Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy If you or your child skipped a grade...

I'm very curious about grade skipping. In that, if you skipped a grade, did you do it because there were problems that might fixed with a grade skip (behavior, mentally checking out, etc.) or because you had a perfect student with perfect grades. Or, was there another reason?

My second question is did the issues resolve after the grade skip? Or if life was "perfect," did issues arrive after the skip?

Thanks for your help in satisfying my curiosity. Yes, I have a grade skipper, and I'm just reflecting on "issues."

DS skipped second to get into a TAG program and to have material and instruction at his level of ability. There was some frustration with the simple math last year, but no big issues. So far so good, except he's caught up and continues moving faster. Another change might be needed next year.

DS is not skipped, but spends more than a third of his day with the next grade up. This change was made at the suggestion of his teacher, who felt she had little to offer him and that his time was being wasted in her class. I offer this experience because I think it is unusual. His teacher suggested that a full skip would likely be more appropriate, but told us it would probably not be supported by the school. For various reasons we chose not to pursue it, which I think was the right choice.

I think the placement has improved things, but it by no means is fully appropriate. The work is still very easy for him. However, he is not complaining, which is what we were aiming for. Also, his writing skills have greatly improved.

DD skipped from the middle of K to the middle of 1st. The reason why is because very little differentiation was happening in K and she just didn't seem to be learning much. She wasn't complaining because she probably didn't realize how boring it was or how things could be different. Since she was close to the age cut-off to be in the next higher grade anyway, we did it. I don't know that I'd do it with a child in a higher grade, where there might be more academic gaps. If a parent has been working a lot with a child at home, that would minimize some of those gaps. After the skip, she didn't have any problems at all, except that she was a bit behind in writing. They had hardly done anything in the first part of K in terms of writing, and I hadn't been working on it with her at home. And she was diagnosed with ADHD that year but she would have problems focusing no matter what grade she is in. If she was in second grade this year instead of third, she would have the same focus issues, except maybe they would be worse if the material was too boring. In the next grade up, there were some very advanced kids (lots of first graders reading chapter books), and DD was "high average" for the rest of that year, but the next year she began to move up and now she is one of the top achievers in her grade (in terms of test scores). Now we have the problem where the work is too easy again, and the teacher does almost nothing to differentiate.

Our ds12 skipped 6th grade this year and went to 7th. We were worried about underachievement after years of not having to really work to get As and after we saw his perfectionism starting to hamper his risk-taking. If he didn't know something, he didn't want to admit he didn't know and so therefore wouldn't ask questions so he would know. That was something that needed to change.

The skip has been very good for him. There's not so much an intellectual challenge (except in math which is accelerated and introduced concepts he missed in 6th grade very, very quickly) but there is the executive function challenge, that we're still helping him to overcome.

Unfortunately, I don't see the intellectual under-challenge changing until high school. He has voiced that much of his day is spent listening to the teachers tell the kids who don't want to be there to stop talking. If he hadn't made some wonderful new friends I would have pushed harder to have him home-schooled.

I skipped 2nd grade because my 1st grade teacher had let me do all the 2nd grade work during my 1st grade year. The skip was fine in elementary school, but I was socially behind during junior high and had a lot of emotional issues during the ages 11 - 14.

Ds7 could possibly benefit from a skip, but I am worried that it might further isolate him socially from his peers. We'll see.

DD9 was skipped a year and placed in the daily GT pullouts that together make up half her day, which claim to work another year ahead, for an effective 2-year skip. She sits in a normal grade-level class (so, 1 year skip) for the other half of the day.

In DD's case, sitting in her age-peer class taught her that she was undeserving of an education. She was caught between two of her fundamental personality qualities: her burning desire to learn, and her deep-seated desire to please. Her first need was not being met, which caused her tremendous stress which she did not release due to the second. The result was explosive behaviors at home, escalating into self-harm. Perfectionism, self-doubt, and task avoidance were rampant.

We yanked her out and homeschooled her in order to heal her fractured psyche, and we advocated for the grade skip (and eventually bypassed the school and made it happen without them) so she could return and have the social aspects of school she still craved.

After most of the year back in school, the situation is certainly much better, but by no means perfect. DD is still bored out of her mind for half the day.

Early entry-- kind of-- my DD was homeschooled for K and then entered 3rd grade as a 6yo in the middle of the following year. She did all of the third grade curriculum in about six weeks, and then followed up with 4th and 5th grade the year following that. She officially remained a "5th" grader the following fall with a 6th grade placement, and this continued into high school, where it ceased to matter and once we realized that she was outstripping even what AP courses could offer her, we completed that grade skip (9th to 11th). This has been what is tolerable and what places her in the top 10% in her weakest areas-- executive function (she is 3-4y younger than classmates), and written work. I'm not necessarily suggesting that this placement strategy is a GOOD idea, just explaining the logic of it. This way we have to ask for relatively few curriculum adjustments. We've learned the hard way that enrichment is best conducted as a covert, don't-ask-don't-tell kind of thing. DD has studied psychology, sociology, and other topics on the side.


No, not really. Oh, sure-- for a time, they get better through novelty alone, but then (IME) HG+ kids tend to rise to the challenge fairly quickly, and the advantage is lost again and it can be time for another "jump" in difficulty, which schools often resist.

NO problem.

Our experiences with our DD (likely PG) are nicely summarized by Dude's explanation of their observations. She tends NOT to engage with teachers for fear of "bothering" them, and to assume that SHE is wrong, not the teacher or the rubric/key.

My daughter was skipped from the middle of kindergarten to the middle of first grade. She was very unhappy in kindergarten and was much happier in first grade. It was a big improvement. However, the problem is that the pace of learning isn't any faster in a higher grade and it wasn't a long term solution. I'm glad she is in the higher grade, but it wasn't enough.

My son goes to first grade for part of he day from kindergarten and that is working well.

DS11 skipped kindergarten with a birthday that was a week past the cutoff for first grade, and this year he skipped 6th grade as well. Since 2nd grade he has been accelerated 2-3 years in math, and now is taking Algebra 1 (and Video Game Design) through the e-school while attending the regular school for his other 5 classes.

He certainly has never been a "perfect student" -- he suffers from near-terminal laziness, mostly due to never having been challenged at anything, and a bad case of perfectionism run rampant in terms of never wanting to try anything new because he might not know the answers on the first try.

We've just kept moving him ahead to try and find something challenging for him and keep him from hating school so much. And, frankly, getting him through school more quickly at this point is reason enough.

I look back and realize that I should have been skipped, but I was a teacher-pleaser and loved schoolwork, even though it was never any challenge. It would have helped me tremendously to have learned to study and work at something along the way.