I do wonder if his stubbornness might be more related to giftedness than immaturity. Do you have any reason to believe that he might be *more* gifted than the typical kid in his school? Also, do you plan to keep him in this private school all the way through elementary? If not, I would take a look at how well the school you would likely later send him to would do in terms of differentiation if he was both one of the oldest and much brighter than the other kids in his grade.
Yes.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be a very large gap (social vs. intellectual) given your description-- and it may widen further or blaze into complete resistance to all directives. (I have a very stubborn/willful child whose preferred protest is this latter method, precisely.)
I hate to say this, but such children are often not possible to accommodate in a formal school setting until they are a bit older and have some of the rudiments of social maturity. (About 7-8yo, barring other considerations.)
This is a huge part of why we wound up homeschooling.
I don't know that I'd redshirt, because that may make the academic side so intolerable that your DS will earn the label (and adopt it as part of his self-image, too) that he's a "behavior problem" in the classroom, and that's who he is as a student.
On the flip side, opting for the acceleration can mean that he compares himself unfairly to a peer group that has greater maturity and fine motor development. The latter has been a problem for my DD.
Truthfully,
both things have been a problem for my daughter. The former would have been far, far, far worse if we hadn't done the acceleration, though. The gap between DD and agemates has widened
very significantly, and the greatest change occurred between four and eight years of age-- since then, her intellectual rate of development has slowed somewhat and her other areas of development have been 'catching up' to her intellectual peer group.
That's an individual thing, and not one that can be readily predicted. At three, we'd have predicted that a one year acceleration would be "fine" for her on all counts. We'd have been wrong.
