I�m new to this board and have been following some of the posts on math acceleration with interest as I have an 8-year-old daughter who has the opportunity to skip a few years of math. Her teacher recently called us in to meet with her and the school curriculum person and suggested having her jump two years of math so that when she is in 3rd grade in the fall she would go to 5th grade math.
I am hesitant to do this. My reasoning is that our daughter is perfectly happy doing grade level math and has not complained of being bored. I know she finds the work very easy but both she and I are okay with that as she�s very busy with sports, music and other activities. I really like that she�s enjoying being a child and don�t want her to feel any academic pressure at this age. She is very social and confident and part of my thinking is that right now I feel like she�s so in sync with her friends that I don�t want to rock the boat. What if having her skip a few years of a subject makes her feel like she�s different and not in a good way?
My husband is focused on the fact that the teacher said that based on her scores that the next two grade levels up would still be easy for her. He wants us to do what the school recommends and thinks that it might motivate her to start to enjoying math as much as she enjoys sports and music and start to develop an identity of herself as someone who is good at school.
The two of us have been in a kind of at a deadlock on this issue for a few weeks. I�m now second-guessing myself and worried I�m projecting my own biases of the perfect childhood on to my daughter. Can any of you walk me through your own thinking process and explain what tipped the scales in favor of one decision or another? Are there other issues that I should be thinking about but am not?
