Thanks for the input. I think the meeting went really well. I met with the head guidance counsellor and the curriculum coach for the middle school. (Both are mothers of gifted kids and the curriculum coach was in the gifted program when she and my husband were in school.) The plan for next year is for all the gifted kids to be grouped together, so that will hopefully improve some of the academic pacing issues DS has had this year. (Less endless repetition, yay!) My husband and I are pleased and somewhat optimistic for now. It is at least enough progress that we can relax a little until we review how it all works after school starts. I tried to give them a good picture of just how amazing DS can be if given the chance to stretch his mind. I also warned them that while this is a good start, he will probably need further acceleration or independent study in math and science due to his interests there.
We are planning the summer with DS with some enrichment camps scattered through to hopefully expose him to more kids like him with similar interests. We live in a very "sporty" area. My family is not "sporty" in the least. I still need to get him registered, but he's excited about a comic book art class and a robotics class we've found.
I think my concern with DS is more his social skills than his maturity. My thoughts are to decrease his stress by getting him into a better academic fit (hopefully we're moving in that direction) and see if his social skills improve. He is one of the youngest in his class already, and is totally clueless where all the other kids are now starting to act "cool." He still likes to be what I call little-kid-excited about things. We really haven't found many older kids he can relate to. He is in Boy Scouts and is respected by the other boys, especially since he recently helped teach the chess merit badge, but doesn't have any great friendships there. His closest peer is his 9 year-old brother who is finishing 3rd grade. (I do wonder how this affects his maturity level.) He does have a couple of pretty good friends, but something hasn't been clicking with either of them lately.
We only have 2 weeks of school left, so we're in the home stretch for this year now!
