Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Young 5's or Summer Birthdays

There are a handful of private schools in our area but are costly. Some of them are out of our price range. One is a Montessori school that I would love from him to attend but again, it's costly. We could do a kinder only option, but that's something we would have to talk about.

He WAS in a Prek class three times a week but we had to pull him. The preschool wasn't willing to work with him, academically or socially. He was being bullied and set aside by his teacher. It was a bad experience. I agree in attending kinder and skipping 1st grade. Though, the school here, the kinder class isn't play based. It's full on school! We took a tour and I was shocked. It's more like 1st grade was for me.

He is gifted but not mature. He's a silly 4 year old who loves fart jokes! He pushes and hits, runs, and laughs. It's like two different ages sometimes.

I would not hold him back a year for kindergarten. We had several suggestions of doing that with DS9 (summer bday), that he wasn't socially ready for kindergarten. And a suggestion that he repeat kindergarten, that he wasn't socially ready for 1st grade. Well...he wouldn't have been "socially ready" a year later, either.

We lucked out and had the most fabulous kindergarten teacher, and he was quite happy. We are homeschooling now; the gap between the academic and social abilities is too great for school to deal with. But kindergarten worked, and I'm happy we ignored everyone who told us to wait.

This is why I like the term "asynchronous" so much better than "gifted". They are still kids even if they are really smart.

I would look strongly at Kindergarten - as long as it's not boring he may get something out of it. It probably depends a lot on the teacher.

Also, if there are any summer camps for gifted (I mean asynchronous) kids in your area that may be worth looking at too.

I will preface this with the hallowed caveat: when you see one gifted kid, you've seen one gifted kid. And I'll add that I'm a middle-aged giftie who still likes wriggling and fart jokes, so I don't necessarily identify those traits as part of maturity (in fact, I believe I've seen an article recently about a study that correlated adult playfulness with giftedness).

That said, the common mismatches I've seen are:

- Interest in subject areas ahead of age peers (which can be anything: science, literature, current events, entertainment, etc).
- Sense of social justice.
- Capacity for sharing and other pro-social behaviors.
- Self control.

This is all relative. We know that an 8yo is still going to be having impulse control issues, we also expect that there has been significant improvement from when that child was 5. When you put 8yos and 5yos together in a room, you should note the differences. If you put your 5yo in that room, and note that he behaves more like the 8yos, he gravitates towards them, and the 8yos are more accepting of him than any of the other 5yos, that's a pretty good sign of a mismatch.

I see that sort of phenomenon with my DD10 in mixed-age groups ALL. THE. TIME.

I wouldn't hold back gifted kid because of maturity. Think of it this way.. instead of worrying about next year in K. What is he going to be like in High School a year older than most of his peers. Years ago when I was looking at sending vs. holding back my DD. (I didn't and later regretted it but she isn't a gifted kid and struggled academically) I read research that showed problems with 18 year old H.S. seniors. who had been held back in Kindergarten, particularly boys. These kids were more likely to mentally check-out and not meet up to expectations, and get into trouble.

Sure, but that is just one child. But they're not that common,it's just the rest of us with kids who think farts are hilarious are too embarrassed to speak up. Or, that we mistake interest in space flight for maturity.

That is exactly my DD's situation.

She probably can handle full-time schooling next year. She already goes to school 8:00 to 1:00 all week and when she comes home, she does her extracurricular activities which are rather demanding and difficult.

We're not doing K next year because of poor academic fit. DD can handle all day of having fun playing but she shouldn't have to sit through hours and hours and inappropriate busy work when she is 5 or be expected to work independently with worksheet isolated from peers. We'd be officially enrolled at a charter school so we'll be able to enter a B & M school next year as a first grader but I'm not sure if that'd going to work for DD.

I wouldn't hold her back a year for maturity reasons and she is very immature in many ways. She is just so goofy, silly, and fun-loving that she tires people around her and goes crazy too often.

We had our son tested to see if he should go to kinder at 4, and the tester said that she would have him go to kinder with agemates to learn all the social/do school stuff, and then skip 1st. It all worked out well for us, though there were lots of meetings before the school agreed to a grade skip. There is a lot more play stuff in kinder, so nonacademic stuff to keep your kiddo less bored. First, at least in our state, is still a learn to read/learn to do very basic math year, with much less play than kinder, which my kiddo would have hated. Just throwing that out as a possibility.

I will also add that I wouldn't hold back a gifted kid for maturity reasons unless you are sure that your gifted kid is not within the range of maturity for that grade. There is a ridiculously huge range of maturity in the early grades. GT kids may stand out more because a teacher might see how much they can do academically and subconsciously expect them to be better behaved. But GT kids are like all kids -- they come with a variety of maturity levels. In all likelihood, they are within acceptable range

In general, the research does not support good long-term outcomes for retentions and redshirting (individual cases, of course, may vary), especially for boys, who have a significantly increased likelihood of high school dropout, compared with non-retained age/ability-matched peers. Granted, the research is focused on retentions for academic or social maturity reasons, not GT students. The one place where being old-for-grade does appear to be somewhat advantageous is in competitive sports, where being more skilled or stronger because you are older appears to translate into being perceived as more talented, and thus more worthy of playing time and coaching attention. This really only works if your late birthday is after August 1st, though, because there are fairly strict birthdate cutoffs for competitive team sports in most communities.

Agree with st pauli girl that I wouldn't delay entry for maturity reasons. I would go further, and say that an age-eligible child not being within the range of maturity for kindergarten-age students is an even stronger argument for being in school, in order to access services for social skills development. Especially considering the diversity of social-emotional skills in primary-age children.