Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Delaying Kindergarten

As the forum mercenary :), let me mention a consideration that is rarely mentioned in discussions of redshirting and acceleration but which I think is important.

If a child is accelerated by a year, that may lengthen his or her career by 1 year. A ballpark estimate of earnings of gifted adults is $100,000. When in doubt, grab the $100K. If finishing school a year early meant an extra year of arduous manual labor, parents could decide that they want their children to enjoy another year of school before entering the "real world". Gifted children are lucky in that for most of them, their jobs will not be more unpleasant than school. We have accelerated two of our three children by one year, and they are both doing well.

-- and to add to Bostonian's post above (though it should be stated that I am something like anti-mercenary);

consider the additional college costs incurred by red-shirting.

With annual increases in the 5-10% range, and CURRENT college costs upwards of 50K at elite schools, this is not exactly pocket change for parents.

Even if you plan to have your child rely upon aid, that is seldom going to be enough to avoid borrowing (which such institutions now see as a perfectly valid means of "meeting student financial need" by the way).

Please note that I am in no way suggesting that this is a compelling reason to PUSH children to accelerate if that is not (already) the right thing to do for them developmentally.

But it's darned sure a good reason to consider NOT red-shirting.

Saw some of the research re: increased salaries for kiddos who weren't redshirted, but the college costs never occurred to me. What a great argument for sending him to school, especially for my fiscally conservative husband!!

The problem for my DD is that she isn't all that subtle about how she feels about other children her age. She refers to them as "the younger children" in a rather condescending tone. When I remind her that some of them are older than she is by a few months, she responds "fine then, the YOUNG children."

She then turns around and literally starts screaming about spilled ice cream.

Haha! Yeah, good point. My 7 year old certainly doesn't look like the one who should be saying he feels older than his class mates when he, himself, is rolling around on the floor throwing a fit like a 2 year old...:-) Ahhhhh, the asynchrony....