Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Even Development, Not Asynchrony

I was reading the Skipping/Redshirting thread and noticing that a lot of people were talking about their kids being academically ready to be placed with older, redshirted classmates but not being on the same social level as the older kids yet. That makes total sense for a lot of kids.

But it got me started thinking on a tangent: How common is it for the kids here to be on the same social development level as their older academic peers? I know we talk sometimes about our kids liking to play with older kids when they are little, but what about as they age?

I ask because my DD-almost-12 is definitely on the same social level as her 8th grade classmates, even as they have all entered puberty and navigated the middle school years. And all the best friends of my 9 year old DS in 5th grade are all in 6th grade, so as they enter the middle school years the skip still continues to be socially appropriate.

How common is this? And if your child isn't grade skipped, have you found that he or she continues to find older best friends as they age and mature?

Just curious.

The only time my HG+ girl makes friends her own age is if the other child is also gifted. Socially she is much happier skipped. But she's still only grade2 so that could change.

If a child has only skipped one grade, the age difference is less of a big deal. When the gap gets to be two years or more, differences become more important as kids enter adolescence. They aren't as important before that.

I know that gifted kids have cognitive abilities that equal or exceed those of kids who are older than they are. But when you have an pre-pubescent child mixing with kids who are 2 or 3 years into that process, the physical differences are real. There some ways in which the kids of those two ages won't connect.

Val, my lock-step bright to MG DD is young for grade due to birthdate (right before cutoff). She's also seemingly going into puberty later than her peers (physically slow to develop). And she's one of the few grade 6s in a 6/7 split. So most of her classmates are 12-24 months older, physically more mature for age. She has friends that have been menstruating for over a year and my best guess is that she's at least two years from menses. Oh and she's got aspergers, so she's socially delayed.

You could say she's as physically and socially out of step as a child who is double skipped. And honestly the only issues we've faced so far are aspie / literalness related. We'll try to send her to a girls school, but I'm glad now that we did not hold her back when it came up in yr2. She's in the right grade, despite the various ways she doesn't fit.

We will probably send both her and our skipped DD to a girls high school though.

My unskipped-but-young-for-the-year DS hasn't really found close friends yet of any age, but seems to get on well with both classmates and much older children he meets through shared interests. And, come to that, younger children ditto. I have been worried about his social skills in the past (and when he was 4/5/6 this was sufficient reason not to skip), but not so much now (there are different reasons now!). I was surprised to overhear him talking very sensitively to a much older friend who was nervous about an upcoming event - but mostly this brought home to me how little I actually know about his social skills! He very clearly adapts to the company he's in now, so I think if he were skipped or double-skipped he'd now be fine with older friends. What I don't know is whether he'd then have closer friends than he does now with age mates. I rather doubt it.

My DS5 hangs out pretty seamlessly with older kids. He was in summer camp with a lot of older kids this summer and was always with the kids who were 6 to 8. He's tall and verbal and can read, and they were often surprised by his actual age. ("What?? You're not even in kindergarten?") However, one way he gives away his age is by crying when he gets frustrated, so that's a "tell."

DD14 has definitely found what Val mentions to be true.

She has better social acceptance from kids younger and from people older than 18.

She currently doesn't seem to have a "best" friend. Socially, she's so adroit that I don't think that's really it-- she blends in wherever she chooses to, basically. But the bottom line is that she really thinks that a lot of what typical 14-17yo girls are obsessed with is... well, stupid.

Her friends in that age group do not have average interests, by far.

Physically, she's a very young 14, and she's definitely not very athletic/coordinated.

She's not really got a single adequate peer group-- but "college geeks" seems to be about the right spot at the moment. It's hard to say when you have a 14yo who makes both the 50 year old neighbor smile, and also the 4yo next door, and seems fulfilled and content with both conversations. KWIM?

When we skipped DD8 into fourth grade in our area with a high amount of redshirting, we told her not to mention her age. She's a fourth grader, and that's all anyone needs to know. That way, they won't treat her any differently. In every other way, she belongs with 9-10yos, and you wouldn't be able to pick her out of a crowd of them if you didn't know her. She's one you could call "globally gifted," because she's ahead of the curve in every domain... physical, emotional, and social as well as the intellectual.

If DW's history is anything to go by, DD will hit menses next year, so she'll be early on that, too. I'm hoping that won't be the case, because it could be a harbinger of female health issues DW also experienced.

I think oversensitivities confound the question. (imagine a 1 to 10 emotional scale)... being equally emotionally mature could mean that kids at age 8 can control emotions at level say 5 or below. But when a kid is oversensitive, then they may experience a thing that is a 4 for an average kid as a 7 and not be able to control it.

To compound the confound, younger gifted kids may have more keenly tuned senses of justice and fairness earlier than other kids. So the average five year old kid sees nothing amiss when their friend of two minutes wanders off to play with another kid, but the gifted kid may see this as a deep and grave social injustice and have a huge emotional outburst.

Guess I'll find out today how this plays out for DS as it is first day of his skip.