Does anyone elses kid like making friends with adults?

[RoboJesus]

Particularly childless adults. I guess its because they don't treat them like children. It's kind of an odd situation and I couldn't imagine myself doing it as a child. But I guess gifted children do often have more in common with an adult than someone their own age?

As a child, and certainly going into my late teens, I tended to prefer the company and conversation of mature adults compared to the majority of my peers.

I am subscribed to one of the biggest online forum, which has G&T section too. Reading the threads doesn't look so good, especially when the parents haven't got a clue how to help children with unusually high IQs.
It always seems to be the same issue. the teenager/adult who don't know how to interact with others. Feel isolated but think others are too stupid to understand them, but they are lonely, and finding difficult with everyday life. If the parents listen to sane advice like you get on here, their life could have been totally different.

Theres no point going on to OP about her child needing better social skills and that his quirks wont get him anywhere etc. If a child is like this, then theyre like this, and whether the world doesnt need more quirky individual workers, we still do have those, and not everyone can be socially gifted workhorse all rounders. They just cant. We deal with the hand we are dealt.

Im pretty sure my children would be better in the workplace if they were more social, but I dont think its something you can actively teach, so good on OP for focussing on his academic progress if he excells there and enjoys that sort of thing

I get you Branleuse, but can you really say that when your child is preschooler? or even in reception or ks1? not even try to help the child to fit in to normal social life because you think they are different?

I havent checked out previous posts, so im just going on information here.
Of course a preschooler isnt going to have "more in common with adults" Im sure that the adults who are enjoying chatting to a clever little preschooler arent thinking about how much they have in common with him/her. I find some children more interesting than others, especially quirky little oddballs, but that doesnt mean that the children is gifted and has lots in common with adults. Theyre still little children.
I do think its probably wise to introduce the child to other children that are maybe selected to be understanding and tolerant of social quirks and differences. Maybe this child might be better in the home ed community where a lot of the interactions are less pressured than in a schoolroom and there are children of all different ages. I find these communities can be very tolerant of quirky kids, when a school environment irons all that nonsense out quite young, or at least lets a child know just how much they are failing at it quite clearly

So Branleuse, do you mean there is no point in trying to get better at something you have no natural talent for, even though it would improve your chances of finding employment?

I was hopeless at social skills as a child. I worked very hard in my twenties at them and am now getting a little closer to holding down my dream job, though not, I suspect, as close as I could have got with more support. Should I just have given up?

My daughter wasn't able to walk for much of her childhood. She is now training for the theatre. Should we have skipped the therapy and just left her in the wheelchair?

Her friend is autistic. His mum put an awful lot of work into teaching him to socialise and behave in appropriate ways around other people. He went off to uni last year. Was that not worth it? There is so much you can do these days, with social stories and the rest. When I see how much help I have been able to give my own daughter with her social anxiety because I knew it was possible, I feel quite envious: I wish someone had been able to do that for me.

Do you think the same of my son who struggled to learn how to read and write? Should we just have shrugged and given up and focused on what he was good at? Or should we have said, as we did, well this is obviously difficult for him, but we're going to help him to get as good as he can. As it so happens, he did get good at reading when he was older, but still struggles with his maths: resitting his GCSE for the 4th time at 18. Should he give up? I don't think so.

We socialise with our age group for a tiny part in of our lives (school). Encourage talking to adults (in a safe way), but also younger people or people with different experiences/understanding. Experience trumps intellectual knowledge in many areas and in an area like politics (with far reaching consequences) there aren’t really any correct answers... just opinions.

Birth order may matter - I’ve seen a few bright (but normal) oldest children who like adult company.

@corythatwas , no thats clearly ridiculous, we all have things we can improve on, but the general tone of this thread has been that OPs child will never do anything if he doesnt get better social skills and to me it sounds mean. Some children lack appropriate social skills for all sorts of reasons and its not something you can teach really, only support.

Mine would hang around at break time and lunch break to hang out with the teachers while everyone went out to play. One of them was annoyed about it. She said she didn't want to play with kids because they were all so stupid and kept falling over all the time. She always seemed so grown up but she seems a lot more normal now.

I think it all changed for DD when another very bight girl joined her class.