Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Thought on 2e child skipping a grade?

I am new to this forum and am seeking your collective wisdom about my "2e" son, who is 13 and in 7th grade at a public international baccalaureate school.

At age 9 (end of 3rd grade) he was evaluated by a neuropsychologist and diagnosed with:
1) Superior intelligence (GAIS of 129, but IQ generally difficult to interpret due to significant discrepancy between 4 index scores- weakness in working memory and processing speed/ strength in visual reasoning and comprehension).
2) ADHD- inattentive type (never medicated)/ executive function weakness.
3) Dyslexia
4) Weakness in fine motor coordination
5) Color blindness.

The school system identified him as �gifted,� particularly in critical thinking, and offered limited services. (They also recommended he skip 4th grade, but we declined). He had private OT to address the lack of fine motor coordination and some private tutoring for writing and executive functioning skills in 4th/5th grade, as well as speech therapy due to a later diagnosis of a Central Auditory Processing Disorder in 4th grade.

In 6th grade he attended a different public elementary school and performed well academically (mostly As, a couple high Bs) with no outside tutoring or assistance from us.

Now, in 7th grade at yet another school, he has been asking since September to skip a grade because he �is not being challenged� and �is bored,� and because he �gets along much better with the kids in 8th, 9th and 10th grades.� He has, indeed, always gotten along better with those older than he, especially adults, and he has often been bullied and excluded by his peers at school, so this complaint does not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, his grades are all over the place. He continues to struggle with writing (not with articulation of ideas or limited vocabulary, but with organization and grammar), and he often doesn�t get assignments in on time- either because he doesn�t start them until the last minute or doesn�t remember to turn them in. Also, he doesn�t seem very interested in most of the work assigned, although when he is interested in a topic or assignment, he is very motivated.

So, my question is this: should we even consider asking that he skip a grade? One friend who is an experienced educator in another IB program said that �at that age if they are emotionally-socially mismatched, they don�t learn much� and �if he doesn�t have one true peer� you�d have nothing to lose by moving him up.� Any additional thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Patricia

A counter-argument to consider: if his executive function is inadequate to the workload in 7th, it's unlikely to be better in 8th. It could be expected to be much worse, because skipping him at this point will likely introduce gaps that require addressing with even more work. This is why grade skips work out so much better in early elementary years - the kids learn almost nothing in those years, so any gaps are few and easily addressed. In hindsight, that 4th-grade skip would have been a lot more convenient.

His desire to skip could be used as a motivating tool, though. "I'm not seeing a kid who can move up a full year right now, and neither is the school. We're seeing a kid who is struggling to keep up in 7th. You want a skip? Prove you can handle it. Do the work. Get those grades up."

His writing weakness could also be more problematic, as the required standards and expected output continue to scale up.

Keep in mind that after a skip, his next school year would then be 9th grade, which is when grades start to really matter. And if he's going for a full IB certificate, there's the issue of the 4000 word extended essay looming ahead.

If this were my child, I think I might elect to use the next year-plus to work on those areas of weakness, in order to put him in position to succeed in high school.

My son is 10 and has ADHD. He was in 5th grade and was accelerated conservatively mid year to 6th grade and two 7th grade classes. Reasons for holding back on acceleration was he struggled with quantity of writing, slow typing speed, and executive functions. He couldn't manage to get his planner home and get it initialed and was disruptive. etc.

After acceleration, he has not had problems managing his planner or "forgetting" homework at school. He wrote a 5,000 word short story. In one week, he caught up on typing speed. Sometimes they're not lacking skills as much as challenge. After a few weeks, my son subject accelerated again so he is in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades now. The first couple weeks were intense for him, but he learned study skills quickly and now says it is easy. He has straight A for the first time! He used to get low grades for lack of participation.

Welcome!

Not getting assignments in on time may be motivational in nature, although it could also be underdeveloped executive functions. (I may be a bit biased, because that pretty much describes my English class production at that exact age, and it definitely wasn't because I was unable to meet expectations. In my case, I think it was a combination of motivation and perfectionism.) I am actually more concerned about the errors in written expression. I would be less concerned about careless spelling and punctuation errors, as those may be self-monitoring errors related to ADHD or low engagement, and are also easily corrected on a word processor, but grammar and organization are substantive weaknesses in written expression, especially as you look toward lengthier, more sophisticated writing expectations.

Although I am generally fairly pro-skip, I do think skips should be approached thoughtfully, considering not only rate of learning and level of reasoning and conceptual skills, but also production and work skill (executive functions, IOW) expectations, among other things. In this case, I lean toward Dude's thinking, especially where he has a history of executive function and written expression weaknesses.

But it would certainly be good to test the various hypotheses, in whatever way you can prior to a skip. When motivated (on those assignments he likes), can he produce lengthy, organized, high-quality work in a timely manner? Or are some aspects still lagging even when engaged? Perhaps investigate the meaning of "bored" and "gets along with". Is he in fact being actively bullied right now? Or does he feel excluded? Is he confounding challenge level with social climate (in either direction)? Is he unevenly challenged, so that some areas are below his level, and others are actually difficult to engage with because they draw on his areas of weakness (writing, possibly)? Both may feel subjectively "boring".

Thank you, Dude, sanne, and aeh, for your very thoughtful replies. In hindsight, as Dude suggested, it may have been a better choice to skip him in 4th. It did not seem relevant in my initial post, but we did skip my now 11 y.o. daughter, who is also in 7th grade (at a different school), and she had no trouble catching up to her peers. (When we had pushed for a long time to have my son evaluated and he ended up with learning difficulties as we�d suspected, the school had our daughter tested, too, and found that she was in the 99th percentile for intelligence; they said that her grades in school were highly discrepant probably because she was so bored and recommended we skip her immediately. She has thrived academically but struggled a bit socially, as she was already the youngest in her class when we skipped her. Overall, though, I feel it was the best decision for her. As sanne commented, sometimes they need a challenge). At the time, it was suggested we skip our son, though, we felt it was more important that he work on those �essentials� of spelling, punctuation, getting assignments in, etc. Perhaps we were short-sighted- we did not have much guidance in the decision-making process, and we didn�t want him to fall behind as his self-esteem already seemed to be plummeting.

So, to the present. As Dude suggested, we have, in fact, tried to use his desire to skip as a motivating tool. In the past 3 weeks, he has gotten all of his assignments in on time without prompting, and his grades appear to have risen dramatically across the board. After reading your comments, I think we need to focus on whether he can sustain a high level of independent functioning, and investigate whether �when motivated� can he produce lengthy, organized, high-quality work in a timely manner�?

Honestly, a significant part of my inclination to encourage a skip is that I see my son truly struggling socially, and also because in the IB program, he cannot subject-accelerate- he can only skip to the next grade. He does feel excluded by his grade-level peers and he was being actively bullied in the fall, but that seems to have become less of an issue, since one of the 3 bullies switched schools. On the other hand, he seems to get along very well with the older kids. But again, since he cannot subject-accelerate and share any classes with those older kids in the IB program and can only socialize after school (when no one has time), he is finding it very hard to form any friendships.

I am so grateful for your experience and expertise- I wish I had known about this forum 4 years ago!