Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Delaying Kindergarten

Having gifted kids who are young for grade is actually a great boon. Combined with a high achieving school system (the kind where other parents redshirt!) it means that there is a chance you can make things work in elementary until gifted programming or other meaningful acceleration options which do not depend on grade skips, like accelerated classes in middle school, roll around. With a regular or old for grade kid, chances are much higher that it's grade skip or go nuts, and in some school systems (and with some kids) a grade skip is simply not a feasible option - and even a grade skip that is supported by the school and works well for the child socially simply means the child is placed with regular peers a year older, not with true intellectual peers the way a gifted program (hopefully) works.
Just like PPs have said, forget the research, it was performed with regular and low performing kids for whom the additional year might give a much needed boost from the lower performing to the higher performing cohort in the classroom. Kids who are already beyond the curriculum do not need to be boosted even further out. It's making sure these kids are younger to make the classroom a better fit that works, and the research on accelerating gifted kids show that for them, accelerating is very beneficial.