I still fight this battle with myself. I was a teacher, and now work in the education field, so I was terribly cautious about not being "that" parent. I was actually the most adamant one in the family about not labeling DS (now 3 years, 10 months).
The conclusion I've come to is that as parents we have to think about what's best for our child. A teacher has to balance the needs of her class, and a school principal the entire school. Often times what is best for the large group is the structure of the traditional age-graded classroom without a lot of deviation.
We've recently switched preschools to a Montessori. While our son's traditional preschool was willing to work with us, even after he was accelerated to the next "grade" 4 months early, he was still being asked to do "letter of the day" type activities, when he is reading and doing math on a first grade level. We're only in week 1 of Montessori, but my fingers are crossed that it will be a good placement for him, at least for a little while!
Did you have any testing done? Near us we have the opportunity for a KTEA-II Brief Form and KBIT 2 for $120. I'm thinking of having it done just so if he scores as highly as we think he might, I can start conversations with the school district in the spring about either starting kindergarten early (less likely), skipping kindergarten all together (maybe slightly more likely), or at least having him switch classrooms for reading and math in kindergarten (the most likely). I feel some "hard data" will remove the emotion from the equation. Maybe it will work for you as well.
So no, you aren't being too pushy. You know what your son needs...now you just have to be the squeaky wheel until it happens.
Good luck!
Kathie
