To me, advocacy means asking for the appropriate level of schoolwork. That's doggone hard to do without insulting the teacher, even for a socially skilled adult.
I think we may just be talking about different things here...
I agree that educational advocacy may not always be appropriate for a child, but i wouldn't rule it out either. Like everything it depends on the kid and the teacher and the situation. And, I think we can be working towards giving our kids the skills to ask for what they need educationally. And developing "social skills" is a huge part of laying the necessary groundwork for that to happen. I don't see it as two types of self-advocacy, but just a continuum of basic to advanced.
We have been lucky in that DS is socially adept (ENFP) and has had marvelous teachers. As a result, asking for appopriate schoolwork has not posed the difficulty you describe. Most of the advanced work DS gets he has gotten because he asked the teacher for it (even in early elementary school), often without my even knowing about it.
I am not suggesting that a kid should be the one advocating--for shy kids and/or defensive teacher it could really backfire. But I know that educational advocacy is realistic for at least some of our kids even at an early age. Like everything, so much is individual. As parents,one of our jobs is to figure out how much responsibility our kid can accept.
