I think blackcat is right - you can't assume that kids will automatically get along better with older kids. But the flip side to that is that you can't assume that the child who struggles socially after a skip would have been any better off NOT skipped. Many gifted kids just won't find their people until much later in life than primary school, and some of them will cope better with that than others. If they are going to have a rough time socially either way, maybe social fit is not the most important rubric to use?
My skipped child is not doing brilliantly from a social perspective in her new grade (not terribly either). BUT there is not a adult involved who thinks a) she should not have been skipped b) she would be better off socially if she hadn't been skipped. She's in the best situation we can manage for her in our particular circumstances, and the reality is that "least worst right now" still ain't that great...
She's at least not curled up in the fetal position, sobbing and begging not to go....
People often talk about acceleration as if only making a skip was an active choice, as if not skipping was "doing nothing" or was a neutral decision. If you come to a place in your life when you have to consider skipping a child (or retaining them, and I've been there too) I think it's really valuable to realise that BOTH options are active choices, BOTH options have pros and cons and that you will NEVER know for sure how the other choice would have worked out - but chances are, if you were faced with that choice there's a high probability that neither option is ideal....
We were ecstatic the first year after DD's skip. Academically, socially, on all fronts it was like a magic bullet... That feeling hasn't lasted but I still think we did the right thing. I wish doing it again to get another year like that was a realistic option, but really it's not.
