how many of you have deferred to your children re: subject vs. grade acceleration, etc.
IAS version I have says "The student indicates that she does not want to be whole-grade accelerated" is an absolute contraindication to a full skip.
In May, when the misery of being in a not-hard-enough classroom was weighing heavy on her mind, she was wholeheartedly in favor of being skipped - and her reasons were social as much as academic.
In July, when the thought of being in a classroom of unfamiliar kids was weighing heavy on her mind, she decided that she was willing to forgo any acceleration in order to stay with kids she knew. So we said, "Take the tests and see how it goes - there's a possibility you'd be a second grader who goes to a third grade class for the ones you pass in," which was true - but I'll admit to leaving out the "but if you pass them all, you'll be a third grader." And honestly, at the time, I did not really expect her to pass as many as she has so far, whereas now I'd be surprised if she didn't pass the remaining ones.
DD is slow to warm to new situations, and while she's improved tremendously over the last year, she still does not like social situation change. She went up a level in swimming last week, and when we got to the pool for the first day of the new class, she said she wasn't going to go to it - that she wanted to be in her old class, instead. I had to pick her up and carry her (thankfully not crying or kicking!) across the pool deck to the new class - where she settled in just fine. I think she will settle in just fine as a third grader, too.
If she had not originally been so strongly in favor of acceleration, we wouldn't have considered it. I think it's something that the kid has to really want. It's just hard to identify what's "what she really wants" and what's "she needs someone to carry her across the deck." And that's where I see the grown-up decision-making coming into play.
When I was 7-nearly-8, I had the opportunity to skip 3rd, and my parents gave me the choice of whether to do it or not. I chose not to - but my reason for not wanting to skip was that I didn't want to miss learning cursive. Had my parents said "Oh, we'll get you a cursive workbook and you can learn it over the summer," I think I would have taken the skip. (My mother has since told me that my parents were indifferent-to-opposed to the skip.) I don't know whether I'd have gotten a good outcome or a bad outcome from a skip, but I do feel that I turned down the skip for the wrong reasons.
