lol! Sorry to laugh but this reminded me of high school orientation night for dd13 last summer. She had, years ago, attended a summer camp that she didn't really enjoy. She's less outgoing than your ds, but the counselors tried to talk with her b/c she was mostly spending her time reading a textbook about the anatomy and physiology of Florida manatees.
So, it turns out that one of the former camp counselors is now a teacher at dd's high school. She walks up to the math table to talk to the teachers there and one of them turns to dd and say, "[dd's name]! You're the manatee expert!" Dd, of course, does not remember this guy b/c she was a little kid at the time of camp, but when you've got kids who can opine at length on adult topics or discuss them in depth when they are quite young, it does draw attention and, apparently, stick in the memory of the adults who have interacted with them.
I've always discussed with dd that genius is not a state of intelligence. It is high ability combined with hard work, passion, and creativity. Genius is as genius does IMHO.
Some of what has helped with dd has been placing her with older kids such that, while she may stand out as the youngest, she is at least doing things in her passion area (science) with people who are functioning more on a peer level, and putting her in places where it isn't always a cake walk. Grade acceleration, camps with older kids, lectures for adults, anything where she can have HG+ peers, etc. have all been good. It combats both the illusion that she is better at everything than most people and the thought that she should be able to do everything with extreme ease.
I think that it is something similar to the idea of having young kids read at their "instructional" level, where they can read the books without extreme frustration but also with a little work. We've tried to put dd in that spot educationally wherever we can. She's less perfectionistic and has less of an inflated ego in being by far younger and working at something close to an instructional level in some areas than she would being of typical age and coasting.
