socially behind during junior high and had a lot of emotional issues during the ages 11 - 14.
While you know yourself best, so many children have issues at this age... is it possible that the issues were not related to the grade skip, but may have occurred regardless?
I think that both ideas commonly apply.
My eldest skipped two grades. He had trouble fitting in when he was and 11-year-old 8th grader and the other kids were 13/14. There's just no getting around the physical differences at that age. He's getting closer to 14 and now seems to fit in better, given that he's maturing physically.
My grade-skipped daughter is 9. She has a very late birthday (a couple days before the cutoff), and so is younger than most or all of the kids a grade behind her. She's lucky to be quite tall and very social. She has a lot of friends, but still mentions that sometimes the other girls talk about things she "doesn't understand yet." We're moving her to a school that groups kids by ability instead of age next year, and I suspect that this will be less of a problem.
Different people have different experiences with grade skips, and IMO, it's an area full of nuances. I agree that there are intellectual peers and physical peers ---but sometimes I think about the fact that a (highly) gifted mind simply works differently from an NT mind, and making connections with older students just because they're older may not necessarily be easy. The older kids may have developed more mentally, but if their minds don't work the same way as the HG child's does, they may not be able to connect anyway. KWIM?
