Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Advice needed - reverse grade skip???

Have her eyes checked for the reading things. Although she CAN read well, she may choose not to because of the small print. Her eyes may get lost on the page...and reading is not fun when that happens. A Behavioral Optemetrist helped my 5 year old a GREAT DEAL!

Ha, my daugther asks me daily where we are going and who we are seeing. She wants life to be one great big play date too. And loves music and drama. And never shuts up. But she does seem to quite like math now. She loves natural sciences and we have often joked she will probably end up a singing vet on TV or some weird combination of her interests and skills. LOVES activities like dissection. In fact lately she has been enthusiastically telling people she is "Going to be a brain doctor or a heart doctor - because you get to cut up dead people at university!".

MumOfThree - our daughters sound very similiar!!

We did have her eyes checked and she "should" be wearing reading glasses for all schoolwork/reading. She doesn't usually remember so it's always a struggle. She may need vision therapy, her eyes keep overcompensating more and more. I forget the word, overconvergence I think?

I just got her scheduled for full LD testing. They will redo the IQ testing as well. We'll see in a few weeks what that shows. I might get back to her eyes as well. Thanks!

I wonder how many kids who do a grade skip ultimately graduate in the top 10% of their high school class? Do such kids still excel or are they now "average" in their class of older kids? Your point about competing long-term for scholarships is a good one.

jack'smom, I've always wondered this as well. I guess I assume they should stay at the top. I have two friends who have grade skipped daughter's. They are only in upper elem. right now but remain in top couple of students. They seem to still be coasting even with the skip. I don't know what that will mean come middle/high school.

My daughter is a late March baby so she is on the younger side for her class anyway. If she were a fall baby, I wouldn't even worry quite so much about the skip. She's almost a year and a half younger than many kids in class.

Three things to consider: academical achievements, emotional fitness and Physical abilities.

1. Academic achievements are the least important. If a child is gifted, no grade level would satisfy him/her. Yet skipping the growing process is a sure way to create a child with high expectations with low abilities. There is certain amount of apprenticeship going on in boring daily life, which assures him/her to be able to handle "ordinary" tasks. "MN has higher standard than NC" is an irrelevant statement. For if MN has an average ACT score of 24, while NC has 23, it would show a big difference between the two states, however it has little bearing on individual schools, let alone for an individual child. The best a parent can do is to compare the course syllabus to see if there is any gaps needing extra attention.

2. Emotional fitness. Does she really fit in with the older kids, or she likes to take a passive role, or she likes to be treated as a kid sister? As parents, you need to make sure that she really belongs by observing how her friends treat her, and how she interacts with others in group activities, etc. It is harder to get leadership roles in a higher age group. How she handles it is an important factor.

3. Physical abilities play another big role. To handle it directly relates to emotional fitness. Since very often, it is something that you cannot make up no matter what you try.

In short, even a gifted child skips 3 grades, he/she can catch up academically very easily if test scores are used to measure. But a parent needs to be concerned with other things. In this day and age, one can find so many extra after school activities for a child to do, while school time is so short (mine goes like 9:15 -- 3:45), I find that skipping is hardly necessary. For elementary students, I am more than enough satisfied if the school can get my children to organize his/her backpacks, do and hand in homework on time.

I mention this because there are so many other factors in today's educational world. Homework is a big thing- alot of schools have lots of homework. Some of the homework is boring- you have to just hunker down and do it. I can imagine that a young-for-their-age child may have trouble doing it, not b/c they aren't smart enough but b/c they don't yet have the patience to plow through something tedious.
There is also the speed part- kids are expected to read/do math quickly. Again, it's not enough to just know the answer; you have to do it fast. Etc.
I'm sure some of it depends on what your school can offer your child. If they can't offer much, you might as well skip them a grade or more. Our local school has a great G/T program starting in 4th grade. By 8th grade, they will have skipped 2 grades in math compared to the regular curriculum. Our local h.s. offers 24 AP classes. If you skipped a grade early on and thus missed getting into the G/T program, I think that wouldn't be a good idea. On the other hand, if your G/T program is a joke, maybe it doesn't matter.

Our daughter for sure needs the grade skip thing. I think we have it for this fall. We're not too terribly concerned about the top 10% performance. Some things are bound to be off. We're sure she'll do fine, but mostly the grade skip/acceleration for us was just to relieve her real pain of being in the regular age-based classroom. Also, I think she'll have an impressive enough transcript from outside courses to balance out any grade issues.

Hi Spiritedmama - congrats on your move - I hope things are going well. Is school still in session where you live?

I would definitely not move from GT classroom to regular classroom AND undo the skip at the same time. We had a similar decision to make when DS left a 'very good' local private school that was very heavy on the product output demands, to our 'very good' local public school. At the private school we were called into meetings because he wasn't bringing his pencil to class regularly. When he switched to the public school, and I asked, timidly, at the first round of parent-teacher conferences, "W....w...what about his pencil? Does he bring it?"

The teachers, who clearly enjoyed DS for 8th grade, laughed and said "Of coures he forgets his pencil, and so do all the other kids" and one lifted up a box of about 100 pencils and indicated just how little a deal it was in that context.

The private school wasn't working ahead academically, but they were a year or 3 ahead in terms of organizational skills and output skill expected. DS learned a lot, but yes, DS PG and ADD, was thrilled to return to public school and have a lot of fun that year socially, be treated 'like a young gentleman' by the adults, and learn cool stuff without a lot of pressue to demonstrate this learning with papers and oral reports. (I wasn't thrilled, but we take turns!)

Of course you have MAP results - and if you found out that DD was going to be at the mean of 4th graders at her new school, then it might be worth while reversing the skip too. And it's worth following up on that, but I highly doubt she'll be below the 90% of MAP scores even if she keeps the skip.

Sitting in the recieving classroom speaks volumes, but school may be out by now.

Anyway - reversing a grade skip isn't the world's worst thing. We did that last August, and my DS is loving it. There is a philosophical question: Obviously it's ideal to have a kid work hard and see fruits of their labor - but if you have to choose between 'no work=amazing grades' and 'hard work = bottom 1/3 of a gifted classroom' which is better? As I've said, DS and I take turns! Thanksfully this year, (9th grade again)with the reversed skip-except in Math, and a really 'discussion orriented' private school he's getting both and it's beautiful to see. Will it last? We'll have to be flexible. Hopefully the school will flex with us.

So yes, I do feel comfortable with reversing skips, particularly in the High School years. (That is when the grades really count, right?) I don't think it's time yet for your DD. Repeating 9th grade when moving to a private school is a very traditional time to repeat a year,so DS, with his early birthday is still probably 18 months younger than many of the students.

Flexibilty is the key!
And hard data - like MAP scores and personal observation.

Smiles,
Grinity