[mlmr]

My sense is that the boy isn't quite hitting all cylinders. He is still a cub scout at age 11.

[Tax-chick]

11 (6th grade) is the very youngest a boy can be a Boy Scout. With many boys starting kindergarten later, it wouldn't surprise me to find a good number who were second-year Webelos at 11.

However, that doesn't mean this boy isn't disabled in some way.

[Tax-chick]

I just looked at another article where the parents said he was "socially immature," but not disabled. Possibly he repeated a school grade, or they just didn't think he was mature enough for Boy Scouts.

The parents said Brennan had seen people searching for him on horse and ATV, but avoided them because of what he had been taught. "He stayed on the trail, he avoided strangers," Jody Hawkins said. "His biggest fear, he told me, was that someone would steal him." They said they hadn't talked to Brennan and his four siblings about what they should do about strangers if they were lost. "This may have come to a faster conclusion had we discussed that," Toby Hawkins said.

This is a very important point, which I hadn't thought of at all. It's sad that a child would be so frightened of kidnappers that he'd avoid people searching for him!

[JCEccles]

My sense is that the boy isn't quite hitting all cylinders. He is still a cub scout at age 11

He's a perfectly normal 11 year old. Some 11 year olds are less socially mature than others, and he appears to fall on that side of the equation. He'll catch up.