We lived in MN when my daughter was supposed to enter Kindergarten in the fall that year - she had been tested at 3 1/2 and we knew IQ - reading level and approached her assigned school in the spring wondering if they would look at her test results and consider letting her skip K. They required us to have her tested again, sent a team of folks from the school (counselor, teachers, principal, etc) to her montessori school to observe her interaction - did she gravitate towards older children, how she handled herself socially - confidence level with older children, etc. She has a late Feb birthday and the psychologist gave some excellent advice to consider and some comparisons - First, he told us one of the "mistakes" in advancing gifted children is that you take a high achiever, used to being in more of a "leadership" role in many academic areas and run the risk of putting them with an older group where they are then more average in academics and this can be a huge upset in the dynamics they are used to and should feel. What he did was provide us with an academic comparison chart to children a full year to almost 2 years older than her. His advice was to make sure in the comparison she would still fall in the upper 10% of the class, which she did. In fact, the school advised us in advance of the testing, she would need to score in the 98th percentile or higher to be considered at all in skipping K. After all of the observations, chart comparisons and analysis we all made the decision it would be to her advantage to skip. The other great piece of advice we got was to go ahead and let her spend the last 2 months of the school year in an actual K class so that she would have the K experience, not really knowing she had missed the bulk of the entire school year, but would be able to relate to conversations about K.
Having said all of this, she was fine, top of her class from 1st grade to 4th grade - grades were excellent, no problems were apparent. We moved back to NC when she was in 3rd grade and as she was approaching the Christmas break of her 4th grade year she started begging to go back to 3rd grade. She said the kids were mean to her at school and would ridicule her as the smart kid and laugh when she incorrectly answered something in class. The other issue was at that age she was more naive than some of her peers and wouldn't get the "jokes". She was and still is a very "black and white" person and takes things very literally. The age difference became an issue for the first time - there were children almost 2 years older than her and none closer in age than 14 months. The psychologist had warned about these peer pressure differences and they had finally emerged. It got to the point of her actually crying almost every morning, begging daily not to have to go to school and to please put her back into 3rd grade. We talked with the principal who refused to make the change because of her EOG (End of Grade) test scores and grades. We had to switch to another school where the principal agreed to move her back and guaranteed he would keep her motivated, and he did. I'm sure we could have forced the issue and insisted she stay where she was academically exceeding but the emotional/social struggle was too painful to put her through. I don't regret making the original decision to skip K, and don't regret moving her back when SHE wanted and needed to be moved. I'm thankful she was able to articulate her need to move back and not sure all children would be able to do this. A 4 or 5 year old looks at friends and social situations quite differently than an older child.
Just food for thought and something to keep in mind when you are trying to make your decision. She is now a 9th grader, was totally bored in school during middle school, but had so many other outside interests it worked out ok - and she was happy socially. High school provides more academic challenges and opportunities, with IB and AP programs offered there are many ways to keep her mind challenged.
Good luck with your decisions!
