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    Joined: Oct 2012
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    Hils Offline OP
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    Hi- looking for some advice. We are a military family that just moved from Northern VA to the Morongo Basin in CA. Our 12 year old son grade skipped from 1st to 2nd seamlessly - it helped provide a more challenging environment but he has always been able to work at least 1-2 years beyond his grade level.

    Due to limitations set by the school district, he is repeating almost an entire year of math (he took Pre AP Algebra 1 last year.) His middle school can only offer Integrated Math 1. He is pretty bored in most other subjects except his piano course where the teacher is thrilled to challenge him and have an excellent accompanist for the chorus.

    Long story short, after drawn out discussions with the school district, the only option that was offered was to grade skip him into high school so he could have access to advanced math and a variety of other electives. Initially, we (son and I) thought that a 12 year old in high school would be too socially challenging.

    Now that he is a month into school and frustrated with pace of his classes, he has been reconsidering the idea.

    two questions- does anyone know what would be the implications of moving up to high school and then changing school districts (to another state). If we ended up back in VA in two years, could he go back a year if he needed the credits to graduate?

    Are there age requirements to participate in sports? He is a great swimmer and could hold his own on the high school team. A little harder to compete against growing boys that have hit puberty... but I know he wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to be on the team.

    Has anyone out there skipped 8th grade (or has a child that has)? How were the adjustments?

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    Originally Posted by Hils
    Has anyone out there skipped 8th grade (or has a child that has)? How were the adjustments?
    Possibly the question might be less about which grade(s) were skipped, and more about how many grades were successfully skipped?
    In other words, whether others have had success with multiple grade skips?
    What were the issues (positive/negative impacts) experienced by a child who was 12 as a high school freshman?

    Yes. It can work quite well. smile
    Until others chime in, there are many anecdotes and resources linked in this acceleration roundup.

    Originally Posted by Hils
    does anyone know what would be the implications of moving up to high school and then changing school districts (to another state). If we ended up back in VA in two years, could he go back a year if he needed the credits to graduate?
    This may be best answered by checking each State's High School graduation requirements, as well as the entrance requirements for any college/university your child wishes to apply to. Some possible links to help you begin your research:

    1) California High School graduation requirements - https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/hs/hsgrgen.asp

    2) Virginia High School graduation requirements -


    3) There are many excellent resources available to assist parents and/or high school students with creating a high school transcript. Creating such records can be helpful in suggesting (or advocating for) course substitutions to bridge any potential gaps in graduation requirements between districts or States. A few links to get you started:
    - Article on Davidson Database: https://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10631
    - A to Z homeschooling: https://a2zhomeschooling.com/teens/homeschool_transcripts_template/
    - HSLDA: https://hslda.org/content/highschool/academics.asp#transcripts

    Originally Posted by Hils
    Are there age requirements to participate in sports?
    This may be best answered by reading up on your State's High School Interscholatic Athletic Association. I believe the current link for California's is: http://www.cifstate.org/landing/index

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    aeh Offline
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    indigo, as usual, has already covered many of the crowdsourced and official state references.

    On the anecdotal side, yes, I do know several people who have grade accelerated into being 12 or younger while enrolled in high school or higher (some accelerated earlier to reach that point), both males and females. Of course there are adjustments, and of course, some of them are more challenging than others, as is the case for nearly all educational solutions for HG+ children. On balance, though, I think all of them view their path as net positive.

    I would like to call this a positive, but some others might view it as a negative, so I think we'll just leave it as a value-free phenomenon: being an HG preteen in the teen world of high school can allow an individual to observe the adolescent social-emotional maturation process (Mating Rituals of the American Teenager, among other things) somewhat more objectively, prior to personally experiencing hormone-driven emotional volatility, and while still slightly outside of the stream.

    I expect you already have some sense of the intellectual/academic positives, or you wouldn't be entertaining this idea. Learning work ethic and healthy failure are equally, if not more, important possible benefits.

    Sports are generally age-limited at the upper end. So if you are good enough, you can "play up", but you generally can't play "down", with a lower age group. Hence the age brackets named "U[age]" or "[age]U". Some sports allow you to continue playing with your age group, even when grade skipped, if you can document that you have historically played by age, not grade.


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    Hils Offline OP
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    Thank you - indigo and aeh (you are always on point and great with resources and suggestions)

    I'm not sure what testing would be expected by the school district to grade skip, but I suggested to my son that he should think about it and make a decision soon.... the further into the school year, the harder the transition (I think.) I'm on board with letting him make the decision... maybe even see if the Jr. High could let him take a day to see what high school is like?

    His older brother is 14 and in 9th grade. They would probably end up in same classes because it is a relatively small high school (Honors English, Integrated Math 2, Spanish, Chorus!) They get along well- but I worry that it could also negatively impact our older son. He is 2E- does great at grade level, but struggles enough with writing and inattentive ADHD that he has to work hard with lots of supervision. I worry that we are treading on delicate ground- especially given cross country moves that complicate life for military kids to begin with.

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    You are asking great questions, Hils! smile These are frequent topics of conversation, many here have BTDT.

    Originally Posted by Hils
    I'm not sure what testing would be expected by the school district to grade skip
    This may vary immensely... from nothing, to being required to make a pre-determined cut-score on end-of-year grade-level tests, to a complete IAS process... or anything in-between.

    Originally Posted by Hils
    I'm on board with letting him make the decision...
    To assist him in making an informed decision which he can "own," you may want to have discussions with him about issues raised in the acceleration roundup (linked upthread)... such as not being able to drive when classmates are, etc... to afford him the opportunity to consider future implications.

    Originally Posted by Hils
    maybe even see if the Jr. High could let him take a day to see what high school is like
    Yes, a school visit and a day to shadow are great ideas, to help assess "fit."

    Originally Posted by Hils
    older brother
    Lots of conversation about the best possible efforts to meet each sibling's needs may be helpful.
    Along those lines... lists of common strategies to help 2E, in case any of these ideas may be helpful for your eldest son, but not yet being implemented.

    These posts about having an older sibling in the receiving grade, may be of interest:
    - post 1 (March 2014),
    - post 2 (Oct 2018),
    - post 3 (Oct 2018).


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    Originally Posted by aeh
    I would like to call this a positive, but some others might view it as a negative, so I think we'll just leave it as a value-free phenomenon: being an HG preteen in the teen world of high school can allow an individual to observe the adolescent social-emotional maturation process (Mating Rituals of the American Teenager, among other things) somewhat more objectively, prior to personally experiencing hormone-driven emotional volatility, and while still slightly outside of the stream.

    Our DYS kid absolutely falls into this group. She just turned 13 and is in 9th grade. I can really see the difference between her interests and many of the other girls who are interested in boys, makeup, etc. It was humorous 2 years ago when she was giving dating advice to some of her classmates. Luckily we have moved to an area of the world where dating is not allowed until kids are much older so we don't have to deal with romance for quite a while. Academics are everything.

    Concerning sports - DD would never play sports with kids her own age if it meant she played with middle schoolers. She is absolutely a high school student. This means she is much smaller than the rest.

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    Val Offline
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    One of my kids was a 12-year-old 9th grader and I know 3 others who were in the situation or a similar one. One was fine. The others weren’t. It wasn’t easy for my son. After some suffering, he opted to spend an extra year in HS and things were better after that. The first year of college was much easier on him socially than it would have been otherwise, because he was close in age to other students and 17-year-old freshman aren’t all that uncommon. There was a very young member of his class, and he honestly didn’t fit in. I met them. His mother kept humble bragging about how young her son was. It was honestly nauseating. I met another similar family at a tour. Same thing. Both kids seemed awkward and out of place.

    I advise being extremely careful about a skip of more than one year. This board is very pro-skip and it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of it all. That’s unfortunate. I’ve heard stories about being essentially an outcast in high from people who had multiple skips.

    Your child will too young to be a peer in the eyes of a great many of his classmates and will be viewed as an oddity by many of them. They may be polite, but not accept him --- because they won’t know how. You and/or your child can decide that these kids are peers, but being a peer is a two-way street.


    At this point, the counterargument will be "But it works for some!" Fine. But it can be very difficult for some, which is why it's important to think about it very carefully.

    I’m painting a grim picture, but it’s deliberate because I think that this board overall, including the wishful fantasy thinking below, is dangerous in its rosy view of grade skipping.


    Originally Posted by aeh
    ...being an HG preteen in the teen world of high school can allow an individual to observe the adolescent social-emotional maturation process (Mating Rituals of the American Teenager, among other things) somewhat more objectively, prior to personally experiencing hormone-driven emotional volatility, and while still slightly outside of the stream.

    This would be amusing if the consequences weren’t so potentially serious. Though not amusing in a nice way; it's very arrogant and superior-sounding. smile

    I know a former 12-year-old who watched this stuff and it brought him to tears. No, not my grade skipped son. He was just confused while knowing he was too young for that. It was another kid who was reduced to sobbing by typical adolescent-type stuff (nothing serious or criminal — normal behavior). It was a big source of stress for him because he was “afraid he was destined to end up acting like that.” The thing is that he was still a young kid and lacked the experience to understand that he might not become like that, and it sat with him for a while.

    (This is a kid whose analytical abilities and sensitivity passed those of most very intelligent adults even at that age, so he may be an outlier even here.)

    Very smart kids are still kids. Being smart doesn’t give you experiences you haven’t had or physical development you haven’t had. It just gives you cognitive ability.

    Last edited by Val; 10/06/18 11:24 AM. Reason: More clarifying
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    Not relevant to OP but posting here because it is relevant to the discussion of >1 grade skips.

    To echo what Val said, we did not dare try pushing for another skip even though our DD could have easily done the academics standing on her head.

    Last year was quite a painful experience for her 7/8th grade is really where the bitchiness, backstabbing and shunning reaches its nadir and our DD was thoroughly unprepared for it. Physically she has been a late developer and grade peer girls really had a field day pointing it out to her constantly. Luckily, she made friends with a crew of rambunctious yet nerdy boys and all ended wel but I shudder to think what would have happened had she been more than 1 grade ahead of age peers.

    If your child is an early bloomer physically perhaps this will not be as much of an issue and every child is different - only you know your child best.

    This year our DD is a 13 year old freshman and is thriving at HS.

    Last edited by madeinuk; 10/06/18 02:36 PM.

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    My apologies if this came across as condescending. It would not, however, be fair to describe this as purely wishful fantasy, as it does describe the lived experience of myself and others I know well. I actually found the experience fascinating (probably as a foreshadowing of my future profession), and personally helpful as a preteen, as it allowed me to separate somewhat the cognitive piece of navigating early/mid teen social-emotional questions from the experience of learning how to apply social cognition in live situations while in the midst of adolescence proper. In general, I view access to vicarious learning as a plus. And I am not alone among multiple grade accelerators who look back on our adolescence as being no more difficult (though perhaps in different ways) than those of our non-grade-skipped peers.

    But I mentioned that others have found it to be a negative because, as you say, there can be high stakes, and different individuals will have differing outcomes, based on where they are developmentally, and the nature of the exact setting into which they are placed, including their social support networks. And I know some of those individuals, too.

    I could equally describe people who could have, but did not, grade accelerate, and their poor outcomes.

    There are, naturally, persons in every combination of grade-skip/no grade-skip and outcome out there, which returns us to the individual nature of the decision.

    Being a peer is absolutely a two-way street, but that applies equally to age-peers who are not academic/cognitive peers as it does to the reverse. There are (as we so often observe here) trade-offs whatever path you choose.

    I would agree with you that any decision of this sort (to advocate for, accept, or refuse one or more grade-skips) should be examined very carefully, with an eye principally to the overall health, happiness, and development of the child. Perhaps we differ in the extent to which we view remaining in conventional grade placements as a neutral action.

    EDIT: I'll also add that a grade-skip one year doesn't mean that you can't reverse it in a subsequent year, if that is in the best interest of the child. Sometimes it's the right decision for that time, but not for a later time. One of our children was effectively two grades accelerated before high school, but then decided to spend an extra year in high school--which then turned into full-time dual enrollment by the time the additional school year started, with a net acceleration of nominally one year, but effectively back to two years by the time full-time college coursework commenced. (This isn't one-to-one comparable to the OP, as we home schooled for many of those years, but my point is the ability to change educational decisions from year to year, mid-year, or over the course of the summer.)

    Last edited by aeh; 10/06/18 08:21 PM.

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    I was single-grade skipped, but by the time I got to high school, I was taking more classes with the grade above mine than with my grade.

    I started taking dual credit classes as a sophomore (I was 14), and graduated after my junior year (the same week I turned 16).

    My church/family teaches that you shouldn't date until you turn 16, so I never went on a single date in high school. There were some hard nights because of that (prom, etc.), but overall it was nice to be removed from the teenage relationship drama.

    I went away to college the August after I turned 16, and finally found true peers for the first time in my life on "Honors Hall" of the university dorm and in my upper division math classes.

    I absolutely don't regret any of the acceleration. In fact, I wish my parents had been slightly more aggressive at pushing the school to challenge me.

    Obviously radical acceleration isn't the right choice for every gifted child. But for some kids it is. You know your child/ children best.

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