Oh dear. I've started reading articles and papers on underachievement and it's depressing/scaring the crap out of me (!!!!) What if a grade skip just sets Miss 7 up to fail? Josh Shaine's insider view on what underachievement looks and feels like to a child is seriously frightening...
http://www.geocities.com/josh_shaine/insideout.htmljojo
Hi jojo -
I'm coming in a bit late on the topic, but wanted to respond a bit to what you and a couple other posters have said.
The first is that nothing in my experience in "From the Inside Out" speaks to skipping at all. I agree with 95% of what Kriston had to say about what I am saying, noting only that I was never grade skipped, not even in 9th grade. Yes, what I wrote is frightening. And stark - it was painful to write it, but because it
does speak to the experience of many (but not even remotely all) underachievers, it had to get written.
You are not where my mother was. Your daughter is not where I was. And the resources both academic and interpersonal that exist today might well have made a huge difference in the isolation that both my mother and I faced. So, no, please do not despair! Think of it as a cautionary tale, rather than a horror story.
I'll disagree with Kriston's comment that "
most kids who suffer from underachievement do so because they weren't challenged early enough." I believe that is
an element, but not the key one. Unfortunately, the more I study this issue, the more I am concluding that there are some heavy duty personality issues involved that are hard to overcome.
I've worked with some families in home school situations and gifted school situations in which there was challenging material aplenty.
Obviously, there is far more out there to explore than I'm going to be able to touch on in a particular post - and I am certainly not going to pretend that I know your daughter!
So, three thoughts for you:
1) Let me assure you that skipping is not a particularly likely cause of underachievement, based on anything I have read or seen in my work.
2) Grinity is on target with the issue of challenges, generally speaking. It will be important for your daughter to acquire skills for learning/approaching topics that are difficult for her - and it is likely that only through such difficulty that she will effectively learn the "study skills," because otherwise they will have little or no utility to her until she hits a wall and is struggling - a hard time to have to learn them!
3) Behavior mod can turn into a very double edged sword very quickly. I would approach it carefully and use it sparingly.
That all said, in the traditional way of these things, Your Mileage May Vary!
Josh
