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I recently got in touch with a few people I knew when I was going through K-12. These contacts got me thinking about an idea that I haven't seen discussed here.

I've been thinking about the continuity that I had in going through my childhood with the same people. I was fortunate to grow up in a small town with only one school for K-12. We moved to another state when I was close to 17.

I often think about the loss of continuity that occurs when moving to a new school in a place that's distant from the old one. It weighed on me at 17 and again when we moved DS8 from a bilingual school that offered a grade skip to one that groups by ability.

We discovered an after-school program that teaches the second language. Happily, DS8's best friend from the first school goes there, as do a couple other of his old classmates who also left the first school. One of his old teachers is also there. So this provides continuity and my son doesn't feel cut off.

Then I got to thinking about radical grade accleration and kids who finish high school very early. I wonder, what do they lose when they don't have the experience of growing up with the same group of people? Do they lose out on going through non-academic experiences with a group of people they've known for a long time? People who move frequently face this problem, but most of them are at least with age/academic peers.

I've been asking myself, if kids start college when they're way too young to socialize with college kids, what do they lose socially? By "start college," I don't mean "take a class or two." I mean, go full time.

I know, I know: HG+ kids have minds that race ahead. Yet it's undeniable that a 13/14 year old just can't fully socialize with people who can drive, live with a member of the opposite sex, and get drunk/barf on Friday night. Sometimes as a kid, it's good to go through certain experiences with people who are within a couple years or so of your own age, know what I mean?

A place like the Davidson Academy (DA) solves this problem by providing students with an age-peer group in an environment where it's possible to take college and graduate level courses, yet also hang out with other people who can't wait to take Driver's Ed. Some DA students will spend many years there, and twenty or more years from now, they'll have reunions or whatever with their former "classmates" and laugh about the time that we slipped in the mud on that really rainy day, or that secret crush we had on so-and-so, or that time when...how wonderful!

But the DA can only take so many students, and only so many families can move to Reno.

I expect that the kids adapt, and the adage "you can't miss what you never had" applies here, at least in part. But I know what my DS8 might miss, and it bothers me. We're hoping to address the problem by sending him to a local middle/high school for gifted kids. But again, how many GT schools are out there? And regardless, I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of sending him to college --- even a community college --- full time when he's <16.

This issue, if indeed it is one, is a manifestation of how truly different HG+ kids are. Unlike, for example, HG+ sprinters, high IQers don't have an obvious visible trait that makes their abilities apparent. I mean, sure, they can read and do math and all, but the activity that drives this stuff is invisible, and the manifestations aren't always accessible or even apparent to others.

So I guess I'm spending some time pondering this idea. One approach I'm thinking of is "let him race ahead in one or two subjects he really likes, and move at a slower pace in the others."

I guess I also don't want to create a person who thinks he always has to be ahead, must get an A on every exam, must get a PhD and must be the youngest guy getting a PhD, etc. I'm looking for balance here. I grew into being a driven/overachiever-type, and feel that I'm much better able to cope with it now than I would have been at 16. Now, I'm driven and I understand exactly why, which I like and which helps me frame goals.

Okay, I will stop. It's late and this message is really long! Your thoughts are WELCOME!

Val

Bonjour Val - Your post is quite interesting. I think back on my school experience, where I spent 1st through 8th grades in a small private school where everyone knew everyone. Then I went to a different high school than most of my grade school "friends." Although I had pretty good friends in grade school, we did not keep in touch when I went to a different high school. But none of them were "soulmates." I did not meet soulmates in my high school either, but in after-school activities in about junior year of high school and then after college. I do not claim to be HG (i'm guessing MG), but I was bored throughout school, and I think I would have liked meeting new people and being challenged rather than being with the same crew for years. But I have always been a rather outgoing person who easily makes friends (though not always soulmate types). I imagine how a child deals with school changes depends greatly on the child's personality.

I went to a K-12 school. None of my classmates were soulmates, but they do hold a special place in my life and memories. I deeply appreciated the opportunity to participate in a community of mixed ability people, to know them from 5years until 45 years has been enlightening, as has given me an appreciation for how a cross-section of America lives, not just the people who go to college etc. I have tried to put DS in a similar situation, and, like me, he seems to really like having the same classmates year after year, even though they aren't much like him.

That being said, if he were miserable, if these kids made his life miserable, if he didn't have friends, then I think leaving him there would defeat the purpose of the lesson I am trying to give him, which is how to get along in a community. If he is just a miserable outsider to the community, then, it seems like I am actually teaching him the opposite of what I wanted to.

Hi Val,

This one seems to be vaguely always in the back of my mind. There are so many things that come into play when making these decisions for DDs. Probably the most important thing for me is to not get too wrapped up in the future and what may or may not happen. I am an analyzer and a strategist by nature, so this is very hard for me.

I think there are options at least where I am because we can do partial schooling and I know the high school does bus some kids over to a local community college for half the day.

We can hopefully blend a way for the girls to be able to learn above their assigned grade station yet stay with their agemates if that's what the best situation is at that time.

We've also discussed completing high school early or testing out of grades and then just going to Europe to in effect, home school by back pack tour. You just never know what's ahead and what options will be available once you get there.

I guess I could ask how many of us often find people they have that "connection" with, IRL. It seems like everyone here connects very well on some level. I have tons of friends IRL(no, really, I do!). There are only a few people I can have that awesome conversation with though. The kind when you talk really fast and flit from subject to seemingly unrelated subject, almost maniacally!
I cherish those friendships, however, I feel connected to a very large and diverse group of people. I have different kinds and levels of conversations with all of them.........

If we take a look at that bell chart, I gotta tell you, the end of it there where those 99.9ers sit......it looks a little sparse.

Perhaps instead of approaching from a perspective of feeling alienated, we could make it a goal to teach them how to have different levels of relationships.

Not to say I have always done this successfully....

I just think it might be something good to shoot for.

I agree 100%, 'Neato.

I was always a social chameleon--I could fit in darn near anywhere you put me, but I knew myself pretty well (better than most kids, anyway). I see the same kind of thing going on with my boys. Both of them seem to have friends of all sorts. They enjoy older GT kids, but they also have good friends who are younger and/or not GT. They just do different things with different people.

The trick is the not losing one's self in the process, I think. There's a difference between being a chameleon, which I think of as being capable of connecting with all sorts of people on all sorts of levels (as you describe, 'Neato), and being a follower who can't stand up for him/herself. I have seen evidence that my kids have a strong sense of self, so in that case, I think their "fitting in" is a very positive thing. Fine line there, though, you know?

As for the overachiever thing, I hear you, Val. That was me in high school. I felt driven to get straight-As because if I didn't, who was I? I had begun to define myself far too narrowly as my accomplishments. It wasn't healthy.

I read a book in my church youth group way-back-when that talked about "the scoreboard of life," and I actually gave the sermon on the topic for Youth Sunday. The concept that we are NOT the sum total of our accomplishments really resonated with me, and it came along at the time when I really needed to hear it. I really tried to internalize that message: we are more than what we can do, more than what competitions we win, more than what we know.

It's why I think it's important to give kids chances to make mistakes and fail and be lousy at things. It's why I think we parents need to try new things and be lousy at them, too, so that our kids see that it's okay. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again, and it's okay.

Here's my own experience: I stayed at the same school K-5. Felt like an alien. We moved to another state where I started 6th grade. Again, I was an alien. Skipped 7th, switched to a GT school for 8-10. Hallelujah! I found my people We moved to yet a third state. Public high school for 11-12. Yep, I was an alien again. But it was nice to know my people were out there somewhere! I met up with them again in grad school.

I guess my point is that if you're not fitting in, it's worth the risk to try something new. Don't stick to the same group just for the sake of shared history.

I've had that same sense as an adult, Cathy. It can take a while to find our "peeps," but they are there! They're harder to find in some places than others, certainly, but there are some of them virtually everywhere if you look hard enough.

If not, there's always the Internet!

I agree about dependence on personality. Problems of alienation are why places like the Davidson Academy and other schools for gifted kids are so wonderful. The students at these schools don't miss out on age-level interactions, meet others like them, and are challenged academically.

The overall school system is obviously part of the problem. The low number of HG+ kids per school may be low, but in an any area with a biggish population, there are enough to populate a GT school (LA has IQ145+ schools, for example). And if you admit kids with IQ130+, almost anywhere should have sufficient kids for an Area GT school pulling kids from several proximate districts.

Going back to the driven-student thing, I remember various things in school that helped me learn that failing was okay. We had a winter carnival week every year and the high school classes would compete at various events; winners got points. At the end of the week, the class with the most points got a silly prize. In 9th grade, we realized we weren't as cutthroat about winning as the other classes, and began to revel in our failure ("We're #4! We're #4!). It was fun and a great lesson. One the flip side, a kid at my new school couldn't handle getting a B on an exam. He was a good friend and I had a lot of sympathy for him.

Tough questions.

Val

For as long as I can recall, outside of sports, I tended to hang out with kids 4-6 years older than I was. I dated 2-6 years above my age until I got into my 30s. When I was with age-peers, outside of sports, I felt trapped and mostly alone, and I missed the interaction with older people whom I found interesting.

Sports are one way to socialize with kids of the same age and from different backgrounds. Scouts are another - but the ages tend to be more diverse.

Given how sparse GT can be, and how its spread throughout the population, giving your kids a wider net to find friends in is a start - in real life people from many age groups and backgrounds will interact and that is the norm. School is not the norm with all the ages segregated.

Overall, from my experience, I believe that its much more limiting to a GT kid's advancement if they are left with age-peers.

I realize that asymmetric develoment exists, but how much of that is related to limited exposure to challenging environments in those specific areas?

For example, I was privy to some adult discussions in the 5th grade that allowed me to avoid a bad situation in the 6th grade. Had I not heard those discussions, I would have blindly trusted someone.