US. My first grade skip went, she was born one month after the cut-off, she is potty trained (we are talking preschool here), she can talk clearly, the classrooms are not full, she is in. The next decision point was the move into elementary school/first grade, where it was pretty much: big for her age, well integrated with older peers, formal testing show no red flags, if parents agree she won't be asked to repeat K. Nothing exceptional there, there was always at least one other child in my classroom which had skipped one grade (so, about 8%?).
Once I learned to read (1st grade, no earlier) I spent days with my nose in a book and became the typical teacher's pet. My 4th grade teacher was the one who arranged me skipping 5th -- she couldn't take me being an all A student without putting in one ounce of work at school. That was more unusual, true. Moving to 6th grade at 9 killed my social life, but looking back I think it would have died anyway -- I used to run with the boys and the shift through puberty and the changing social scene was... difficult.
I kept coasting as a B+ student, never learned how to really apply myself or organize my work, until I found myself in a very competitive science program after high school where all of a sudden I wasn't the youngest student anymore (3rd youngest out of 48), I could still intuit answers to math problems but wasn't able to intuit the proofs anymore, and the sheer amount and complexity of the stuff we had to learn didn't lend itself to the "listen once, remember long enough for the next test" technique. Ended up graduating from a solid, bottom-top-tier program with not much more than good enough grades.
So I'd say solidly MG, right? I wish I could get my hands on those test results from 4th grade, just to know. Though I had to laugh when reading some of the testing threads -- I still remember driving the evaluator wild on what was probably the first Similarities question: plum and apricot. I spent 5 increasingly desperate minutes going though answers like "they are both from the genus prunus? both have flowers with five petals and sepals?..." while thinking "oh my, this is really hard, I am going to flunk the test"... and she finally broke down and told me the answer was fruits (probably thinking "FRUITS! What's wrong with you???"
). And then sitting back in my chair thinking "well, that was dumb!" rather scornfully.
Getting back to my son, yes, you are right, he is/was starved for social interactions, but I have been having a hard time helping him with that. It doesn't help that he is attracted to the outgoing sports-loving kids (a crowd he doesn't fit into at all, and not for lack of trying). I am not sure if this is because his best pre-K buddy was that type (they had been friends since they were both 6 months old in the infant room at daycare) and he is looking for that same friend/friendship, or if he likes the type. Although looking back that kid (highly verbal, highly social) probably smoothed over many social situations for him at preschool. Last year he bonded with one of the other misfits in his class, a girl who loved animals and playing in the dirt as much as he did, but they are separated this year.
First meeting of the social skills playgroup (which comes with group "talk" -- mix of education and group therapy, I guess -- for parents). The program was strongly recommended by the private evaluator we saw, who came highly recommended by local parents of ASD kids. So my hopes are high.
