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Indeed...and some of those skills showed up in interesting ways when my boys were young. My eldest DS became very intuitive about when someone was bluffing, he read body language, twitches, and tells extremely well. I'm afraid he often called those bluffs, including with his teachers at times (laffin)

Yes, we also have this rule.

Didn't stop my DD, though. She would just sneak downstairs at night, spend a few minutes re-enabling the wireless network (which we locked down at night) and away she'd go. We were sound asleep.

And no, not all kids have this propensity. I think most parents can judge whether or not their kids have that obsessive streak, though DD doesn't demonstrate it outwardly as much as some more loquacious children do.

Wow... it's scary when they're like that: more clever than wise. My two are more innocent, I think... (I hope! lol) as in, they haven't figured out that they could go behind my back. Either that or (more likely) they have but haven't had the nerve.

If I were in your shoes I think I'd sleep in the basement one night, and when she came downstairs... SURPRISE! Busted. (heh heh) ;p

It looks like this thread has pretty much run it's course, thanks everyone for your input. I've always just seen the local gaming store as an under recognized source of peer group / socialization for GT kids and wanted to hear other's opinions on it as well.

A lot of those stores have need for volunteers to organize events. It's difficult for a store owner to know the in & outs of all the games they sell. If you've got some time it's a great way to provide some mentoring and positive influence to an interesting group of young people. Sadly, there are too many parents who use these stores as a baby sitting service. I encourage you to become involved. At the very least, please stop in, introduce yourself to the owner, and if you're leaving your child there for a period of time, leave an emergency phone number.

When my DS (age 9) played in his first Magic tournament, we were quite worried about the setup and how it would go being with all the teens and adults. My DH stayed (and played) to keep an eye on things. The only problem was an adult that lost to my DS and threw a tantrum with lots of curse words. My 9 year old said "Hello, 9 year old here- careful!" The guy immediately shut up and was very embarrassed by his behavior. From that lesson- I recommend a quick conversation with your kids about not only being gracious winners and losers, but what to do if someone else isn't, particularly if that person is an adult.

I would have preferred my son say nothing, so as to not create more conflict. But it turned out ok.

For face-to-face RPGs, I played D&D pretty regularly throughout my teens. Towards the end of them, I also experimented with a few of the World of Darkness RPGs by White Wolf... specifically the Mage, Werewolf, and Vampire modules.

Based on the interest my DD7 has shown in certain computer-based RPGs (notably Fable and Star Wars - The Old Republic), I have a strong feeling that if I brought in D&D equipment and volunteered to play DM, her and her 10yo gifted friend would love me forever. In the meantime, lately DD and I are playing Lego Harry Potter cooperatively nearly every day.

I'm not a fan of card-based games, because I've seen people blow shocking amounts of money on them, but to each their own.

My children love board and card games, but we haven't gotten into any RPGs or online gaming. This is somewhat deliberate. DS4 is especially obsessed with games and I could see this becoming an issue. Actually, games are his primary interest.

DD knows kids who are into POkemon, but shows no interest.

In college, I was invited to a D&D game.

Once.

Apparently, I was supposed to take it a little more seriously than I did.

They didn't like when I slowed their progress by attacking the (previously inert) local flora and fauna, getting myself seriously injured in the process. I also made apparently racist comments to the dark elf.

Interesting re-awakening of this thread... made it out to the local card store on Sunday. Very nice facility; we were looking at Yu-Gi-Oh, but they discontinued it in the store due to some issues between older and younger kids and unfair trading. DS6 started excitedly rattling off all the rules he read/watched videos for it last week. The owner mentioned a new game Kaijudo that is starting up; so, we'll try that. He said if he could find a handful more of kids as enthusiastic as my DS he could put together a good group. No telling if DS will stay that motivated will cross my fingers for next Saturday.

I guess if you're supposed to be serious, I was always doing it wrong. As players we were usually united in purpose, but our primary purpose was annoying the DM. Doing the bizarre was our normal operating mode. The DM would respond to the ruin of his scripted narrative by trying to kill us. Most times the games devolved into shouting matches, and a good time was had by all.

As a follow-up to my previous post, I did speak to my DD and her friend about playing, and they're pretty fired up about the idea, and I've begun the process of acquiring the necessary materials. In the interests of helping them flesh out a fuller party, I've proposed creating a warrior character of my own to tag along with them. But because it wouldn't do for me to unduly influence their side of the story, the character will be of sufficiently-impaired intellect that, among other things, he would be likely to attack inert flora and fauna. Or rather, he would be unlikely to attack aggressive flora and fauna if nobody told him to.