Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DS7 going to 3rd or repeat 2nd - maturity?!

I homeschool my DS since newborn. His way of learning as for almost all children is thru playing. He do not like paperwork/seatwork. It is boring and hard (writing - fine motors). He went to private school and finished 2nd with A's and B's. He just turn 7yrs old and we need to move to another place. The Public School want him in 2nd because of age/maturity.

He want to go to 2nd because they have 2 recess time. The 3rd has only 1 recess.

The Pediatrician said to put him in 3rd.

Is He to young to be with 9 and 10 yrs old?!

The school try to get the boys later (as for 6 to enter kinder)

Hi Engmom,
Was it more Bs or more As? Was there a pattern to the Bs? Due to small motor issues, bordom, or difficulty learning? Are there any issues with 'twice exceptionality?'

I like the "Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual" to put numbers on things. Was your son happy in 2nd grade? If he was bored and underachieving, then I strongly discourage repeating. Why did your Pediatrician say to go to 3rd?

Is you son learning to type? My son also hated writing assignments until age 9, when his touchtyping got wonderful.

Particularly since you are new to the area, seems like a good time to move ahead. If possible, set up some playdates with the older boys where you can see him interact, and then you will know better how he will handle the age difference.

Good luck,
Grinity

There are more A's, B in writing cursive and bored. He was not happy, it was a small school and he just want to play with the others kids. But all the kids of his age were "bulling" him because he was not in the correct grade. They did not play fair with him.

He knows how to type.

Thanks for the advice, I will try to set up the playdates.

Did the school actually meet your child? How are they assessing his maturity? I would be inclined to follow the pediatrician's advice since he/she knows your son and what he is capable of.

Actually, I would be inclined to have an evaluation - my pediatrician may be able to make some general observations but an achievement assessment of some kind makes for better "chatting with the school". I think listening to your kid is worth something. We are in a similiar pinch but until we can work out something better - we'll go for some serious time wasting boredom in the name of some happiness. And fight for subject matter jumping... oops me, me, me.

Honestly, I would fear teasing... but we aren't boys here and I don't know what public is really like these days. Is public the only option - something geared to gt would keep you from needing to bump up. Frustrating that it is so hard... sorry. i feel your pain - not literally or i'd be popping flinstones....

Is the school wanting to hold him back just because of his age? If so, then I wouldn't go along with that. Or do they have reasons beyond age?

I suspect maybe we need more information than you're giving us... Or do you really just have two relatively unsupported opinions, without much in the way of supporting evidence? If there's nothing more than opinion, then I'd say you need to do some more talking to find out why the dr. and the school feel as they do. Details matter in this sort of situation!

Regardless, I wouldn't place my child in an inappropriate school setting just so he could have a second recess. I'd put that decision in the "doing what's good for you whether you like it or not" pile, right there with eating your veggies and taking your medicine.

My advice (FWIW): if your child has completed a grade with As & Bs, there should be no reason to repeat it. If you're on this discussion forum, most likely it's because your child is gifted, so there's even less reason to repeat a grade. Maturity will come. Any given elementary school class has varying levels of maturity. There are very few reasons to hold a young child back.

Thank you all for your support and advise. Here is a little more of inf.

The Pediatrician ask my son about school, he answered that he was bored at school. He just want to play. The Pediatrician said he need to be challenge and understand that school is something serious. He heed to learn to work harder. If it is too easy now that he is young then he will be an underachiever and will think school is a joke.

The school indicate that he will be the youngest of the 2nd graders and almost 2 years younger than the 3rd graders. Their experience is that boys are not mature enough to be working and sitting quietly without a recess for 4 or 5 hrs. That the older kids will see him as "odd" and will tease him. Also, he will not be able to finish the schoolwork on time, (he does not like to write - fine motors)

Thanks,

He "need" to learn to work harder. (typo)

engmom,

You're talking to a board full of moms of kids who are sometimes more than 2 yrs younger than grademates. It works. My kids may be seen as odd or teased once in a while, but generally they are well-liked and fit in with their adopted grade.

How will any teasing be worse than the blow to self esteem in having to repeat a grade (especially since he was bored to begin with)?

My son is almost 7 and just finished first grade in the public school. We are skipping him to 3rd grade in a private school. He is a a bit immature but we think he can handle the skip better than he can handle being bored in 2nd grade. The director of the private school thought he should skip to 4th. I would NOT skip him to 3rd in OUR public school, though,for a variety of reasons (class size, NCLB testing, ...). We also have heard the "he's a late summer birthday, he's not mature enough" argument.

Don't know if that's much help but wanted to let you know we are going through the same thing. Also, someone on this board pointed out to me that you can always DEcelerate if you need to do that.

I agree with cym and squirt. My DS has the same summer birthday issue and was accelerated from 2nd to 3rd in mid-year. He spent the second half of a year in third as a seven year old when most of the boys were 9 turning 10. He was much happier socially with the older kids, and was teased less than when he was in second.

He is also a very asynchronous kid who can seem very immature one minute and very advanced the next. He is also a rather wiggly little thing, with tons of excess energy. All of these things considered, third grade was a much better fit for him.

I wanted to pass along two points:

1) The public school decided DS needed a grade acceleration based on his second grade teacher's assessment. Without any prompting, she gave DS the end of the year tests in all subjects by October of his second year. She also talked to the gifted teacher about DS before recommending a grade acceleration to us. You should be able to ask for the same thing. If the school is dragging its heels, you should be able to say, "Look, in the week before school starts, give him the end of the year tests." If he passes them, then there is nothing left for him to learn in that grade. You can also ask that they do out-of-level tests to find out where he is, but those take a long time to order, administer, and grade.

2) Most schools follow the Iowa Acceleration Scale (IAS) for determining if a child should be accelerated. It is a very detailed process that evaluates the child's intellectual needs and emotional needs. My PS (public school) formed an acceleration team that had my DS's current teacher (2nd), his previous year's teacher, the gifted teacher, the principle, and the school psychologist. They gave him the WISC-IV IQ test, and somehow tried to evaluate his out-of-level knowledge. (we are trying to find out if they gave him any achievement tests). And the school psychologist talked with him and tried to assess his emotional and social maturity. All of these voices had to agree that acceleration was a good option for this particular kid at this particular time. I'm glad the school was so cautious, but it took 3 months to jump through all of the hoops to make it happen. Also, part of the IAS is asking the kid what he or she wants. If the child says at any point that they do not wish to be accelerated, then the process comes to a complete stop.

As a parent who spent three months agonizing over whether to accelerate or not, I understand your concerns. Eventually, you just have to go with your gut feelings. You know your kid better than anyone else. Just try to listen to what you think is best for your child. (and yes, I spent three months of not sleeping well due to worrying, so I know how hard it can be.) I had it easier, since the school was recommending the acceleration to me. You might need to fight for it.

Hope this helps!

Oh, and one more thing. My school didn't play the "summer birthday" card. They played the "product" card. When you move up in grades, more of what the child knows is measured by producing a "product"... like a book report or science report. The one concern that the teachers had with my DS is that he did not write very much daily in his journal, and his left-handed scrawl was a bit slow to produce. Sure enough, within a month of moving up to third, DS had to do a science report. It ended up being 19 half-pages long, which was quite taxing for him. Science is what he lives for, his joy in life. But getting all of those facts that were swirling around in his head down on paper was a challenge.

Hi again engmom,
I went back and reread your first post and realized that you are switching from private to public. So the public school really doesn't know your child yet.

The thing about public school (I think?), is that they move very, very slowly. My guess is that they have to fill out a ton of paperwork and send it off to the state to justify that a kid needs to be accelerated. They will not let a kid jump a grade without a mountain of paperwork to justify it. Just thought you should be warned in advance. It might also be state specific and even district specific, depending on how friendly your school is to acceleration. But I would start working on generating that mountain of paperwork. Try to get as much concrete data on your child as possible, or start hounding the school to start testing him.

Good luck!

I think that's very important, Dottie.

Weighing the harm of not skipping, harm that's being done to a child now, harm that's visible and real, against some hypothetical "won't he be traumatized if he can't drive when his classmates can?" makes it clear how goofy that non-specific sort of argument tends to be.

"Yes, let's bore the kid silly for 10 years on the faulty assumption that all kids develop facial hair at the same time." <eye roll>

Generic, hypothetical arguments against grade-skipping--or any other deviation from the path kids are "supposed" to take--don't impress me. Yes, he might not be happy with the skip sometime down the line. But if you KNOW he's not happy without it, it seems to me to be an easy choice in that case! The problems today are real. Deal with the "what-ifs" of tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

BTW, we got the same sort of thing when we decided to homeschool: "What about high school? Will you be teaching him chemistry in your kitchen?" The kid was 6yo at the time! Can we worry about high school chemistry a little closer to when it's relevant?!?

Frankly, I think it's just a scare tactic. A way to snap us back into line. I don't find that sort of thinking to be useful at all to the actual children involved.

Engmom,

I would actually be wary of a grade skip based on your description of your son. You say he does not like paperwork/seatwork and he finds writing hard due to fine motor skills perhaps not being as advanced.

The way I read your post, you had concerns about his maturity level yourself. Although I feel that grade skips are sometimes great, I don't believe they are always the best alternative. He would be very young.

Is there a specific area where he is very advanced (math, language arts, etc)? Would subject accelaration be an option? Would they be able to differentiate w/i the classroom?

Just things to consider.

Agreed Dottie.

If he the private school certifies that he has completed 2nd, then the public school has to accept that and place him in 3rd. (provided the child and parent agree). I couldn't tell from the original post, engmom, whether the private school just let him work at his own speed in an open type classroom and he went up through 2nd... or if he was in a structured 2nd grade class. I don't know if it makes any difference, but I could see the school making an issue out of it. Granted, I have no experience with private schools and how they structure their material. But I have some experience with how PS likes to drag its feet. And take my above post with the grain of salt that I love data. Towering mountains of it!!! It gives you a good feel for what kind of advances and challenges you need now for your child. And it gives you an indication of what kind of challenges you may (or may not) face in the future.

And I agree completely with the hypothetical social/emotional problems in the future.
Love the <eye roll>, Kriston. LOL

The hard part is separating a kid who doesn't like to write and seems immature because he is not being challenged from one who is truly young for his age. That is a tough one!!!

My own DS, FWIW, appeared to be very young in second emotionally due to a serious lack of motivation. School was definitely a social event and learning was non-existent. I even had his first grade teacher repeatedly come up to me after school and tell me that she was afraid he was falling behind because he had no interest in doing the work!! Of course he had no interest in doing it... it was way too easy. All of those issues, as well as the squirminess in his seat, improved greatly when he had more challenging material to work on.

I'm not saying you aren't right, Bianca. He could very well be a little on the immature side. But it could be a case of serious boredom. Engmom, does your little guy "light up" when he finds something challenging at home? Does he have a favorite subject that he loves to explore? My guy was constantly doing more advanced work at home that what he was offered in school, and would just shine during those moments. That might help you to guess as to whether he is bored and needs more challenging material, or if he needs some time to grow and development?

Oh, man! And here I've been exercising! I burn up at least 150 calories a day!! Thanks, Dottie. I needed a laugh today.