I think it is very difficult to predict, as it depends so much on the specific child. But I think you knew that...

My own experience was largely positive. I also just missed the cutoff, and was entered early, skipped once at third grade, again at ninth, and left high school a year before graduation to enroll in the university. So four nominal skips (although the early entry to K was negligible). In the grades that encompass third through sixth, I was in various forms of gifted programming. In junior and senior high, I was not, but had a custom schedule, with additional acceleration in core academic subjects.

Factors that I think helped to moderate the peer social impacts include having HG+ siblings close in age, a community with a high performing peer group outside of school, and extracurricular interests that were not as affected by age/size (I was not an athlete). I am also rather small of stature, which may have steered me away from sports, irrespective of grade skips.

Regrets? Maybe a few awkward pre/early adolescent romantic encounters, which, at the time, I thought were awkward because of my age difference, but in retrospect, were just awkward because of my age, period.

Among my children, I have an early adolescent who skipped K and 4th, who appeared to be largely happy with the course of things while still in a b&m school. The one comment I have heard is a dislike for being treated (in a warm, cuddly, class pet kind of way) like a baby by classmates--although they consistently respected the academic aspects. This particular child is highly social. The others have been predominantly or solely homeschooled, so it hasn't come up as much.


...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...