Can your child visit the kindergarten classroom for a day? My DS visited his kindergarten when he was only 3.5 and then started at 4.5. He left the visit excited and with the kindergarten teacher fully on board for early entry.
We knew very early on that DS was "out there" in terms of development and could not fathom him doing kindergarten work at the usual age, so I saw early enrollment as a sort of preventive measure. I wanted to build in a skip while he was still happy and engaged in school rather than waiting for things to go sour before doing something radical.
Early entry worked really well for us, but it still took another skip later on to make a really good fit. We're vaguely planning to do a deferred college enrollment / gap year / study abroad after high school but will figure all that out when the time comes. The important thing for us is that DS has always been challenged and happy and never lost his love of learning.
