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<p>Actually tests have shown that there <em>is</em> a positive correlation between intellectual and emotional maturity (not seen any research on social maturity, but having met many early to college students, I believe they are also far more mature in general than those their own chronological age and further, often more than socially mature than even the average adult). That said, people again shouldn’t <em>assume</em> that because one is intellectually an adult, they are also emotionally or socially able to function at an adult level - I have seen plenty of early to college students with things like Aspeger’s where they are not emotionally or socially at even a chronological peer’s level. But far more often the reverse error is made - thinking someone can’t be emotionally and/or socially at an adult level no matter if they are clearly at an adult level intellectually. Frankly, I hit my peak in emotional and social maturity at age 16 (this isn’t a joke, but for real; my filters for what I utter and tolerance for foolishness in others went downhill from that point on, sorry to say).</p>
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<p>It can’t be a <em>legal</em> guardian unless the parents are game to have no say in what happens to their child anymore, as we checked this with a lawyer when MIT suggested we might want to look into having a guardian in MA for our son if we weren’t going to move to live with him there. But having an adult support system does make good sense. Our son has had adults in the Boston area that he can call upon if he wants an adult other than a parent or housemaster or faculty member (or grad student). The first person who volunteered here is a venture capitalist that first met our son at a venture capital conference back when our son was 10 (our son won the tickets when he was on the first place team in a statewide business plan competition for undergraduate and graduate students) and then invited our son to enter a sailing competition with him (the two took second place thanks completely to the VC) and took our family and his on his boat for the day and in other ways, stayed in touch over the years, and he’s taken our son out to dinner to just chat a few times since our son moved to MA. Parents of friends our son knew through Davidson Young Scholars also volunteered to help out whenever our son wanted help and to have him to their place for homecooked meals and such. It’s not like he moved there having no support people around upon moving to the dorm.</p>
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<p>I actually feel we parents are responsible till our son turns 18, which is why he still is to let us know when he is going off campus (as he did tonight with a 17-year-old friend to a another teen friend’s party, a party where the girl’s parents will be present as the parents have assured me their children’s parties always have their supervision; I have also met and driven with the 17-year-old driver and feel he is safe to drive with) and why he is to call by a little after 10 PM to let us know where he will be spending the night tonight.</p>
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<p>Only you said you were okay with kids going to college (i.e. taking classes at college as a commuter) however young, and that alone with expose them to most everything. In front of our son’s first music course, two girls were making out. There were condoms handed out in front of the student union on our son’s first day of classes (and don’t many restrooms for males have condom machines…are parents to not allow their sons to use the men’s room till they are 16 or something?). An honors course had a book assigned where the main character “comes of age” with a <em>sheep</em> (this was one of the only things where I did request the professor grant approval for our son not to read that one chapter, and he told the entire class to skip the chapter once I brought the section to his attention, which I am sure made most of the students skip right to that chapter rather than skip it). Another professor wanted our son to see “A Clockwork Orange” or “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest” (and he wasn’t even our son’s professor, but just a professor who chatted with our son and felt those movies would be good for him to see); he argued, “Your son is 10 in chronological age only. He has the reasoning and understanding in life that few psychology professors have, trust me.” I still wouldn’t allow our son to view those movies at age 10, but that again is just MY comfort zone and I won’t fault parents who would decide differently here. My parents took me to R-rated movies from a very young age and it never seemed to have any bad effect on me, but that also doesn’t mean <em>I</em> am comfortable with our son seeing an R-rated film at a young age (and my dad also did give me grief about that, saying that our son at age 7 had the mental age of an adult and so should be allowed to see R-rated movies, but I didn’t feel he was <em>emotionally</em> an adult at age 7).</p>
<p>Again, I really think it all depends on given individuals rather than any set “never this” or “always that” rules.</p>