Added to this context is the fact that DD, whose academic peers are Ivy-bound 16-17yo's, often compares herself to those peers and thinks that she's "nothing special" by virtue of being 'omnibus' gifted rather than having an area of profound ability with everything else being more moderately exceptional and acting as a foil to highlight the singularity. Multipotentiality strikes again, basically.
That is, she isn't a "mathy" or "scienc-ey" or "geeky" or "wordy" kid. She's more-or-less average/normative against any of THOSE kids. It's a weird area of distorted perception for her, honestly. She doesn't seem to grasp that her Mathy friends don't have her ability in English and debate, and that her Writer-friends aren't also in the math track that she is. Oh, and that they're all a couple of years older than she is to start with, and most of them are really working at it.
While I suspect that your dd is probably more gifted than mine and more accelerated, a lot of what you've said in this thread and this part, in particular, resonates. Mine is 13 and just started her sophomore year of high school (she'll be 14 fairly soon). She, too, compares herself to the most advanced sophomores in her peer group/grade although most of them are 15-16. There are about 500 kids in her class and it is one of the highest performing schools in our state so the top 10-15% of the class are 4.0+ students and taking a plethora of AP, pre-AP, accelerated classes and many taking "zero hour" classes so they can fit more hard classes into their schedule.
Dd doesn't see herself as particularly special in comparison especially b/c she opted not to take two science classes this year as she did last and isn't enrolled in a 6 a.m. zero hour class. She probably recognizes that she is better at English/reading/writing than many of her grade peers, but weaker in math than some/those for whom math is a strength as well.
We've seen a lot less of the issues you describe in regard to cutting her down to size since she's pretty much stopped socializing with age peers, though. In regard to the boyfriend issues that is a problem in and of itself b/c, the one boy she was dating briefly in her grade was much older and that creates its own set of problems. There was no need to downsize her in his mind or his parents' minds, though, as far as I could see, but once she let on that she was 13, which he didn't know, that was kind of the end of the relationship (which, honestly was fine given some hesitations I have about her dating older boys).
I have mixed feelings about letting the good majority of dd's friends be very bright older kids, but it does seem to have worked better. When she was younger, we too heard a lot of stuff from parents of kids her age about how their kids could skip grades too, etc. and, like you, knew that this was implausible if we were talking about the kids really being successful b/c these weren't HG kids (or often every MG kids). She kind of shut down these relationships herself in favor of hanging out with her grade peers over time.
I apologize if I've missed this in the thread earlier, but are you running into these issues with grade peers and their parents as well or just age peers and their parents?
