I hate to say this, but if anything, I think that it intensifies during adolescence.
PG kids are
so asynchronous that adolescence is VERY hard for them. They have the normal needs for social experiences and a shift toward more intimate social relationships with peers... but most of their peers reject them because they don't "fit" well either agemates (who lack maturity) or with academic peers 2-6 years their senior.
I'm afraid that we're living this right now, and it's deeply painful for my DD. She has had the experience of TWO failed relationships just within the past six months... one with a chronological peer who was frankly a real drag because he couldn't keep up with her cognitively and also couldn't STAND that his girlfriend was "smarter" than him... and now again with an HG+ academic peer 3y older than her, who has decided that she is... well, our hypothesis is that now that he's competing
directly with her (he switched schools), he is understanding just HOW much harder (well, and just the crushing workload) than most local schools HER high school is...
and suddenly that three year acceleration and 4.37 GPA of hers seems a LOT more impressive... and therefore she's actually a threat to his identity as the smartest person he knows, because she continues to coast even with a jammed extracurricular schedule, and I get the sense that he's struggling a bit. :sigh:
Ergo, she must be relegated to "unworldly little girl" whereas before she was "peer." It's been very very sad for my DD. She's gone to great lengths to try to rescue the relationship, which is probably just doomed, frankly. She's the nicest person I know... and one of the least arrogant/insufferable, so it very definitely isn't her.
He was the closest thing that DD had ever had to a true 'best' friend the way most kids have them. She is heartbroken. And lonelier than ever for having had a taste of this kind of normalcy.
It's making me bitterly regret not working a LOT harder to find DD more ways to understand that there
are more people like her in the world, and that eventually she'll meet them and find others who share interests with her.
It's not just a little kid thing, unfortunately. I do think that many PG kiddos must have a recognition of just how different they are from peers when they are 4 to 7 years of age, though. That was really the first time that DD seemed to long for a true peer. She finally met another PG child last year, and while that tickled them both no end, they really don't have enough in common otherwise to actually become friends.
I have no idea (other than summer programs and DYS events) where one cultivates meetups with other PG children. It seems like we've tried it all... but one of the problems is that if you don't live in a large city, your pool shrinks to the point that you're quite literally attempting to find the six to twelve other kids your child's age within a 50 mile radius.
