My son only went to kindergarten at our public school. He didn't fit in socially. He was the second youngest kid in the class and the only one able to read at a 5th grade level. The other kids couldn't read more than a few words. He spent recess talking to the teachers about interesting things he had learned at home. At school they wanted him to spend a lot of time coloring and doing crafts and he just wanted to learn. He didn't fit in physically either. He had a mild disability that affected him physically and had to avoid bullies who were a year older but in the same grade with him. The principal and two teachers recommended that we homeschool. One of those teachers, who had experience with gifted kids, thought he might be highly gifted and kept telling me that I could homeschool my son. I did worry about social development because he was the only child at home and there were no other kids in our neighborhood. I asked the superintendent if I could take my son to recess only and stay there to watch him but they would not allow it because of liability issues. The nearest park with playground equipment was 40 minutes away so my son didn't get to learn any social skills on the playground.
I think the one thing that helped my son was drama and musical theater where he worked together with other gifted kids and he was allowed to have friends three or four years older and nobody thought it was strange. My son has only had one friend his age and he was also gifted. One day a few years ago my son teased an older friend about liking a particular girl and he mimicked the way his friend talked to her. His friend said okay, I can do an imitation of you too and he said something like "blah, blah, blah wikipedia, blah blah blah technology" and apparently my son got it. I think it took that for my son to realize that his friend wasn't as interested in all the things he had been telling him about and that he needed to limit what he talked about to only the things the friend was interested in. Once he learned that lesson he became a much more reserved kid. He also learned that he would have to go online to find other people who shared his interests that were different from his friends' interests.
The higher level vocabulary my son seemed to create a social problem, even around adults in our small town. Since my son was homeschooled, read a lot, and was only around people who used a higher level vocabulary, he had no idea which words the average kids his age knew.
One of the best things about acting was learning about the character he was playing. In a similar way he "studied" other kids his age and he said he could, if he wanted to, talk like them and act like them but he just doesn't have any desire to do this. He said the boys his age always talked about things he just wasn't interested in like sports and fishing and hunting. He was interested in sociology and psychology at the time. Just for fun we decided to wear "socially acceptable" sports T-shirts to walk around our small town to see if we somehow fit in better socially. People did talk to him more. They would ask him what sports he played and when he told them he didn't play sports, that he was in musical theater, the conversation was over. At 13 he isn't as willing to change himself to fit in with kids or adults he has nothing in common with.
My adult "socially gifted" former cheerleader daughter gives her little brother advice every day about social development. But he said he had advice for her too. His advice to her after she had gone through several football player and body builder boyfriends who turned out to be jerks was to find a guy that likes to read. She did and in some ways her new "cute nerd" boyfriend is just wonderful but it bothers her that he doesn't have muscles because he spends too much time reading and he doesn't wear the right clothes because he has no clue how to dress well. My son told me yesterday that she would try "socially rehabilitate" him. He knew this because his sister was always trying to do this to him. I have to say that this is really helping my son and the clothes she picks out for my son look really good on him. She takes him to visit her friends sometimes when she visits. She says that socially he fits in very well--with adult friends. We are hoping that he will fit in socially in college.
