I agree with everything that has been said about homeschooling. I agree that if your kid is unhappy, then they will not be good friend material and that homeschooling could easily be the solution. I know and have known many happy, well-adjusted, delightful homeschooled children.
What I want to write here is really for the people who stumble on this board BEFORE their children have a problem and are worried that their highly gifted child will be unlikely to fit into the public school system. That is certainly a possibility but not for certain. Some of us have had great experiences with public schools. My son has thrived there; he has met and befriended kids that I certainly never would have run into in our social circles, people from all walks of life (most of the homeschoolers in our area are pretty homogeneous). He has run for office, given speeches and performed in front of 500+ kids; he has volunteered as a reading aid in the Kindergarten class and made friends with both the Kindergarteners and the other adult aids. He edited the school newspaper and helped in the lunch room; he is now friends with the lunch ladies. He is confident and self-assured and he makes friends wherever he goes. We know we have been very lucky. It would have been hard to replicate this breadth of experience with homeschooling; although I know that we could have exposed him to other cool things if we were not locked into a public school schedule.
We have run into some glitches along the way and I expected to run into trouble when we switched schools this year, which is why I found this board. And it has really helped me plan some strategies and make a smooth transition. Sometimes, though, when I see people talking about the problems they are having, I think how lucky I was to have NOT found this board until we were well settled in public school. When DS started K, already reading at 5-6th grade level, I thought there might be trouble, but I went in with an open mind. I hope that others will be able to do so as well. Yes, there may be trouble, but it is not for sure.
