I disagree with the idea that one needs to heed advice from many others regarding acceleration. This decision is so personal and so individual. I have been told so many times what *ought* to happen with my child based on scores or abilities or levels or evaluations and none of those involved really know my child or our options or the possible consequences of each decision. The "experts" have quickly been revealed to know very little about my child or our specific circumstances and skipping has mostly been recommended to help make a situation easier for administrators, not for the benefit of my child. It's easier to provide high school math in the middle school than the elementary, but that doesn't mean a kid has to be in middle or high school to receive it.
Mommajay -- you know your child and your situation the best. I agree with indigo's "if it ain't broke" approach. If your DD is happy currently, I wouldn't be inclined to skip because you are worried about a poor fit. If she's unhappy, that's a different situation.
I've heard countless times that PG children need to be radically accelerated or that gifted kids must have altered instruction or risk horrible underachievement or rebellious behavior or stagnation. The biggest benefit of DYS and similar for my family has been learning that families with PG kids approach this in a variety of ways -- and each approach has its share of anecdotal positives and negatives. What works depends on the family and the options and myriad details that only you can know about your family, but it is definitely possible to make this work without skipping. When my child was the age of yours, I asked the same question on a DYS list and got a huge range of responses. It helped me immensely to see the variety of possible ways to make this work. The whole process can be much more flexible than it may seem to someone with a young child. I know kids who thrived with multiple skips or single skips and kids who thrived for a while, but then needed/wanted to undo skips and did. I know of kids who have gone to college and then later gone to high school, kids who have not skipped and then in middle school been ready for college and skipped all of high school and went straight to college, and kids who have finished high school and a college degree simultaneously. There are lots of ways to make this work and most of them are hard, involve heavy parental involvement, and lots of reassessing and re-evaluating. Some families relocate for better opportunities for education in other locations. I'm not saying that it's easy and in other circmstances, skipping many grades would likely have worked great for us. But skipping doesn't have to occur now if you or DD are uncomfortable with it right now. It works for many folks and avoiding it works for many folks and none of us know enough about your circumstances to make sense of what your DD needs.
