Okay. I have another very hard-to-place kiddo.
My DD14 is a high school senior. She has just
two friends who are not at least seniors in high school, and she is the youngest of them all (by a considerable margin, in fact).
She is often stymied by their lack of
emotional maturity on the one hand, but also by the social interactions that reflect growing pains on the part of those same peers (not age-mates, remember, but students 2-5y older than she is). So the hook-up-break-up, boy-crazy, drama-laced high school experience bemuses and befuddles her. She can seem a bit aloof.
She has cherished the hope that college will be different. I don't exactly know what she means by that, but I know better than to let her think that all will be smoking jackets, library dates and deep philosophical discussion. {sigh} I've pointed out to her that the years from 17 to 23 ALSO come with enormous changes as people become adults-- and that the functional range of maturity is probably
never wider than at 16-18yo. It's something that she trusts her dad and I about given the number of those students we've seen (as faculty). So no, she won't find that there is a tremendous difference once she leaves high school (and as noted, that has been frustrating to her), but that the college environment will be automatically
enriched in the more mature sort, at least after the first term or two.
She only has one friend who is driving, believe it or not (he's nearly 18 now). She knows a few other peers who have, but the friend who is driving was reluctant-- his parents insisted only because he has to commute to college classes and it was a royal pain for THEM to drive him back and forth. Most of her friends won't be ready (or aren't).
Her circle socially is composed almost entirely of honor society type students (probably most are MG+)-- so I can't imagine what this would be like if she were evaluating what the full spectrum looks like.
DD has just a handful of friends who are
fully aware of her age and it really doesn't matter to them. Like-- REALLY doesn't matter. Those people are all probably HG-EG, that's my guess. They are SUPER-bright, and this is evident when you talk to them. But they and my DD seem "about the same" academically, when you round all the edges out, and then to take into consideration that she is 14 and they are both nearing 18... well, yeah-- that's PG.
So yes, she has friends who can accept her the way that she is-- most of her friends are male. She has trouble making/keeping female friends in part because most of them are just interested in stuff she could care less about, and the guys aren't shallow and boy-crazed. (well, most of them arent')
I also suspect that many of her female friends eventually (through observation) note that she has no problem befriending male peers... which might make her seem threatening... she's very pretty, and can talk to ANYONE about ANYTHING in a completely breezy/artless/glib manner. She's also seemingly "not complicated" like other girls-- which is also highly appealing to others. She seems to draw male and gender-atypical peers like moths to a flame-- being somewhat ambiguous/unusual herself, and being VERY nonjudgmental and matter-of-fact about this kind of thing with others.
Of course, some of the boys don't really KNOW that she's a girl, so that works out nicely in the friendship department with them.
Of course, there are others that do notice-- and this is kind of fascinating to watch, as a dynamic. It's as though you're watching someone who has just made the discovery that their puppy is actually a tiny fairy. There is a lot of blushing and blinking and gaping when the epiphany happens. DD isn't always too happy when a friend decides she'd be good girlfriend material, btw.
Boys are less mature socially than girls as teens-- this is helpful for a geeky gifted girl who can be "one of the guys" and play Minecraft and WoW with them for hours on end, and make fart jokes, etc.
This has been a healthy way for my (truly quite feminine!) DD to hang on to her actual age in a way that doesn't force her to compromise her identity or intelligence (much) along the way. If she were deeply interested in make-up, clothing, and boys, this might be far, far different. THEN, I suspect it would be a greater challenge. I was a girl like that. Well, sort of. I was VERY VERY sad when all of my friends graduated two years before me and left me languishing in high school. Just fyi.
Every child is different, though-- I don't know that this is really advice so much as anecdote. We're still living it. DD occasionally bemoans the fact that she will bypass some rites of passage by virtue of age alone-- and that she probably won't be old enough to VOTE until she has a bachelor's degree. This incenses her because SHE actually
cares and has passionate interest in politics and social justice.
Her friends will (mostly) be eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential campaign. She also still finds physical romantic impulses directed at her to be kind of squicky. She is the perfect geek-boy's girl, but she is equal parts perfect and perfectly unattainable.
It's a mixed up series of things.
Most of what DD objects to about feeling "rushed" is that while she wants to do ALL of the things she is interested in, the further she goes academically, the greater the pressure to "choose The One Thing," and being globally gifted,
she can't bear to. Certainly that's not an appropriate thing for a 14yo to be thinking about... but it has to be (on some level) when that 14yo is looking at colleges. KWIM?
She has sometimes wanted the following things:
a) that Nirvana where she could be PRECISELY who and what she is, all day, every day. Both 14 and interested in college-level discussions of politics and literature and physics and--and--and.
b) to have about 20 years at college, so that she can TRULY explore what she wants to do with that extraordinary brain of hers. This way she won't have to narrow things down to just two or three majors, see...
Sadly, neither thing will come to pass. Oh well.
I can tell you that what you've mentioned is a concern that my friends who've had children go through one of our local multi-age classroom schools have mentioned as a challenge with grades 4-6 - the differences in emotional maturity, physical changes with puberty coming at different times etc. My older dd is in 6th grade, is not grade-accelerated, and has gone through puberty - and she still very much enjoys playing with her Barbies and other dolls and is in no way emotionally starting to think about boys etc - yet there is a huge range of social and emotional developmental levels among her same-age friends in her same school class.