I seem to read of a lot of situations where the child and parents want a grade acceleration, but the school denies it for one reason or another. We are kind of in the opposite situation. The school is offering for my son to skip 1st grade next year. While they aren't exactly pushing it, we're getting the strong sense that they think it's the right move. The parents are somewhat ambivalent but agree it's a no-brainer in terms of better meeting said child's academic needs, and are pretty confident that he would also be fine socially (at least in the short term). Any ambivalence we have stems from him already being young for grade and very small for age, which we worry could make things difficult for him socially a few years down the road.
There are several major pros to doing this, including one that has to do with doing it now rather than later:
*He is functioning at 2nd grade or higher level in all academic areas already, even including fine motor/handwriting. There won't be much for him to learn in 1st grade. He is already getting the idea that school should always be easy.
*He would likely have an instructional group in the classroom for reading and possibly writing in his new grade. Right now, the only truly on-level reading/writing instruction he gets is one-on-one weekly pull out.
*Most importantly, he has been going to first grade for math all year, he does fine socially there, and he already has a peer group and several friends (none close) in that grade. We think this would be the easiest time to make the transition because of this. Unfortunately he is still a classroom isolate in terms of math, though (hence the next point).
*Next year he will need to accelerate in math again, moving to a 3rd grade classroom, so if he doesn't make the whole grade skip now he won't have another chance at moving up along with peers that he knows from math class.
Our son, however, is very much against the idea. This seems to be more of a reflex reaction rather than based on any particular concerns, as far as we can tell (he just turned 6 and is not great at expressing his feelings). The only thing specific he has said is that he thinks the work might be too hard (we just completed an extensive testing process which showed him functioning similarly to an average 2nd-5th grader, depending on the subject, so we are quite confident this will not be the case!). We as parents agree that we would not pursue a grade skip at this time if he continues to feel this way. He's the one who has to live it. However, I am considering gently pushing him to explore the idea more before accepting this decision. Specifically, right now he already attends first grade for math every day. I would like him to spend a day (or more) visiting/shadowing the whole day in first grade. He's already comfortable in the classroom and with the teachers, so it doesn't seem like too much to ask. I think he might potentially see that he can easily do the work and get along with the kids for the whole day, and thus be more comfortable just staying with this group of first graders as they go into second grade next year. If not, we won't force it, but it would be nice for him to be going on something more solid than a knee-jerk reaction.
Does this sound reasonable to you all? He was against it when I floated the idea, but he could probably be bribed (er, I mean incentivized). Also, I'd love to hear any stories from others who had kids who were reluctant to grade skip, whether you ended up doing it or not, and how it turned out. I do want to listen to my kid, but it's also a big decision to leave in the hands of a barely 6 year old.
Thanks in advance for any feedback or insights.
