Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need Advice on Grade/Subject Acceleration

Just a sad note, my DS6 just said this morn
"He is the smallest in the class"
He means the youngest.
I hate when he says this stuff makes me sad he skipped.
UGH, so hard to know what is the right thing to do.

I will plug in with my stories:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/5667/1.html (my story is on page 3)

And also this thread
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/3251/1.html

It has been over a year since I posted those - so they probably do need some updating. Feel free to ask questions if you are brave to browse through the above

I recall when I was moved from 1st to 4-7 grade class in Montessori.

I was forced to walk from the back of the class to the front and then introduce myself. Everyone was seated and PEERING DOWN on me like vultures.

I was terrified.

Big desks. Big kids. Little me.

I adjusted.

Well, is HE sad?

Don't assume that because he is comparing himself to others, he's sad about it. That sort of comparison is age-appropriate. They all do it, and usually it has less to do with being unhappy (or happy, for that matter) about their lot in life and more to do with just establishing the order of things. They talk about who is the oldest, youngest, tallest, shortest, fastest, smartest (and not in a bragging way), and who owns the most video games or Pokemon cards. And that's just what I've personally heard discussed...

If he IS sad, that's different. But if he stated this in a matter-of-fact way, it doesn't necessarily mean anything about the skip.

WOW what a moment and you still remember.
Must have been hard though to adjust.

Hi Kriston,
Yep he is sad or more mad maybe.
I believe he is associating Age with Importance.
As if it is a grade, if the highest grade is the "best" then so is the highest Age lower age lower importance.
I think this is what is going on.
How to explain age not relevant to importance?

Rather than explaining, have you asked him why this matters to him? Sometimes talking less and asking more helps. If they start trying to explain it, they see that it isn't what they think it is.

Or, if he doesn't talk himself out of it, at least you can get a better idea of what exactly is bugging him and how best to deal with the problem. I think we parents too often project our own interpretations of a situation on our kids, and their thought processes can be VERY different than ours.

(Not that you're doing this. Just that I think it is something to consider. I know I've been bitten by this a time or two...)

The more the child talks, the less likely we are to be wrong about things.

IMHO...

And mad may be a good thing. That means he's not willing to accept that he's less important or whatever because of his age. That's probably a good place to start!

Hi Kriston,
I def could be doing this.
You know we were in a store and I told him he could open a candy bar while we were on line. He didn't want to open it,was all freaked out. So I assumed he was thinking we would get in trouble for say looking like we were stealing it.
Anyway when we left I did ask him why he didn't want to open the candy bar. He said "because if we ripped the bar code they would not be able to scan it" So yes, a very different reason than I was thinking.

Great example! Exactly!

I very rarely answer a question my kids ask without asking one in return. (And for things that I think might be really serious, like a skip being a bad idea, I usually ask a lot more than one!)

I am going to try to talk to him more today about it and see what he has to say, could be interesting LOL