Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Today was a good day!

Congrats!
I practice the "don't ask, don't say" approach. If no one asks, don't mention anything! Like the others said, most kids accept the child readily. Most of the time, it would be only room mom who knows abt it and some kids telling their parents (in just a matter of fact way). If someone brings it up, just smile and say "it's the school's decision" and change subject. Works everytime because most pple would not probe further.

Congratulations! Good job with all your hard work! It always a challenge being the pioneer

Our DS7 accelerated last year, and it has been a great experience and an obvious right choice.

My only advice would be to refer to it as "acceleration" rather than "grade skipping". We ran into trouble at the beginning of the year with a few other children in the classroom who felt as if DS should have had to take 1st grade like them. With the help of his teacher we were able to have things settle down with those few children by reminding them that DS had already done the 1st grade work and he was ready for 2nd grade.

Good luck to you and your family!

Thanks everyone! I got the tip about about saying "accelerated" from Hoagies too, so obviously an important thing to note

Thanks Dottie! I KWYM that those kids will find SOMETHING to pick on a kid for regardless. I need to work on the the shoulder shrug. We had some practice with that because DD was getting a different curriculum after the accel. was agreed to and all the kids wanted to know why why why. The good thing was, dd didn't know why other than that "we were working on getting what she needed and to see where she was at." It really bothered her in the beginning but got old after a while so I guess that was good prep.

Our son's skip went by much more smoothly than we ever expected. As his teachers predicted, everyone already knew he was advanced anyway, so it really was no big deal.

We also accelerated him for Scouts, CCD, etc., too. So in most situations the age/grade disconnect just doesn't come up. People who don't know the background just assume he's the same age as their kids.

Yay! Congratulations on all your advocacy efforts paying off. We're in the middle of requesting a grade skip, so I know how much stress and work is involved. Yippee - I'm so happy for you and your DD!

Cookiemom, that's what I was hoping... most who know her won't be surprised (more surprised that the school did it because they just didn't ever do it). We plan to just move everything along to grade level as far as teams etc to stay on board with it.

st pauli girl... good luck to you! Your efforts will be rewarded. As you know, it just takes time. Hope to hear of your similar results soon!!! Good luck!

I can totally relate to this as we are going through this with our child this year as well. We were told by the school to NOT treat it as a "secret" because we don't want our child to feel it is something to be embarrassed about, but also to feel free to not bring it up unless someone else does, basically to just follow our own comfort level. At the school's suggestion, our child did tell a few friends and it seems to be getting around quietly that way. So far, so good, but we did already get two strange phone calls from different parents calling for obviously pretextual reasons, who then asked for info, so be on the look out for that. Good luck!

Berteau, I was kinda hoping it would quietly work it's way out over the summer but the school is definitely all about keeping it secret right now. Ineteresting about the weird calls. GREAT! LOL! We need to start a separate support group! HAHA!

DC will be going upstairs to shadow the kids that she will then be in class with next year so I am hoping that raises some suspicions and then it starts to slowly leak out so that it's not all at once. I know it's all part of this whole thing though. Let me ask you... has it been done in your school before? I think if more kids did it it wouldn't be such a big deal but because this is new to everyone at our school they are all afraid of what is to come because of it (calls from parents wanting this and that etc.) As I explained to the school, they have now been provided with a great tool with the IAS (that they had no clue about until we met with them) and that if children meet the criteria and they qualify... THAT'S A GOOD PROBLEM TO HAVE!

Good luck to you and keep me posted. I am sure next week will bare some questions once word gets out that she spent all week in the next grade but luckily there is only 2 days of school left after next week so I may not have to hear all the chit chatting! *biting my nails!*

If your DC is going to shadow soon, then I'm guessing the cat will be out of the bag then. That is how it was with our DC anyway. They recently sent our DC to the higher grade for a couple things to at least get her introduced socially to some of the kids she will be with next year. I'm not sure what/if anything the teacher in that grade told the class but the kids seem accepting of her so far. She says some of the kids say hi to her in the hall now, etc.

Our DC will also be the first in the school to do this but in our case it was at the school's suggestion. They had the IAS already and set up a team to complete it, so maybe they are open to it for other kids also, I really don't know.