Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Playing with peers, play styles.....

mom2one,

When my ds was in preschool, his interests were not in line with those of the other kids. This item in your post rings especially true:

"My kid prefers to talk about stuff, how things work..."

(Sorry about my ungifted tendencies in the formatting department. I keep meaning to figure out how to make those nice boxes when quoting.)

As he has gotten older, he has found more common ground with his peers, in part because they are "catching up" in a certain way and in part because his own social skills are expanding. Now (he is 8) the other kids share a love of Minecraft, Pokemon, chess, strategy games, and so on. And he has learned to play many variations on tag, now loves four square, etc. He still does not relate to other kids in a completely typical way--but when they're talking about Minecraft (for hours each day), you'd never know. He also is getting much better at figuring out what makes sense with any given individual--ie., he doesn't bother bringing up Minecraft trivia with a kid who he knows does not know anything about the game. (Two years ago, I'm sure he would have tried to launch into a conversation about HIS topic of interest, regardless who he was talking to.)

In part, I think all of this has been a natural progression of social development for him and intellectual development for some of his peers. In part, we have explained things to him. Ie., "Hang on a sec--We were just talking about X. It's really jarring if you jump in about Y. You need to say something about X first and then--especially if you can find something that relates to Y--you can change the subject." His friends, also, have been great in training him (mostly the vastly more mature girls). I once overheard this: "I have no idea what you're talking about. You need to start at the beginning."

We parents (and other adults) still have a lot of conversations with him that I don't think he'd have with a peer, but as he gets older, he's also finding the other really bright kids at his school (and elsewhere).

In short, we've done some explicit decoding of common "rules" to help him navigate the social world--and he's also picked up on many of these things on his own. In the meantime, at least some interests of his peers have dovetailed with his (and at least some of his classmates are similarly passionate about particular games and topics).