Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Fears of skipping grades

Mia - it's a great question. The answer is that sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't, but if it hurts, and the child needed it, you can add more, and if it hurts, and it is truly "too much" you can switch to another school and decelerate, or do a year of homeschooling and decelerate. If sports, scholarships or siblings aren't in the picture, and the Iowa Acceleration Scale Manual has been satisfied, and the child isn't happy/learning to learn, then from what I've seen, an early skip is a nescessary, but not nescessarily sufficient, thing.

What worries me, is reading books, such as "Picky Parents Guide" that say, "DON'T GRADE SKIP YOUR CHILD - unless they are really unusual, such as the top 98%" and I think, "top 98%?" If only my kid was that 'usual.'

Smiles,
Trinity

I had to LOL at that, Trinity! I'm right there with you -- a 98 percentile kid would be -- well, if not a walk in the park, at least much easier to handle, educationally speaking! (Of course every child has their own unique issues, but with most kids, the decision on whether to accelerate isn't one of them.)

LOL, this is Mia-time three days a week -- I'm an RN and I work nights, so this is great!

Dottie -- Agreed, and of course we'd rather that his scores were a little more evenly distributed across the board, at whatever level that might be; it's infinitely harder to accomodate a child with these scores that are all over the place! However, if we do decide to skip him, I'm certain that he'll be able to easily keep pace with the his new grade level with the same instruction they're receiving -- especially as the only skip we're considering now is a single grade.

Just want to add, this board is GREAT! I'm so happy to have found it. :-D

Hi Dottie,

I hope that my posts about homeschooling versus traditional schooling didn't set off your defensive response. It wasn't my intention at all. I acknowledge that homeschooling isn't the be-all, end-all, either. We have definitely made many sacrifices to do it, and it STILL isn't perfect. I was just responding to the topic of grad-skipping, and how it would have negatively impacted our son. We know that we probably won't homeschool forever, as my ability to actually teach him stuff is coming to an end soon. That makes me nervous, because we don't yet have a good plan for what to do next.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that, and to tell you that I think all of us are doing the best job for our kids and families, who have completely different needs (both academic, financial and social). It's wonderful to see parents with the drive to consciously analyze options and find the best choice when that decision is so hard.

Mia wrote:

"When I look at the "social issues" for boys ... I'm not that impressed. I think being teased has less to do with size or sports ability than it does to do with personality and vulnerability -- issues that would likely be there if the child were grade skipped or not. I know plenty of tiny adult men who were *not* teased as children."

You are exactly right! And I am so thrilled that, right now anyway, we have a confident and joyful little boy. I have pulled him out of the Montessori school, with his full blessing. Today he went to Mother's Day Out at our church, which is held two days a week for about 5 hours. It was a lot of fun, and he made some new friends. He walked right into the room of strangers this morning and said, "Hi, Guys! Can I play?" Several of the other 4 yr. olds just sort of looked at him, but he sat down and joined in on the fun.

I just wanted to make the point that there are are so many facets to this discussion, and I really want my husband to feel that his voice will be heard. He is so open to all of the new things we are discovering about the PG world. And I should stress that we are NOT the kind of parents to push DS into sports. That's really not a concern of ours at this point. We will follow his lead in that department. But I do want to acknowledge some of DH's concerns. Several of you have discussed what can make a happy child withdraw, though. You make an excellent point when it comes to the social aspect of skipping:

"And I always like to point out that an unhappy, bored, frustrated kid isn't likely to make friends easily or get picked early for kickball teams either. Finding a "good enough" educational solution often makes the social thing work out, simply because the kid feels happier." - Kriston

This is exactly what we were dealing with at DS's former school. I am already starting to see a difference in his attitude toward learning, just in the few weeks that we've started home schooling.

Which brings me to another question:

Do any of you recommend a home school curriculum that you really love? (DS is four. He will be eligible for kindergarten in the fall.)

Feel free to point me to another forum/thread. There are so many different threads that I thought I might ask a few kindred spirits first.

Thanks again and again for your involvement,
Allison

Before you dive into curriculum, I'd recommend that you do some research about 1) the regulations for home schooling in your state, and 2) what kind of home schooling you want to practice. The first is a legal necessity, at least by the time your son is 6. The second is a practical matter to help you choose from the astonishing amount of material that's out there. There are LOTS of types of home schooling! Personally, I'm going with the "eclectic" approach because it pretty much means we can do whatever DS6 and I want to do in whatever form works best.

I like Singapore Math (www.singaporemath.com) and the "What Your Xth Grader Needs to Know" series by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (I bought several years' worth, just to be sure I covered all the basics, but really, checking them out of the library would probably have been enough...) For pretty much all the other subjects besides math, we raid the library and follow DS's interests wherever they take us. (Our library even lets home schoolers get an "educator" card, so we can keep the books for a lot longer without fines.) And BTW, we don't try to do every subject every day, or even once per week. I figure we just need to hit all the major subjects by the end of the year and it will all balance out. And after all, the danger isn't that our kids will go too slowly or fall behind, really, is it? Mainly I'm having trouble keeping enough material on hand because he's going through it so fast!

I've found GREAT help and reassurance in "Creative Home Schooling: A Resource Guide for Smart Families" by Lisa Rivero. That one is worth buying, in my opinion!

Otherwise, probably the two best pieces of advice anyone gave me were to find an active home schoolers association and not to buy a bunch of curriculum right away. The benefits of joining a group are probably self-evident--social connections, field trips, contacts you couldn't find alone, classes like art, P.E., foreign languages, etc. As for the curriculum, much of what you'd buy at first is going to be wrong for your child, and you can waste a lot of money! Ease into it. Use the library. Figure out what suits you both. Then plunk down the cash as necessary.

I hope this helps!

Hi Allison,
I've never homeschooled,but it seems to me that setting up policy is as important as curriculum. After all, with curriculum, you are mostly, if not entirely going to follow your child's interests, perhaps occasionally linking the practice of a difficult skill to an iterest. You local school district probably has something like a "scope and sequence" posted on an internet site somewhere. That can be a good reference point to keep in mind.

I've heard praise for Singaport Math and Handwriting without tears over and over again. You may want to read up on books about "unschooling" which is all about following your child's lead.

But educational policy - that's the part I never hear about. I weighed HSing very carfully last year. I concluded that for us, I would have to lock up the TV, or throw it away, remove all the computer games so that "Typing Practice" seemed like great fun, (compared to nothing) and institue a P.E. requirement. I would defintly include household management on the curriculum (chores)

Back when DS11 was 6, and we were walking around in the dark, being told that there was something wrong with him, we got him a Gameboy, so that he could be like the other boys. It did help socialize him, but it also acustomed him to instant gratification. It was the best decision we could make at the time, give the information at hand, but I believe that it was too high a price for fitting in a bit.

So I've never seen an article about setting up policies for homeschooling, but I would encourage you to think hard about how much "mindless entertainment" under what circumstances you and your DH will allow. What do you want your day to be like? How much of your son's day will be about following his interests and how much about contributing to the family and others? I'd love to hear about what the real HSers say about this.

Smiles,
Trinity

You're right that it can be a chore to keep the TV turned off, Trinity. (Though we already have an "edu-tainment only" policy in place, so that helps. If it's not on PBS or Noggin or the Discovery or Science channels, we don't watch it.) But I'd have to say that part is not as hard as I thought it would be. DS6 and I both know we have a responsibility here, and we both really try to live up to it. We usually keep the TV off until work I done. If we take a TV break (usually only done when I have something I need to do, ala the "electric babysitter"...), then it's never more than one 30-minute show. Then it's back to work.

I've tried to keep my policies as simple as I can. Here's my list, in full:

*read fiction of his choice for 15 min. per day,
*read nonfiction of his choice for 15 min. per day (though I will try to steer him a bit more as the year goes on so that we cover all required subjects by year's end),
*be read to by an adult for 15 minutes per day (usually before bed),
*do a math lesson every day,
*write two lines of handwriting of his choice every day,
*do something he loves every day (This was Dr. Amend's suggestion, and I love it!),
*tidy up for 25 minutes per day. (You're right, Trinity, that this last part is VITAL to family sanity!)

Exceptional days are days with field trips, art or P.E. class, or a social gathering. Since these things are important, too, and there are only so many hours in a day, we usually let school slide a bit on those days. Otherwise, I'm as firm about hitting all these points as seems reasonable.

Actually, my bigger problem is not the TV, but how much of the creative but only marginally educational activities to allow. If he's building transformers out of tangram pieces, does that count as school? What about making cars out of clay? Or creating his own "I Spy" book with crayons? Frankly, a lot of his day is devoted to projects like these. I usually just chalk them up under "doing something he loves" and let it go provided he's done his reading, writing and math. I'm just not sure he's learning a whole lot in those times. Sometimes I feel I should be a bit more rigorous, kwim?

But as my wise DH said, "If you handed DS6 a developmentally appropriate book to read for 30 min., then sent him out to play the whole rest of the day, he'd get more out of it than he was getting from where he was." The fact that this is true gets me over many of my worries. HSing may not be perfect, and I KNOW I'm not the perfect teacher (!!!), but I also know DS6 is better off than he was at the start of the school year in that particular public school classroom.

Asking what you want your day to be like is really key, Trinity. You're spot-on there! I chose to be as laid back as I could be without feeling like I was shirking my duty to him. Happily, DS6 is interested in virtually everything, so I don't have to push him to learn. If I did, I think he'd go back to traditional school. That's just not the way I want our family life to be.

Realizing that it's a learning process is key, too. I think you really have to let go of perfectionism if you're going to hime school. It's a system that will evolve--must evolve!--as you and your son go along. In fact, I warned DS6 before we even pulled him out of school that I would have to learn what worked and what didn't; I told him it would take time and I would surely make mistakes. But, I told him, we are a team in this home schooling endeavor, and he's going to have to communicate with me about what's working and what isn't, and he'd have to be patient with me as we figure it out together. That really helped, I think, to start us off on the right foot and to give us license to experiment a little.

It helps to get out of the house, too. We do a lot of our work during the 3-afternoons-per-week that DS3 is at preschool in our church. We just stay in one of the Sunday school rooms and get lots of intensive work done without interruption or temptation to play.

I'm going on and on. Sorry. But I think you're asking great questions, Trinity! They're just exactly the right ones to ask!

Thanks Kriston! Well done! You didnt' mention "computer games - video games - gameboy - Internet" If you feel comfortable, how do you negotiate that?

To me, the kinds of experiences your DS sets up for himself with the Tantagrams and Clay are exactly what "school" should be about. I had a very hard time enticing my DS to do any of that after the age of 2.5 when he discovered computer games. YMMV, but I applaud you.

Maybe I'm a Romantic, but I really believe that most children without open access to the worst TV and Videogames will naturally gravitate to the types of activites that they need to develop properly, particularly at age 4-9. I think that's the difference between hothousing and homeschooling.

Smiles,
Trinity

You can't tell? Because I'm ALWAYS on the computer, naturally! The poor kids can't get to it! LOL!

We own two computers, but only one is hooked up to the Internet. That helps. And I really am on the computer more often than not when we're not doing school work. (Bad!)

We don't own a gameboy or other video game system, so that's easy...for now. When we get to the "Everyone has a gameboy but me" thing, I know it will become more of a challenge. Now, when the kids do play games on the computer, it's usually "I Spy" software, the games on the Hot Wheels website, or Webkinz. None seems too bad for them. It's all of the nonviolent make/build/do style of game. I figure it's about equal to the kind of TV we allow them to watch. Meh. But they only play for maybe an hour a week.

There will come a day when I'll be in trouble, because my rules for them about TV and computer do not apply to me. I rely very heavily on TV, computer games, and the Internet for my personal entertainment, mainly because they're more interruptable than my writing or reading books and more fun than housework. (Ha!) But one of these days, I fully expect the kids to say, "How come you get to watch junk TV and play on the computer so much and we don't?" I don't have a good answer for that!


Nah, I don't deserve applause. It's the path of least resistance for me, really. The clay and tangrams and legos and such are all independent play that don't require my attention. Video games and TV do require it, at least some of it. Really, I'm mostly just a lazy person at heart.

I certainly don't want to hold myself up as some kind of example parent or anything. I'm SOOOOOO not that! What I am is concerned to make learning fun and easy on all of us. Most days I go to bed feeling like I should have done more than I did for my DSs. But I remind myself of a saying we had in grad school: "You can never do enough. You can always do more. But at some point you really have to decide to stop for the day." Home schooling is much the same. Some days are learning whirlwinds. Some days are yawn-worthy. But if learning is mostly fun for him and if I feel we're mostly being responsible, then I'm okay with stopping for the day, even if we could have done more. <shrug>

Certainly we're not hothousing. Quite the opposite, if anything! Keyword: lazy mom!