A general question is to what extent parents should try to influence and regulate the personal lives of their grown-up children.
Ahh, well...this thread isn't about adults. The OP was referring to a thirteen-year-old girl. I'm not sure that this is the right thread for a general discussion about parents and their adult children.
By "grown-up" I meant post-puberty and having the mental age of an adult. Gifted children can reach the latter milestone in their early teens.
Define "mental age". My gifted 14yos are certainly cognitively on the same level as adults I know. But, in the ways of many, many gifted kids, they are the poster children for asynchronous development. Neither is socially ready for adult relationships; it is my responsibility as their mother to keep them safe from making spectacularly bad choices. The ramifications of some of those choices have been bad enough for their cousin, who never had plans to do much with her life anyway; for an ambitious and highly capable kid they could be disastrous.
