Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy A few questions....

While hibernating, I am wondering what are your thoughts are:

1. For kids who did whole grade(s) acceleration, how do you shielding them from getting exposed to "mature" cultural information too early?

2. Is it worthwhile to take the future college fund to pay for private elementary schools now?

Thanks in advance,
Mag

1 - keep an ear out for what his new peers are talking about, and be ready to listen. Make sure your child knows your views on these topics. Take lots of deep breaths.
2- If things are bad enough, then yes. How bad is 'bad enough' that's very hard to say in some cases. Visit the classrooms of the private schools to be very very sure that they are indeed a good chance of a better fit.

Mag,

You can't and this should be considered. This is true for any school due to hormonal influence. When hormones begin, students are more interested in sex.

Talk to them before they hear the mature content from somewhere else and especially if that information will be inaccurate. Better that they hear it from you first.

But this doesn't have to only be about 1 year accelerated kids. The problem is similar when there is a red-shirted kid (did I say that right?) or there are some kids in the class that watch unsupervised TV/internet and it can get bad.

Sorry, not much help here. A private school classroom isn't going to solve this problem as some of these kid discussions/talks probably do not happen in-class.

In my son's school, he is 7 1/2 and whole grade accelerated to 3rd grade. However, he is only the youngest by 4 months, based on our district's December cutoff. There is a very wide range of ages in his class from him to the oldest who will turn 10 in January (retained). I figure at best, we are encountering any social/ cultural issues 6 months ahead of his age-mates. I doubt by the time he's in middle or high school those 6 months will make much difference.

We will have to push for subject acceleration by middle school and I do worry about it then. He will likely be in a math class with kids 4-5 years older. That's a dramatic jump.

I have a 6 year-old completing 6th grade and what we do is ensure that @ home, he is allowed to be his age and we limit the "older" content accessible to him (No Nickelodeon, Disney, Power Rangers, etc ..)

Secondly, talk and talk with them, depending on the gap in ages (for our boy 4+ years from his academic peers) a lot of what is said goes over his head and the few things he does get , we talk about at home. When you do talk, talk to them as if they were that age, they can smell condescension and patronizing attitudes very quickly.

By talking to them at a level they perceive themselves at, the message you want to project will be received more positively

1) I don't, particularly. My DD is 7, accelerated to 3rd - she has an end-of-May birthday, and we have a 9/1 cutoff, so by definition at least 9 months younger, and 18 months younger than most of her friends. She complains that the other girls like iCarly and Hannah Montana (while DD likes Battle Force 5 and Pokemon) - but that was an issue last year, when she was with age peers, too. For most of the other stuff, she just doesn't "get" it, and ignores it.

I don't consider sex / violence / language to be the same kind of thing, in that she watches movies with all of those things, and has had fairly graphic "sex talks" at home.

2) Totally depends on your situation. The private schools available to us would not currently be a better fit for DD than she's getting from public school. But I anticipate she'll test well enough to get merit aid for college, and don't intend to encourage her to apply for schools that don't offer good merit aid, so I wouldn't take a worse situation now in hopes of a better situation later, either.

Thanks for all of your input!

1. Mentally, DD6 can understand the science of it. But emotionally, we don't think she is ready. We also do not allow her and her brother to watch tween TV shows yet. But over hearing some of the conversations of older kids at school just added another concern to consider if we chose grade acceleration.

2. Choosing paying for school now or later is such a difficult choice. Seeing so many college graduated are drowning in their educational debt made us want to save kiddies' educational fund for later. But if they don't have a good education now, will they get into the school of their choice in the future?

Just thinking....

Thanks again for your thoughts!
Mag

From my own experience (now 20 years in the past; man, does that make me feel old!), going to a substandard high school did not interfere with my ability to get into a good college. I didn't feel prepared to tackle lab science at the college level, but that wasn't something I enjoyed or was good at at the substandard high school level, either.

1) agree with previous posters that it is up to you to educate before the child gets information/misinformation at school.

2) Depending on the situation- absolutely. We are very lucky to live in an area with an amazing private gifted school. It is expensive but is very worth it to us and many other families. My kids are learning so many skills they will need and getting such an amazing foundation that it is well worth the money to me.

1: I told DD9 about the basics of the birds and the bees, and what will happen to a woman's body as she develops. Then when asked about sexual matters, I told her that people at school will tell her things about it, it probably won't be true, and if she has any questions at all to ask me and I will answer her anything. She's usually pretty good at coming home and saying "you just won't guess what so and so told me" or the classic "I think xyz told me something wrong...again" Like just now xyz said only girls have a gluteus maximus.

2: I would not take money out of funding for college education for elementary school.

Thanks everyone!

Have to laugh about only girls have gluteus maximus!

Speaking of the birds and bees.... Is there a good resource for preparing the talk? Is 8-9 years old a good age for both boys and girls?

So far, we have been answering questions about the differences between girl's and boy's body whenever DD6 and DS5 ask. They knew there are differences and they knew which parts will change as they grow. That's about it.

Thanks again,
Mag

We didn't really "prepare for the talk". Mostly it was a series of small talks as situations came up that lent themselves to it. We did buy a few books and give them to our kids, told them they could read them when they wanted to and left them on the bookshelf in their room. And I think they did read them. I suppose with grade acceleration (which we did not do), you would want to check in with the school on sex ed topics for the various age groups.

Thanks, intparent! It's funny you mentioned having books around for kids to read. That's what my parents did too because they were too shy to talk about the topic.

That's pretty much been our approach as well. Dd12 has a Sept. bd in a locality where you have to turn 5 somewhere btwn 6/15-10/1 to start K depending on the district. She made the cut-off by two weeks by starting in one of the districts with a later cut-off. She then skipped 5th so she is between 1-2.5 years younger than her grade mates (waiting to start kids with bds around hers is common here).

She missed the 5th grade sex ed talk due to the skip. We opted her out of part of the 7th grade curriculum b/c, as a younger 11 y/o, I wasn't too sure on having her learn about anal sex and some of the other stuff they intended to cover including pictures of genetalia with STDs. This was all taught in a co-ed environment by a male teacher she didn't know. They also had a Christian group come in and talk about teen pregnancy which I had an issue with knowing what that often looks like -- which is scare tactics.

I've tried to talk with her ahead of time about whatever I can and, fortunately, she is very open with me so it's been good so far. I'd have to say that now, at 12, she is starting to explore things, like reading the Lovely Bones, that I wish she'd wait on but I don't imagine that I'd be successful in banning her from reading things like that and am still going the route of discussing rather than banning. I read it after her anyway, so it was too late to tell her she couldn't read it.

Being accelerated, she does tend to hang out with other kids in the accelerated/GT classes, who tend to be fairly well behaved kids at least, not the ones who are smoking and experimenting with things I'd rather she avoid. She's expressed a pretty strong desire to avoid that type of stuff as well.

Actually I think the full grade skip is no different from having older siblings. My younger son learns way more stuff from his brother (+2.5 years) and his brother's friends than he does from his classmates (+1-2 years). And I bet this is true in normal (non HG families), too, and has been true forever. So about 1/2 the population has been thru it so I don't stress too much.

I worry more about our older son (11 years). I can't seem to stop him from reading The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, etc. My husband hides the Esquire, but there's a limit to how much you can keep stuff away from a kid who's genuinely interested. Especially when he knows what clever cartoons are there to be studied... I'd take any advice on that.

On college we're choosing to invest in private school today. I am hoping they do public HS, which will help a lot.