About social skills - my DS7 had trouble relating to kids his own age every since he was very little. When we had get togethers with other families who have similar age kids, he may be playing with them for very short period of time and then he would go do his own thing or go talk to the adults.
He was basically shut off when he returned to kindergarten after the winter break. The school social worker got involved. She asked my DS to pick someone from his class that he would like to play with and pulled both them out of the class for a period of time during the day to play with each other. I think that helped him finding same interests with the other kid. Came to first grade, I warned the teacher but so far he has made more friends and had no big issues interacting with the kids in his class.
I think he's finding more things in common with the other kids as he grows older. Also signing him up with team sports may have helped too. He is in basketball so not only he's learning basketball skills, he's also learning how to play and work with his teammates.
We are currently trying to work with his school for accelerated academic plans but specifics said that we don't want him to skip grades. He's finally able to related to kids his own age and also we don't think he's mature enough to move up grades yet. For us, accelerated curriculum in the current grade works better.
