Based on my very limited experience (I can remember my own high school days, my sister's and my best friends - each of us was grade-accelerated and in classes with kids 2-3 years older than us... plus we had the opportunity to meet quite a few college aged kids who were friends and sibs of friends)... two things pop out to me:
1) Who we were interested in (of the opposite sex) had very little to do with what was inside their brains and everything to do with how cute or attractive or what sport they played or did they have a great sense of humor or were they fun to just hang around with. Some of the judging based on looks etc sounds horribly superficial and shallow, but the facts on the table are - when we were young teens, we were in fact a bit shallow! So were most of the girls I knew when it came to dating, no matter how high or not-so-high their IQs were. As someone mentioned above, that changed in college for most of us and that's when we started seeking out people to date who had similar intellectual interests.
2) A lot of what happens with dating in high school is going to be related to a combination of personality. I was never particularly interested in dating in high school, and I didn't have very many boys ask me out. I did date one boy briefly who was 2 years older and driving when I was still a year away from getting a learner's permit. I felt weird about the car thing, even though my sister thought it was beyond cool. Being the shallow teen that I was, I broke up with him because he could drive and I felt more comfy around all my friends who couldn't drive and didn't have cars.... not sure I was using my brains and high intellect very clearly there lol! My sister, otoh, had a very serious relationship with the first boy she dated, who happened to be two years older than she was. They dated all through her high school, even though he'd long sense graduated and gone on to college. Her dating life, even though it was with an older boy, was much less wild than most of my friends who were dating same-age boys, and she's still friends with her now "older man" all these many years later. My best friend was always all about dating older boys - as many as she could, and as wild as they came. By the time she was a junior in high school she refused to go out with any boy who was still in high school. She wasn't looking for intellect, she was looking for sex. I honestly think, from knowing her well, that she would have had the same type of dating life even if the only boys she'd had to choose from were the same age as she was and she'd never been accelerated in school - it was just who she was. She was still very much the same in college
3) Older boys aren't the only boys I can see myself worrying about with my girls - I knew a few friends who were sexually active as early as 6th grade when I was growing up, we had girls get pregnant in our middle school, and one of my best friends was constantly pressured to have sex with her then boyfriend, who was the same age as us (11-12). We also can set a lot of rules about what to do / not do as parents, but ultimately it's our success in passing on our values that will be most important in helping our kids get through the crazy early years of dating.
4) I wouldn't worry too much about setting some limits if you want to and are worried that they may seem out of place for a child in the grade your child is in - for example, only go out if a parent is driving (or whatever). I can see that's something a parent *might* worry would set their child apart from same-grade peers, but from what I remember of high school, there was a huge spectrum of parental limits across grade level - I had friends who weren't allowed to date until they were seniors and other friends who had limits on who they could ride with etc. Curfews were all over the place. So what I'm trying to say is - giving your child a limit isn't going to automatically blare out as a red flag that "I'm young", kwim?
Sorry - none of that is probably any help! Just more food for thought
polarbear
