My issues:
1. totally selfish - I don't want DS leaving home 1 year earlier. That's so hard for me to swallow. I know people say the child may take a gap year. But how can anyone really predict what your child is going to do in 10 years?
Well-- you can't. But it seems to me that using this as a reason to not skip at THIS point is, well-- predicting 10 years into the future. LOL.
2. is my child really that capable? Basically, I am projecting imposter syndrome on my child.
Presumably, if a skip WOULD seem like the best choice, er-- then that cannot possibly be the case. Too many other people have to agree with you about that high ability, and they have no reason to do so if they aren't of the opinion that he IS that capable.
3. Will skipping a year actually reduce his accomplishments and the things that go with them (ex. scholarships), because there will be more capable kids in his new grade?
Uhhhh-- see #1. Don't look that far down the road. Please. If you try, you DO run the risk that a child will, by that time, have discovered the myriad ways to entertain and challenge him/herself OUTSIDE of acceptable activities... oy, do I know this one.
DO. NOT. PASS. GO. here. Seriously. Bored/unchallenged kids who are HG+ are a danger to themselves and everyone around them as adolescents. TRULY.
4. will my DS be upset about the skip when he is older?
Well, unless you have the most remarkable adolescent on earth, he's bound to find SOMETHING to criticize in your parenting decisions, and he's probably going to trot it out at the most hurtful moment imaginable. This is what teens do. I wouldn't be so afraid of that if I were you. I
bitterly resent my parents NOT skipping me. It led to all manner of bad, bad, BAD things, and it was sheer luck that I didn't wind up a high school dropout and teen mother with an arrest record as long as my arm. No kidding.
As someone else pointed out, NOT skipping may be the status quo, but it is not necessarily benign.
