Hi Speechie (cute screen name),
I feel your pain. I, too, went through this and even though my daughter (3 1/2) is now in school and has playmates from there we still find it hard. Now that it is summer we venture over to the community pool and each time we do I find it interesting how the older kids gravitate towards DD and even more how DD's verbals match theirs. The other day we had a 12 yr old hanging out with DD and it was so cute to see their conversation. DD always seems to match verbal to whomever she is talking to. The down side to this is when she is with kids her age she tends to shorten her sentences to fit in, but when she is around older kids she is in her own element. Then yesterday while at the pool a 9 year old followed her around and was shocked at her age since she has a little brother DD's age who was also at the pool but DD wasn't interested in playing with him and the little girl who was hanging with her certainly didn't treat her like a baby.
As for the school and concerns .. you really won't know how he will do until you try it out. Lots of people on this board placed their toddlers in social preschool since it focuses on play and not much on academics and seem to be happy with the programs. We tried the social preschool route too, but came to realize it wasn't a good fit early on and scrambled to find some where else to send her. We really lucked out in her school she goes to now. It is a Spanish Immersion program so everything is taught in Spanish by Native speakers plus the program is academic. The 3 yr old class is doing kindergarten work. DD loves it and was challenged the minute she stepped into the door since everything is in Spanish. If it wasn't we would have had to look to move her up to Kindergarten since she was already doing everything that they were but in English. At least this way, until she is completely fluent in Spanish she is still in a learning process.
Too bad your son doesn't live close to us... he sounds so much like my DD especially with the imaginative play.
