A general question is to what extent parents should try to influence and regulate the personal lives of their grown-up children.
Ahh, well...this thread isn't about adults. The OP was referring to a thirteen-year-old girl. I'm not sure that this is the right thread for a general discussion about parents and their adult children.
By "grown-up" I meant post-puberty and having the mental age of an adult. Gifted children can reach the latter milestone in their early teens.
That becomes a different question, then. Do we let our young teen kids make all decisions for themselves b/c they are mentally older than their age? I guess that is a parenting question and I'd lean toward saying "no" for our family. I have no intent of banning my dd from things and have let her make choices for some time regarding reading books that seem inappropriate for her age, for instance. In general, she's made good choices. We talk through things and I'm usually fine with the decisions she makes.
However, if the only alternative I can offer her to considering older guys is "don't date at all b/c boys your age are too immature," I don't suspect that is likely to be a good alternative. When she chose not to read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when we talked about it having some weird sexual stuff and bondage, the alternative wasn't "read nothing."
I guess that I'm trying to get from others if their HG+ girls were able to happily date boys their own age and where they found them or if they ran into fewer of the problems than typical in dating older boys by virtue of their greater maturity. Mature or not, I do know that human hormones play a part in our making good decisions when we are young, though.
