Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion grade accelerated, physically small; need advice

Sports outside of school at this age are age-based, not grade-based, so that represents a great opportunity for him to compete with other kids his age. I strongly recommend that option.

I'd also strongly caution you against rushing to judgement on the athletic tendencies or abilities of a 7yo... especially a gifted one, since their abilities in all other areas have a tendency to lag for a bit, then take a sudden, giant leap forward.

I'm not sure if this will help you or not because I have a girl who is actually fairly tall for her age. But she is two years younger than her classmates. As she is in middle school she is playing school sports, all of which are quite competitive around here. For the last few years she has always been among the smallest kids on her teams, but not always the shortest (she has kids who are naturally small and not redshirted along with a few girls who were redshirted specifically for sports), but she is now starting to grow and will be one of the tallest girls in a couple years.

The biggest advantage we have seen with her playing sports with her classmates, though, is that she is taught at a higher level and her athletic skills - she's a decent athlete, but definitely not a natural-born "athlete" - have risen to the challenge. For her it's been similar to how it's been with academics: if you teach it she will learn. I'm convinced that if she was playing with her agemates she'd be an decent athlete playing like the other 11 year olds. But since she's always gotten to play with her grademates she's a decent athlete playing like the other 13 year olds.

Too, she has skills that will help her athletically that other kids don't always have. She learns plays and rules incredibly quickly, she's very consistent in her performance because she's a bit of a perfectionist, and she understands the nuanced coaching she receives.

If he's small it's possible he's always going to be small compared to both his grademates and his agemates, and you can't keep holding him back until he's average-sized. But maybe emphasize to your DS the things he brings to athletics that other kids might not that could really benefit him. And, maybe see how much stock *he* is putting into these things.

In the meantime, I like the suggestion to find him a sport where small height is an advantage or at least doesn't really matter, or an individual sport like swimming or martial arts where he can build his athleticism without the direct comparisons to other boys.

Your ds sounds about the same age for grade as my dd12, who turned 7 about a month and a half into 2nd grade. She has always been young for grade b/c we started her a little early, but she's not atypically young IMO, but I also grew up where the K cut-off was 5 by Dec. 31st.

Mine is also very, very small. As a 7th grader now, she's just a hair under 4'8" and no more than 65 lbs. I also have a grade skipped dd who started school at a similar age to my dd12 and then skipped the last year of elementary. She, like others have mentioned, is taller than typical for our family so she doesn't stand out as younger.

While mine are girls and I'm sure that the issues are different for boys, a few things probably apply for both.

* Will he likely be short his entire life? Some boys just come from families where the men grow later in life and don't tend to be shorter forever. Some kids, like my dd, will be lucky to be 5'1" or so based on genetics. For a kid who is always going to be shorter than average, I figure that s/he is going to have to get used to the idea that s/he is just small and may not be competitive at sports that rely on height like volleyball and basketball. Even if the child is the oldest in grade and doesn't look as short as a result, eventually age stops being a benefit when everyone reaches their full height.

* Like others have mentioned, doing extracurricular sports with age peers might be a good alternative, but if he's in the 5th percentile of height for age, he's still probably going to be shorter than most of his age peers.

* What does your ds want? Does he mention wanting to be in the younger grade and, if so, have you talked with him about how he would feel about repeating academics?

* I can say that my dd12 was self conscious about her height in elementary. She was bothered by always being the smallest and we had some issues even up until 6th grade where her "friends" would pick her up, swing her around, and generally be too rough with her given the size discrepancy. I can say that she has reached a point in middle school now where she's pretty comfortable with who she is and her size. This came about not b/c she is no longer smaller, but b/c she has found some good friends with whom she connects on more than a superficial basis and the academic fit has become, probably for the first time in her life, pretty good. She's really starting to do better as she reaches higher level math that relies not just on rote memorization and she's had a few years to be subject accelerated there. Her classes just hit more on her strengths this year especially and I believe that she sees the benefit to being where she is academically and socially.

You are are all wonderful! Thank you so much for all your ideas. To answer some of your questions, DS missed the cut off by only a month; meaning, if he had entered as he should, he would've been one of the oldest kids in his class. So with that fact and since he was academically so advanced, it was a no brainer to put him in school early. He has always been small but then, I was always small until high school and then grew overnight to become taller than average. I hope that's the case for him.

I've asked him whether he would like to repeat 2nd grade and he was pretty ambivalent about it. He will be OK either way. Like mnmom23's kid, DS tends to adapt very quickly to whatever situation he finds himself in. He becomes very lazy if he's put in a situation where he is not challenged but does not complain of boredom; if we teach him stuff that seems way ahead of his age, he goes into an alert mode and surprises everyone by mastering it quickly. In fact, he probably would quickly catch up if we were to grade skip him again in the future. He's like a chameleon.

So... from what you guys have all said (and now I agree) it is probably a good idea to not repeat 2nd grade. I'll try to steer him toward sports that's not so height-dependent. I'll let you know how he does! Thank you!

Junior,

My DD8 is in 4th grade. She is the youngest as well as the smallest in her class. She is even smaller than her reading buddy from the 1st grade. Last month, she said it was kind of embarassing that she is the smallest in her grade. I sat down with her and explain to her about genetics (me and my DW are short) and nutrition. She is at peace now (we made her feel proud that although she is the smallest in size, she is the smartest in class and all those stories like David and Goliah helps too) but she started eating more vege and protein. She is now taking her multivitamin on her own too.

Boys are a little different especially if he is interested in organized sports.

My middle kid, now 15, repeated 2nd grade. Though our circumstances were a bit different, she is also small and she was immature.

She attended a school from PreK through 2nd where the birthday cutoff was end of calendar year. She then switched to the public school which has an end of September cutoff (birthday is in October).

While she did know a few kids at the public school through rec sports, I don't think any of them knew she was repeating a grade. She could have gone to 3rd - public school said she was ready academically - but left the decision to us. For social reasons, we chose to repeat 2nd.

Around here, most rec sports are grade based, but we only made the mistake once, just one sport, one season, of putting her in with grade mates (this is prior to the repeat year). She is not a natural athlete, and we didn't think she would even play rec sports beyond the age of 12. However, around that age, she expressed interest in playing travel softball, and started playing volleyball for the school because a friend asked her to go to tryouts.

She is now in her 3rd year of travel softball, made JV volleyball at school (got a good amount of playing time), and is a practice player for a club volleyball team (can't commit to play tournaments due to softball conflicts). She is not big, but did finally grow, and is now 5'-4" and almost 100 lbs.

Your son could play pound football until he reaches HS age so he isn't greatly outsized. Baseball is great for kids of all sizes - we have seen a lot of softball as our older two both play, and there are tiny kids to huge kids who are great players.

I realize that our situation is different due to the school switch, and I will note that she was bored in elementary, though she is not the type to complain about it. Good luck with your decision.

DD is very small. 9yo and 50 inches/44lbs and in 6th. so around 5%tile in height.
When we skipped her the first time we knew her physical ability was very poor and she was very uncoordinated.

So we started training her and picking sports that height didn't matter. Skiing/snowboarding, archery and running. She started running 5ks. She started going pushups/pullups/crunches to strengthen for archery. She passed her 3rd grade PE exam which was a huge relief.

In this latest grade skip to 6th grade it was a piece of cake! She was ready. She passed her 6th grade tests beating many 6th graders. She's made friends very easily and yes it's crazy to see her with them as she is a size of a big 1st grader, but her friends don't seem to be bothered.

The boys are talking about snowboarding and hanging out with her and she likes to ride motorcycles so they talk about that. Again all things that don't require height.

So it's possible to be proactive and find things they can do physically. GL.

Oh by the way, in this new grade she found friends who like to go out so she invited them to her archery lesson. There were four of them that I took to the shooting place and boy did they have a ball!! They all want to join archery now and admired her for her ability to shoot.

It's so nice to see because Dh and I know how long of a road this has been. GL!!

You think he would be competitive against his agemates? Really? When 95% of kids are bigger and stronger and taller?

More like damage his self esteem further by placing sole importance on an area he can't hope to excel in (apart from the out of school sports others have mentioned). At least right now he can blame his age.

DS is small and grade skipped. He loves gymnastics and tennis with age mates outside of school. He is competitive at school sports and comes in the middle of the pack with sporting things - it's one thing he is not the best in and he is quite happy to work on /practice.

Spud Webb won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest at the 1986 All-Star exhibition. He was smaller than 100% of the NBA, at a mere 5'6" (or 5'7", depending on your source).

David Eckstein is also 5'6". He has two World Series championship rings, and he was a key component of both teams.

Brian Gionta, at 5'7", scored 48 goals in the NHL one year, and his name will live forever on the Stanley Cup.

Etc...

In far less significant news, I played flag football at age 19, as a defensive tackle... all 145 pounds of me. I was regularly matched up against blockers that easily weighed over 200. And I got past the blockers so often that the other teams had to start game-planning around me.

I beat those guys by being smarter, not stronger. And since we're all here talking about a gifted kid, there's no reason to assume, at this stage, that he can't do the same.