Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy small boy grade skipping

Here, here! Every situation will be different. Except my feelings differ a bit on your last sentence when it comes to young children. I believe what the parent believes is right for their kids should trump what the kids want until the kids are maybe around age 9, for the most part.

I was just giving my opinion too, and everyone's family makes decisions differently. I know my kiddo and how he learns, and I also know that if we had relied on his opinion at age 5 as to whether or not we should grade skip, which involved moving to a different school, he would have said no. The unknown is scary to kids. Of course, we still listened to our kiddo and talked through our reasoning, and eventually swayed him to our side, but the decision was ours as parents. I say age 9 because my kiddo is now 8, and I would give his opinions more weight next year. He has no way at his age to know what the best school situation is for him. Obviously other families will do things differently.

I agree with some aspects and not with others. I feel it varies from child to child. Social aspects and puberty are some issues. honestly puberty has a range and for some it starts at 9 and for others may be 11 or 12 or vary further on either side.

social maturity also varies a lot, so I feel one should decide based on whole spectrum to skip or not

My DD6 skipped K and I always wondered 'what if' not skipped, because she is still 2-3 grade levels ahead. She is not bored, it is not her personality. She will be happy to do whatever she is asked to in school. DD is 90percentile for height and 80 percentile for weight, both her parents are short and small frame. DD often says to my wife that she looks like 3rd grader and her mom looks like 6th grader(DD is 6 now)
just my 2 cents

I wouldn't place any worries on the height - but I do have a short boy who is not grade skipped in middle school and part of the reason we've never pushed for a grade skip is related to believing that for our ds, the social issue would be a concern - which honestly is something that is going to vary a lot depending on the individual child, and I'm not sure I would have been able to forward-predict the imp act it would have made on my kids, hence you basically just need to do what feels right to you for your family and child if you're making that decision when your child is still in early elementary.

Rather than grade skip we've sought differentiation and subject acceleration for ds, as well as putting him into an academically challenging school where the full class is working a grade level ahead - there can be other ways of dealing with the need for academic challenge - and granted, we haven't always been terribly successful at it! But fwiw, in the classes our ds has been in where he's subject-accelerated but they aren't necessarily "gifted" classes, he's still been bored, and I'm not sure that a full-grade skip would have completely met his need for intellectual challenge.

The social issues that I've seen in middle school which I think would have been tough on ds had he been younger than his peers resolve around the kids who are becoming aware of their sexuality, starting to think about dating, growing independence from their parents etc. I didn't see it way back when, but I know today that my ds is on the lower-developing end of the curve re interest in those things, and I've also seen that being gifted sets him apart in school in some ways (and he still appears very much gifted when he's in among older kids). Fitting in is very important to him right now (as it is with many kids who are middle school age)... so for him, being with same-age peers has helped out. *BUT* I don't know that I could have known that looking forward when he was only 5.

I have a good friend who did grade-skip her dd (dd is MG) - and her dd has done really really well academically - but now that she's in middle school, her *parents* are having a lot of issues with her classmates being interested in boys, dating, independence from parents etc - all things that I remember us discussing might happen way back when.... and she honestly says now she wished she had thought it through instead of being so focused on the academics.

Last thought re height - if you made the decision based on height alone, how would you feel about your ds knowing you didn't place him ahead due to his height? If you have some reservations about that, I'd take height out of the equation and just focus on the other reasons for/against a grade skip.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - fwiw, two of my three kids are very short. It has bothered both of them at times - but if they are really short, they are really short no matter whether or not you're switching them around 1-2 grade levels ahead or behind where they should be placed according to age. I'm also really short, and I wouldn't want someone making a decision about school based on my height.

I recommending doing a search on this site for successful un-skips around middle and high school age. There are great success stories on that as well... A skip early on does not mean that you cannot change things later on. It's all about flexibility with our kids.

Some of the parents are mentioning their kids who are not skipped and how they are still a few years ahead of grade and some are mentioning kids who are skipped and who are also still above grade level, etc. The way I looked at it when skipping a young for grade child (who is female, though) is that we went that way when coming close to meeting her needs socially and academically was nearly impossible without the skip.

When you are dealing with a child who is a few grades ahead in many subjects, it might be possible to meet those needs with a combo of enrichment, subject acceleration, and GT programming if available. In our dd's instance, she was easily at the point where she would have been able to do well in high school honors level coursework in science and language arts (reading, writing, everything in LA) by about age 9 (4th grade). She was in that realm of being a few grades ahead in math, but not nearly as accelerated as she was in other subjects. If all of her achievement levels had been at the same level as had her math, I probably would not have agreed to skip her and would have pushed instead for subject acceleration or more GT options.

I'm sure that there are different issues for boys (I don't have one of those), though, in relation to puberty. My dd has not minded being one of the later developing girls and I understand that it generally isn't a social liability for girls (actually that being one of the first to develop can be hard for girls).

Size-wise my grade skipped dd is average or even a bit tall for her age. My younger dd, OTOH, is very short and petite build (around the 5th percentile). We did get the argument about not starting her early in K b/c she was so small but I've generally looked at it this way: if the child is small b/c s/he is way younger and not b/c s/he is going to be smaller than age-mates for his/her whole life, that is one thing. If the child, like my dd, is likely to be short forever (we have many 5' tall women in both my family and dh's), I would not hold him/her back academically in the hopes of making the size difference lesser. A small person will need to learn to deal with the fact that s/he is just smaller than others. Dh is 5'6". As an adult, he has to deal with the fact that most men are a lot taller than he.

I guess that what I am getting at is that I would not use size or later puberty as the deciding factor against a skip if all other indicators point toward it not just being an option but being necessary in order for the child not to suffer academically. It is something to consider, but only one piece of the puzzle.

It's hard to know if your friend would have been more misearable if he hadn't been skipped, or if he needed a double or triple skip, of if he was just fated to be miserable in middle school - some people are. People's memories are quite unreliable, and one thing to know about gradeskips is that in most places they are unusual enough that there is a human tendency to blame every future woe on them.

The second thing to evaluate is the 'LOG' (level of giftedness) and the local student population. In the US people tend to segregate by economic, and there is a trend (not a perfect one) that higher economic areas tend to have more high IQ kids. So IQ and achievement test numbers are very important. For some kids, but the time the school starts being willing to do a skip, they are so different from their classmates that a skip is almost gaurenteed not to be enough. (Although it can be a great start.)

We did a skip at this exact point,on top of a July birthday in a severly red-shirted area and it was very valuable. We were looking at serious underachievement issues, and it gave our son a chance to learn good work ethic. We did undo the skip later, but we don't regret the journey. Assoline actually doesn't recommend a skip before the 'bridge year' for moderately gifted kids(I'm assuming that in your district 5th is the end of elemantary and 6th is the start of middle school) because the bridge year is key to building up organization skills that will be needed at the next level. If
your child is unusually gifted, then it's not so much of a consideration, but we ran into this problem. Our son was undiagnosed ADD at the time as well as PG, and had no work ethic due to the 'enforced underachievement' and keeping him organized became my 2nd full time job. I was willing to do it because it was the only way out of a bad situation, and contrary to what I had read, DS was able to take back the driver's seat of his homework and organizational responsibilities 100% within a few years. I had to break it down and teach it to him in babysteps, and he entered 9th grade for the second time as 'the most organized boy' in the program. Because of DS15's organizational weaknesses, do does better with agemates in a private boarding school that is very 'in dept discussion' orriented with tons of individualized attention. So it is possible, but if we could have kept him at home, and the tuition money in our pockets, we surely would have.

And would be be enriched enough? and do you really want to go through the whole thing next year? So much depends on if you are in a 'Superzip' neighborhood, what your child's LOG is, how happy he is with his agemates, how organized he is, what kind of stamina he has, what kinds of bedtimes you can put up with, how good he is at handling social situations, and what are your alternatives. Can you try it for 2 months and then go back?

What is motivating you to make the change in the first place?

Best wishes, we'd love to hear how it all turns out.
Love and More Love,
Grinity

I am in the same boat with my son 9 y.o. in 3rd. He is ready for middle school if we use testing and scores to judge by. He is tall in the 90% for his age. He plays baseball, basketball and soccer each year since he was 5.
We do not know what we are going to do yet. A single grade skip is possible.
We thought we would put out all the options and ask him what he wants.
He wants to go to 4th grade and see how doing some independent stuff works out (AoPS). We are also going to try a math tutor/mentor also. We have contacted several and believe we have found a really nice match. He is the High School calc teacher and was suggested by the Middle school principal. He seems so excited to meet our son. He gave him a couple Algebra questions over the phone to try to wet his chops.

He loves school and his buddies. He has been bounding through on his NWEA scores.

the school HA coordinator sent A Nation Deceived home with him for us to look at. she also included a copy of Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare. Believe me, I know I could have worse problems

Reading some of these posts makes me even more appreciate the principal at the middle school my daughter was skipping into.

When discussing/debating placing her in 6th or 7th grade, the principal at the middle school interjected and said if our chosen tool (the IAS) was saying my daughter was an excellent candidate, and the discussion was (now) only about the social aspect; then we should trust the tool, we should do the skip, and the parents, teachers, and administration need to do their job and make sure the social side does not get out of hand. She then followed up with, "middle school sucks for everyone, not just those who have skipped a grade or two."

-S.F.

You know, the funny thing for my dd who skipped was that middle school was probably the best years she's ever had socially. I had a horrible time in Jr. high and was bullied terribly. Dd was extremely popular especially by her last year. She got lead roles in plays, was in the honor choir, NJHS, went to dances, had boys asking her out left and right, had friends, won numerous awards, and just had a great time. It really helped that she had one HG++ friend and a number of other gifted kids (not just high achievers) who were about 18 months older than she so she had peers probably for the first time ever.