Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion grade accelerated, physically small; need advice

My DS8 is grade-skipped and also fairly small for his age anyway, but he has some good company in his class with some other kids the same size who are just naturally smaller. But some of his best friends are at least a foot taller. He leans toward being nonathletic, but really he's probably OK but just extremely cautious. He has not been eager to play team sports, ever, but he really enjoys fencing, for which age/size doesn't matter so much. Around here, many sports activities that are outside of school are based on age, not grade (hockey, soccer, etc). You could see if he's interested in individual sports too, where age doesn't really matter.

I personally would not recommend undoing a grade skip in elementary school for this reason alone. From your post, it sounds like he wants to play with his friends, not necessarily his agemates. His friends will then be a grade ahead of him, so he will lose out on that if he repeats a grade.

Elementary school is so circular and repetitive (usually), that I imagine it would be pretty awful for a kid who already does well with agemates to go down a grade. If going down a grade for PE is an option, and your kiddo wants to try that, it can't hurt to ask.