Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Advice needed... profoundly gifted 1st grader

Thank you. I'm sorry that I am defensive, and that I misunderstood deacongirl's comment. I've just been getting a lot of pressure to skip from a lot of people, and all I was asking for here were suggestions for how to make it work WITHOUT skipping... then got lots of responses about why to skip. And I may get there, but that's not what I'm looking for right now. I'm trying to make that the last resort.

That's freaking adorable and now I want my daughter in your son's school.

Some have had great success with asking open-ended questions such as a daily conversation over dinner where family members talk about their day... asking what was the best thing that happened in school... what was the worst part of the school day.

Originally this was presented as your concern, resulting in several inquiries about your daughter's preferences. Now hearing of your daughter's reticence to be accelerated brings to mind an often repeated saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Has she been tested... test scores and any input/advice from the psych may be helpful components of your advocacy efforts, especially given the history of upheaval you mention.

It was seriously cute. They made a teddy Christmas tree and made little teddy ornaments. The teachers loved it. The kids were happy. The parents thought it was adorable. Etc.

Yea, this forum is a lot like my DS7: Ask a question and you end up with a 10 page dialog with a small chance of the actual question being answered. It happens.

To the topic, having some activity, some area of focus in or outside school where she can learn find her inner 100% effort may be pretty important to later success. Freshman year of college is not the funnest time to realize you have no idea what studying is. Habits of ennui start early and are some stubborn bugs to break free from (still working on 'em, myself, when I get around to it.)

I haven't read all the previous posts, but here's our story, suggesting that it might be ok not to skip in some cases:
In K my son was reading at about a 3rd grade level and math at a similar level (if not higher for some concepts), and they pushed him up to the "highest" reading group with the gifted first graders, and this worked well (though the lexile appropriate books were not things he was interested in - grade school social dramas - though he appreciates them now). They didn't know what to do with him for math, so his teachers just supplemented him with challenging questions - which mostly worked, plus he will ocassionally find a topic he didn't know (measurements mostly) that is "grade level". He was bored a bit, but we decided not to skip him (he's one of the youngest in his class anyway, and socially wasn't very mature and had poor fine motor skills that made it difficult for him to write when in K and 1st, although he's caught up in both now). He eventually made some good friends in 1st and 2nd grade, who he is still good friends with now (5th grade). There have been challenges along the way - he does get bored, especially with standardized test review - but so do the kids who are above average at all. He's now in an advanced math class that is a 5&6th combined curriculum (finishing all the 6th grade topics in 5th grade) which will lead to a 7/8 combined math curriculum in his 6th grade year and algebra 1. He never had any peers in math in K-4, even among the other G&T kids. He's at a new school this year which is the combo of multiple elementary schools, and I think there might be one other kid in his advanced math class who is at his level. They're moving fast enough with new math material that even though it isn't "hard" for him, it's new, and they move quickly enough to keep him interested, but he's noticing that even among this more select group of students that he and one other kid are the only ones who are breezing through it. He's yet to be really challenged with math in terms of the official content, but his teacher is good and has extra stuff for them to do.
I have friends who skipped their kid - who was probably in a similar place academically, but with better fine motor skills, though possibly with more social issues. It's going ok - though I think the social aspect is still a challenge.

I guess what I'm saying is that it is OK to hesitate about skipping a grade. It can be made to work, though it is not easy. Skipping a grade won't solve everything either, especially if your child is more than 2 grade levels ahead, and the potential for boredom is there in the next grade as well. We'll see how it goes, but with the addition of science (with actual experiments) as a stand-alone subject and a focus on writing (that is sort of independent of grade level) and new music & art opportunities, foreign language, this year is going well, even if there are a few subjects that are not well differentiated .

Well! That statement certainly brings back some unpleasant memories.

Study? I have to study? How do I do that?

Our solution to this was to place our son in a non-graded charter school. He's technically a first grader, but his teacher is giving him second grade work for the time being (MAP testing results later this month may change that). His biggest challenge is learning to write in the pre-cursive style and also finishing his timed, 100 equation tests in five minutes. So, he is not entirely bored.

He's been reading at a fourth grade level+ since the beginning of Kinder and last year in a private school was doing third grade math worksheets, so I guess he's on-par with your DD?

The charter appears to be a good fit. He is in a room of 20 kids ranging from first through third grade and has made friends across those ages, especially gravitating to the older kids. All the kids are like a big family and look out for each other (there's only 50 in the whole school) and there's no issue with bullying, teasing, etc. I'm fairly sure the older children have been instructed not to "spill the beans" on Santa, etc., although DS has begun to suspect the tooth fairy.

Most people do.

On the other hand, if everyone else who is familiar with your child is saying this to you--

I'd consider that is a likely set of signals I should probably heed.

As Val notes, it's not that our accelerated children have a rushed or even foreshortened childhood-- so much as that they have a qualitatively DIFFERENT one from 99% of other peers (both agemates and intellectual peers who may be older).

Don't write off options based on your assumptions about what those options would translate into down the road, that's all.