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

My youngest dd, 8 years old, is so tiny she's only occasionally in her life been tall enough to make it into the first percentile on the growth charts for her age. She's not only shorter than 100% of the kids her own age (and in her grade, where her age is right around the middle of the pack)... she's smaller than many of the kindergartners at her school (she's in third grade).

She's also an incredible athlete - strong, agile, great motor coordination, has yet to meet a sport she doesn't love. In 2nd grade her teacher put together a little book for each student on their birthday week, and included a page where each classmate wrote a little something about the student they admired. 9 out of 10 comments on dd's page were "Awesome cartwheeler!" "Best cartwheeler in 2nd grade!". She participates in competitive sports outside of school and is eagerly awaiting middle school when she can start playing competitive sports at school.

I'm not terribly athletically talented, but I played volleyball for fun for years and I did really well at it because I had fun playing it and because I practiced and learned and tried. And I'm about as vertcally challenged as people come

JMO, but it seems to me that *for the majority of sports* success at sports has less to do with size than it has to do with passion and skill and dedication/motivation.

Also, the student who is being discussed here is only one month younger than grade cut-off.... I'm guessing he wouldn't be all that tall among kids one grade lower. And I'm basing that guess based on the 2 out of 3 of my kids who are very short - my dd mentioned above, and my ds who is around 5th-10th percentile for height for his age.

polarbear

Since repeating 2nd grade would make him one of the oldest and since he does not appear to be athletically gifted and he is well-placed academically and well-adjusted socially, I would not recommend repeating 2nd grade.

However, my sister had some regrets accelerating her DS in elementary due to high school team sports considerations. Her DS is an adult now but was 12 when he started high school and 16 when he started college. In his case, he was always obviously talented athletically but on the small to average size for age. As such, he always did well in sports or anything requiring athletic abilities even in comparision with his grade-mates who were two years older. However, once he got to high school, he could not compete with kids who were two years older and much larger and also athletically talented.

I have a relative the same age who's 15th percentile for height and I'd describe him as an excellent and competitive athlete: he's quick, a fighter, tenacious, dogged, well coordinated, agile, etc. He jumps out at me as someone who could be a fantastic high school wrestler when he gets there. He's currently doing great on a swim team and progressing rapidly through karate belts. As academics are not his forte, if he were in the same position I'd say yes what a great idea it would be to put him in a situation where he can be a bit more competitive athletically.

The original poster here though identified her son as "not particularly athletic", as having friends in his current grade and fitting his current grade okay right now, it was more fearing for the future that was prompting their concern. It is in this particular context that I have a hunch that undoing a skip for sports and general "fitting in" might backfire.

I do think in early elementary grades an awful lot of success with school sports is simple size, when later on skills and teamwork start to be important. Flag football is an excellent example of that, in 1st grade a big size kid who grabs the ball and barrels through with their elbows out deflecting the other kids can look great. But by maybe 6th grade there is actual planning and teamwork and a quick thinker who can keep his head under pressure might be highly appreciated as a running back. One may find ways to fit in with school sports even without changing grades.

In no way did I mean to generalize that people who are shorter than average have globally poor athletic aptitude, that's not what I intended at all, I can see it came across that way, I apologize for that.

Polly

I didn't mean to suggest that I would undo a skip for sports, but I think that if DD15 had not repeated 2nd grade, she would not be playing school sports.

Sports had nothing to do with the repeat - she was immature and had the chance to repeat in a different school (and be in the correct grade per the public school birthday cutoff). I also thought she was not the swiftest of kids in an academic sense. She was labeled gifted in 7th grade, FSIQ over 130, years after the repeat.

However, it did happen to work out well with the sports. Unfortunately, you might not know the "right answer" to the question until your kiddo is grown. Of course this happens with lots of decisions you make for your kid - some will turn out well, some not as well - but you just do your best.

Likewise for me. My dd12 isn't the best athlete probably due to lack of confidence when comparing herself to others who are bigger and lack of interest/practice. I do think that it can be somewhat harder to dunk a basketball, for instance, when you are 5' vs. 6', but there are always those who are superior athletes even when they are smaller than those against whom they are playing.

On your larger point, that undoing a grade skip due to sports is a bad thing, we agree 100%.

I still urge caution on rushing to judge the athletic abilities of a 7yo, though. At that age, my mom had labeled me as a hopeless clutz, and in 2-3 years I had outgrown that label. Earlier, I made the point about how gifted kids can leap forward in athletics just as they do with everything else, and we all (coaches and parents) saw my DD7 do just that in soccer last year. She showed up at practice one day as a different player, and carried it on from there.

Also, there are two ways in which a mentally gifted individual can gain an edge against physically superior opponents:

- Figuring out innovative ways to maximize their limited abilities and compensate for their deficits.
- Just plain outsmarting the opposition through superior tactics.

For example, that David Eckstein guy I mentioned earlier, the knock on him all the way up to the majors was that there was no way he'd be able to make the throws from the shortstop position to beat a runner headed for first base, because he didn't have the arm strength. And that was true... he most certainly did not have the arm strength to make those throws. So, he figured out a delivery that demanded more from stronger muscles in his torso and legs, probably by closely observing what pitchers do. The result didn't look pretty (it looked like he was throwing his entire body at the base, not just the ball), but it got the job done.

And don't even get me started on the guy who pitched in the majors with only one hand...

MIT has one of the top ballroom dance teams in the country. It's not because nerds intrinsically make better dancers; it's because nerds are really, really good at analyzing the complicated body mechanics of moving two people through space.