We recently had a revelation --DS9 does not have true peers at school. He has lots of friends, who are good kids, they do well in academics (the whole school is doing well in academics), talk about video games all the time, and in general act like 9 year olds. But DS obviously is much more mature behaviorally and intellectually. (He is reading Jonathan Kozol's books on social inequality and just fell in love with Schubert and Handel). We kind of knew this. During school year (both last year and this year) DS seems to be always in low gear, sloppy at work and acting "young" sometimes. But during summer he is a different person. He suddenly has heightened curiosity in everything, puts himself into an intense learning mode, and his social behavior also becomes very mature for his age.
I have nothing against his friends, they are good kids and are simply acting their age. But what I want is that, IN ADDITION to school friends, DS can have a few true peers so that he can grow at his pace. I don't know where to look if I want to help him find such true peers. We do sign him up for extracurricular activities but these are not helping much so far. I'm sure some of you have gone through the same worrying phase so I'd like to know what you did for your kids.
