We had a different idea of "gift of time" given to us by the psychologist who tested our son when we were wondering about early entrance to K. She said, "Let him play at home another year, and you parents take a break for a year - you'll have lots of advocating to do throughout his school career." It was good advice after just learning our kid was PG, and we used the time to read everything we could and plan what worked best for our kiddo at that time.
We ended up having DS7 skip 1st grade, so really with these kids, like others have said, when the gift of time occurs can shift throughout their schooling, depending on many factors.
Yes, I totally agree. For us, DS6 never did well in a 3yo program and we pulled him out and didn't have him in another program until 4. Even then just a few hours a week. It worked well for us. Then he skipped K and started first. I am glad we did it that way, and it was nice to have a year that was fairly worry free. He still did tons of academic stuff on his own that year, but it just wasn't in school.
