Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy If you or your child skipped a grade...

I'm very curious about grade skipping. In that, if you skipped a grade, did you do it because there were problems that might fixed with a grade skip (behavior, mentally checking out, etc.) or because you had a perfect student with perfect grades. Or, was there another reason?

My second question is did the issues resolve after the grade skip? Or if life was "perfect," did issues arrive after the skip?

Thanks for your help in satisfying my curiosity. Yes, I have a grade skipper, and I'm just reflecting on "issues."

DS skipped second to get into a TAG program and to have material and instruction at his level of ability. There was some frustration with the simple math last year, but no big issues. So far so good, except he's caught up and continues moving faster. Another change might be needed next year.

DS is not skipped, but spends more than a third of his day with the next grade up. This change was made at the suggestion of his teacher, who felt she had little to offer him and that his time was being wasted in her class. I offer this experience because I think it is unusual. His teacher suggested that a full skip would likely be more appropriate, but told us it would probably not be supported by the school. For various reasons we chose not to pursue it, which I think was the right choice.

I think the placement has improved things, but it by no means is fully appropriate. The work is still very easy for him. However, he is not complaining, which is what we were aiming for. Also, his writing skills have greatly improved.

DD skipped from the middle of K to the middle of 1st. The reason why is because very little differentiation was happening in K and she just didn't seem to be learning much. She wasn't complaining because she probably didn't realize how boring it was or how things could be different. Since she was close to the age cut-off to be in the next higher grade anyway, we did it. I don't know that I'd do it with a child in a higher grade, where there might be more academic gaps. If a parent has been working a lot with a child at home, that would minimize some of those gaps. After the skip, she didn't have any problems at all, except that she was a bit behind in writing. They had hardly done anything in the first part of K in terms of writing, and I hadn't been working on it with her at home. And she was diagnosed with ADHD that year but she would have problems focusing no matter what grade she is in. If she was in second grade this year instead of third, she would have the same focus issues, except maybe they would be worse if the material was too boring. In the next grade up, there were some very advanced kids (lots of first graders reading chapter books), and DD was "high average" for the rest of that year, but the next year she began to move up and now she is one of the top achievers in her grade (in terms of test scores). Now we have the problem where the work is too easy again, and the teacher does almost nothing to differentiate.

Our ds12 skipped 6th grade this year and went to 7th. We were worried about underachievement after years of not having to really work to get As and after we saw his perfectionism starting to hamper his risk-taking. If he didn't know something, he didn't want to admit he didn't know and so therefore wouldn't ask questions so he would know. That was something that needed to change.

The skip has been very good for him. There's not so much an intellectual challenge (except in math which is accelerated and introduced concepts he missed in 6th grade very, very quickly) but there is the executive function challenge, that we're still helping him to overcome.

Unfortunately, I don't see the intellectual under-challenge changing until high school. He has voiced that much of his day is spent listening to the teachers tell the kids who don't want to be there to stop talking. If he hadn't made some wonderful new friends I would have pushed harder to have him home-schooled.

I skipped 2nd grade because my 1st grade teacher had let me do all the 2nd grade work during my 1st grade year. The skip was fine in elementary school, but I was socially behind during junior high and had a lot of emotional issues during the ages 11 - 14.

Ds7 could possibly benefit from a skip, but I am worried that it might further isolate him socially from his peers. We'll see.

DD9 was skipped a year and placed in the daily GT pullouts that together make up half her day, which claim to work another year ahead, for an effective 2-year skip. She sits in a normal grade-level class (so, 1 year skip) for the other half of the day.

In DD's case, sitting in her age-peer class taught her that she was undeserving of an education. She was caught between two of her fundamental personality qualities: her burning desire to learn, and her deep-seated desire to please. Her first need was not being met, which caused her tremendous stress which she did not release due to the second. The result was explosive behaviors at home, escalating into self-harm. Perfectionism, self-doubt, and task avoidance were rampant.

We yanked her out and homeschooled her in order to heal her fractured psyche, and we advocated for the grade skip (and eventually bypassed the school and made it happen without them) so she could return and have the social aspects of school she still craved.

After most of the year back in school, the situation is certainly much better, but by no means perfect. DD is still bored out of her mind for half the day.

Early entry-- kind of-- my DD was homeschooled for K and then entered 3rd grade as a 6yo in the middle of the following year. She did all of the third grade curriculum in about six weeks, and then followed up with 4th and 5th grade the year following that. She officially remained a "5th" grader the following fall with a 6th grade placement, and this continued into high school, where it ceased to matter and once we realized that she was outstripping even what AP courses could offer her, we completed that grade skip (9th to 11th). This has been what is tolerable and what places her in the top 10% in her weakest areas-- executive function (she is 3-4y younger than classmates), and written work. I'm not necessarily suggesting that this placement strategy is a GOOD idea, just explaining the logic of it. This way we have to ask for relatively few curriculum adjustments. We've learned the hard way that enrichment is best conducted as a covert, don't-ask-don't-tell kind of thing. DD has studied psychology, sociology, and other topics on the side.


No, not really. Oh, sure-- for a time, they get better through novelty alone, but then (IME) HG+ kids tend to rise to the challenge fairly quickly, and the advantage is lost again and it can be time for another "jump" in difficulty, which schools often resist.

NO problem.

Our experiences with our DD (likely PG) are nicely summarized by Dude's explanation of their observations. She tends NOT to engage with teachers for fear of "bothering" them, and to assume that SHE is wrong, not the teacher or the rubric/key.

My daughter was skipped from the middle of kindergarten to the middle of first grade. She was very unhappy in kindergarten and was much happier in first grade. It was a big improvement. However, the problem is that the pace of learning isn't any faster in a higher grade and it wasn't a long term solution. I'm glad she is in the higher grade, but it wasn't enough.

My son goes to first grade for part of he day from kindergarten and that is working well.

DS11 skipped kindergarten with a birthday that was a week past the cutoff for first grade, and this year he skipped 6th grade as well. Since 2nd grade he has been accelerated 2-3 years in math, and now is taking Algebra 1 (and Video Game Design) through the e-school while attending the regular school for his other 5 classes.

He certainly has never been a "perfect student" -- he suffers from near-terminal laziness, mostly due to never having been challenged at anything, and a bad case of perfectionism run rampant in terms of never wanting to try anything new because he might not know the answers on the first try.

We've just kept moving him ahead to try and find something challenging for him and keep him from hating school so much. And, frankly, getting him through school more quickly at this point is reason enough.

I look back and realize that I should have been skipped, but I was a teacher-pleaser and loved schoolwork, even though it was never any challenge. It would have helped me tremendously to have learned to study and work at something along the way.

Familiar with up to four years of successful acceleration, full grade-skip may be regarded by schools as a last resort, because schools may be reluctant to forego the tuition and/or tax dollars which they receive per pupil per year of enrollment.

The often-reported lament that one grade skip is not sufficient as children may tend to outpace the curriculum in subsequent grade levels gives rise to the proposal that students be flexibly cluster-grouped by readiness and ability in each subject, without regard to chronological age (or "grade level"), into courses of appropriate placement and pacing.

Practices such as MAP testing may ease placement decisions, facilitating acceleration. Practices of evaluating teachers/schools/districts based upon standardized test results may work against acceleration because these are tied to a pupil's grade level; Advanced students, when denied acceleration, are believed to boost the standard test scores of a class and therefore reflect positively on a teacher/school/district. AT WHAT COST TO THE GIFTED STUDENTS, who may be disregarded as collateral damage.

The Iowa Acceleration Scale remains the gold standard in putting issues on the table to discuss the likelihood of a successful acceleration.

My 5th grade DS10 skipped 1st grade, after we suggested using the Iowa Acceleration Scale, which objectively showed he was an excellent candidate for a grade skip. Things were a bit better after the skip, but not enough. He still was not being challenged or learning much of anything new, especially in math where the teacher was giving him the same 2nd grade math he had completed the previous spring in kindy. Grrr. We ended up transferring DS midyear to an accelerated program for HG kids, so effectively he has had a 2-year skip since they are working at least one year ahead in most subjects. My DS never had any troubles making friends, but he had many more friends after the move to the HG school. There was a bigger pool of kids who shared more of his interests.

Our main reason for the skip was so that our son would have the chance to learn new things and be challenged. He is rather unmotivated on his own, and a teacher pleaser, so he could easily have gone under the radar and skated by without ever learning a thing.

If I had known that grade skipping existed, I would have begged for it as a child! Instead, I settled for "skipping" my senior year of high school, going full-time to the local university through PSEO (dual enrollment).

While you know yourself best, so many children have issues at this age... is it possible that the issues were not related to the grade skip, but may have occurred regardless?

This may depend in part on his/your definition of "peers"... chronological age? intellectual peers? academic peers? Some families find it helpful to develop several sets of peers/friends/acquaintances through various interests, extracurricular activities, clubs, camps, etc.

I think that both ideas commonly apply.

My eldest skipped two grades. He had trouble fitting in when he was and 11-year-old 8th grader and the other kids were 13/14. There's just no getting around the physical differences at that age. He's getting closer to 14 and now seems to fit in better, given that he's maturing physically.

My grade-skipped daughter is 9. She has a very late birthday (a couple days before the cutoff), and so is younger than most or all of the kids a grade behind her. She's lucky to be quite tall and very social. She has a lot of friends, but still mentions that sometimes the other girls talk about things she "doesn't understand yet." We're moving her to a school that groups kids by ability instead of age next year, and I suspect that this will be less of a problem.

Different people have different experiences with grade skips, and IMO, it's an area full of nuances. I agree that there are intellectual peers and physical peers ---but sometimes I think about the fact that a (highly) gifted mind simply works differently from an NT mind, and making connections with older students just because they're older may not necessarily be easy. The older kids may have developed more mentally, but if their minds don't work the same way as the HG child's does, they may not be able to connect anyway. KWIM?

DD5 skipped mid-year into K at a small private school. She's now in 1st, but it's hard to say what that means. She's doing 2nd grade spelling, and will soon be in 2nd grade math. She's grade-level for reading, but many years ahead in verbal ability. We're afterschooling some math for fun (Beast Academy) but she's still frustrated by the mechanics of adding and subtracting. Because the school is so small, she gets to socialize with kids of all ages.

Bottom line: Small school with flexible attitude is saving our bacon.

One of our child's grandparents (who is still alive and likes privacy) grade-skipped one year.

Overall, it was not helpful to my family, in my opinion.

We have asynchronous development, far-reaching brains coupled with immaturity corresponding to birth age (and sometimes feels younger).

That grandparent (I think, due to lack of maturity) never reached full ability on a professional level. This can lead to a gifted person being very frustrated, unhappy, dissatisfied....

I had a professor once who told the class that our learning is cumulative, so don't skip what you are learning today or you might never make it up.

This grandparent married young and that can throw a wrench in career plans.

Also, I have posted before that I saw and heard an interview of a very young man who was working on a college degree in astrophysics, but, to what you would want for your child, communication skills did not match scientific comprehension.

Bill Gates has been documented through interviews to have been a voracious reader as a child in his local, branch library. He did not just study science.

Just our opinion. Follow your instincts. Do what works for you, your child and your family. Good Luck!

^ Adding to that, I concur that the best solution is probably a different approach, not just a "skipping" of parts of the same one.

We definitely see a difference in my DD relative even to other HG kids we know because we've chosen aggressive enrichment and compacting rather than "skipping" as a strategy: she has a more 'rounded' profile as a student and as a person. She has a wide variety of interests and high ability in many domains, but she has also had a chance to develop the supporting skills necessary to support interactions at that higher level of thinking in those domains.

Ultimately, learning isn't a solitary activity beyond some point-- and you have to develop the additional communication strategies to be able to interact with others as you learn at that higher level.

That's where life experience comes into things. Now, one can definitely say that specific trajectories go toward a more normative set of opinions, feelings, and background... but that isn't necessarily "life experience" per se...

because you can grow up extremely sheltered and wind up a 25 year old with LESS meaningful life experience than a 10yo cancer survivor has... if you KWIM. It's the ability to relate to complex ideas and communicate/explore in groups of other people that really matters on some level.

This.

See, this is the way my DH11's "homeschool school" operates. She's currently grade skipped around 2-3 years for academic classes and 1-2 years for elective type classes. But it's hard to judge as there aren't official grades or cohorts. In any case, the majority of her curriculum is middle school level, though by age she'd still be in 5th grade in the public school.

Socially, I believe this has worked out much better than a grade skip in the highly segregated public schools would have. Each class has a suggested age range and the majority of the participants cluster in this range (but that can be 4-6 years, so that's a broad cross-section of students). There are also outliers on both ends of the age spectrum. It's perfectly academically and socially acceptable to take the classes you are ready for or interested in, whether that means you're a 7-year-old in middle school biology or a 13 year old boy taking a fiber arts class with a bunch of 8-year-olds (both actual examples from the school).

The students seem to group themselves naturally into age appropriate clusters outside of class. So the teens hang mostly with other teens. My daughter's friends are between 10 and 13, which feel appropriate and in no way problematic for her in terms of maturity.

While my daughter's school has limitations due to the fact that it is technically homeschool, I believe a modified model could work for all public schools. Not that it will ever happen.

Indigo, I seem to remember that there is data showing that accelerated kids often are at the top of the higher grade. I think there are citations in A Nation Deceived. My daughter had the highest standardized test scores in her grade after being accelerated. Maybe this information might be reassuring to schools.

We found it just wasn't possible to work out something with the regular schools because they wanted kids to specifically practice questions in standardized test format even if they knew the material and because they just weren't able to be very flexible.

We found that standardized placement tests didn't help much. I was told my daughter could skip some things based on testing, but it never actually happened even when I arranged for and paid for he testing myself.

[/quote]
While my daughter's school has limitations due to the fact that it is technically homeschool, I believe a modified model could work for all public schools. Not that it will ever happen. [/quote]

I agree. I'd love to see traditional schools have flexible (across-grade) grouping. But, I agree it will never happen (except maybe in a few charter or private schools). But, I believe it would solve a lot of problems we are discussing on this thread.

My DD10 skipped 5th Grade. She has still had straight As all this year, but it has actually taken her more effort. It was a good move for this year but is only a temporary fix. The curriculum at her school is very repetitive from year to year and she just really doesn't need that so, she is getting really bored in Math and History. Also, the Science covers too many subjects in very little depth each year which is also frustrating. Next year we are going to homeschool her so she doesn't have to do so much repitition and can engage in more depth.

It solves part of the problem, the need for younger kids to skip ahead. It does not really solve the issue for older kids, who don't need to skip, but just move faster (see HKs thoughtful comment above about compressing rather than skipping). Even with my daughter now, I see gaps where she's missed stuff from having skipped so much (it's primarily in history and social science, but also in grammar).

I could image a system where grade school is completely cross age with students allowed to skip into whatever classes they are ready for and with the opportunity for a student to enter middle school whenever they are ready academically without regard to age.

I would assume a choice of middle / high schools: a) normal pace (as per current) b) accelerated pace (for students who can go faster and either graduate early or go dual credit at a local college). The middle / high school would be equally cross age. I think this would be doable with current staffing and facilities (if you already have adequate staffing and facilities, many places don't).

It still doesn't really solve the problem for an 8 year old ready for middle school learning, but without the capacity to handle the middle school workload. Our kids are always going to be outliers and the very best solution for them would be placement in schools specifically for HG and above kids (like Davidson, but for all ages) where the highest potential students would get the support they needed. Admission would be by test results only, with no regard to economics OR achievement (which are so unfortunately linked in our society).

Of course, now we're really talking fantasy land and no such "elitist" and "non-egalitarian" idea would ever be embraced in the US.

On the other hand, the USA may actually be the first place such educational reform may occur, allowing curriculum and pacing choices which may supplant skipping.

The fact that homeschooling is legal in most states, that forums exist to exchange ideas and build support, and that private schools, specialty public schools, and charters exist... all lend hope that we can help inform society that we as individuals are and remain equal despite our considerable differences including age, stature, intellectual profile.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is potentially different for each individual. Each person or family may sacrifice, strive, and weigh opportunity costs in choosing to set personal priorities and gravitate toward a unique mix of intellectual, athletic, spiritual, political endeavors.

Kiddo is probably HG and in private school with lots of MG(+) kids, but still bored. I think our next steps may be testing to see if he a possible DYS and to help with advocacy. Unfortunately we are in an affluent area so the teachers are weary of hearing about "special" "accelerated" "underchallenged" children and thus tend to tune out our concerns.

Does your child enjoy classmates, friends, and teachers? Boredom arises from the curriculum & pacing? Information at the following links on the Davidson Database may be of interest, in learning about some of the best approaches in advocacy...
1- Advocacy - Working with your child's school http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10558.aspx
2- Choosing the right school for your gifted child http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10511.aspx
3- Basic educational options for gifted children http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10270.aspx
4- Guidebook - Advocating for Exceptionally Gifted Young People, plus lists of other resources http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/browse_resources_165.aspx

Wishing you all the best.

My son skipped third this year (only wanted math acceleration but ended up doing full grade skip).

He is doing well academically and socially.

He is probably going to do 5th grade at his school...and then home school middle school,

DD13, now in 9th grade, has skipped 2nd and 6th grades. First skip done because she already was well ahead of grade level and we wanted her challenged before she mentally checked out.


Second skip was done because, as happens with many HG kids, the first skip was only a temporary fix. By the end of 5th, she was once again well ahead of grade level. No plans for a formal third skip as subject acceleration in MS and self-choosing of classes in HS have kept her occupied.

Have the issues been resolved? Not fully. We still have to push her a little bit to be open to failure. And I still can't convince her she is good at math. (One of our repeated conversations: "DD, you say you are not good at math. Do you consider me good at math?" "Yes, you are way better at math than I am." "I did not take geometry until I was 15 and a sophomore. You are taking it at 12 and as a freshman..."). But, overall, we're in an acceptable least-worst scenario.

--S.F.