Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Experience with a second time grade acceleration?

Would anyone share their experience in doing a second full year acceleration? DS is currently in second grade. He did not attend first grade. He asked if he could go to fourth grade next year. Does anyone have experience with this?

JT,

Our son skipped 2nd and 4th. He is 8 now and is finishing up 5GT. From an academic perspective, we felt compelled to allow this as he was totally bored. His current teacher has suggested that she does not feel 6th grade will offer him any challenges and that we should consider another jump. So he would start next year as a 9yo 7th grader.

I initially had no concerns about him skipping, but I am really questioning where this is going. Does he go to HS as a 10yo? He has an older brother (+ 5 years) and usually has no issues dealing with older kids. We will be meeting with counselor, middle school principal, and others in the next few weeks to discuss placement. We just did state testing this week and he was 'intimidated' when he went into testing and everyone there was so much older than him.

We attend a virtual public school and day-to-day interaction is limited - both a good thing and a bad thing, imo.

pa

DD9 has done 2 separate grade skips and is in need of another, but we are not sure whether or not we will do another one.
She skipped from kinder into 1st grade after a few months at age 5, then this school year she skipped into grade 6 from grade 3. Socially things have gone pretty well, she seems to feel like more kids "get" her in gr 6 than did in grade 3, however she is still not really challenged, she has high As in all of her classes and is currently working on gr 8 math at home. She will be ready for all other gr 8 classes by the time August comes around, but she does not want to skip into a class with even bigger kids than she is with right now.
The first month of the skip this year she was happier than we've seen her in a long time at a school, but as the semester has gone on she has gotten a bit dragged down with the larger volume of work, and the realization that the jump from gr 3 to 6 was still not enough for her. However, she is still happy at school, loves her teachers and has some friends.
We too wonder where the grade skipping will end - she is still very much a 9 year old in her need for a play ground and silliness, but when her brain isn't stimulated she is so miserable that noone, including her, can stand to be around her. We are actively looking at various alternatives, like subject acceleration next year and testing out of classes.

My daughter skipped 2nd and 6th grades (and is now in 7th). There were pretty much 0 issues with the first skip. The kids were not that much older than her, and she was in a small school with small class sizes.
I would say we've noticed some social issues with the second skip. Nothing horrible, but my daughter does feel slightly out of step (socially) with her classmates. At the school dance, she brought a book and read under a table the whole time, and she has made comments about her friends getting a little boy crazy. She has gotten teased a little bit about being a "know-it-all", but that came from the kid who was previously the "know-it-all" in the class she skipped into.

Sports at the middle school (combined 7th and 8th grade teams) have been a mixed bag. She was fairly out-sized in soccer; had some limited success in swim; and lost a lot, but had loads of fun, in tennis.

Academically, we are happy with the skips. 7th grade has been slightly challenging at times (mainly filling in the gaps in math) but for the most part it has been easy enough that I cringe to think how bored she would be in 6th. Luckily 8th grade will involve some subject acceleration as well.

One of the more frustrating things has been coordinating summer activities. Some camps go by last grade level, some by next grade level, and some are by age. My daughter was mildly upset to find out that a camp she loved last year is now closed to her because she skipped through the last grade they accepted.

Best of luck to you,
-S.F.

My oldest DS8 skipped 1st through 3rd grade and went from K to 4th grade directly.

He did both 5th and 6th grades in one academic year and is now completing 7th grade.

He finds the academic work challenging for the most part and is starting to work hard on emotion control and social interaction


Our youngest skipped 1st grade and is completing 2nd and 3rd grade this academic year.

Academically he is mostly challenged but he is a very free spirit and anti-conformist and is acting out because he chafes at the schedule of doing work on demand an in the time allotted as opposed to being allowed to do work on his own timetable.

You could just lie about her grade. I mean, it's summer camp, right? Not a big deal. We lied about my DD's age by a few months so that she could meet the cutoff for attending camp with her grade-mates, and it worked out fine.

Alternatively, you could just call and explain the situation. I did that once with my DS, who wanted to stay one level down in soccer for one more session, even though he had just aged out of it. They said it was no problem.

Indeed, for things where size and coordination matter this summer, we're signing up DS for his grade he's in now. For things where maturity and thinking skills matter, we're putting him in his receiving grade.

The community soccer league has no problem with me signing up DS according to his age, letting kids play up and down as parents feel the kids are best placed.