I wanted to understand how parents have been addressing individual subject acceleration vs overall progress. For example if your DS/DD is 5 years advanced in math or literature:

1)Do you try to put brakes on it to focus on other areas
2)Let them drive the passion and allow other areas to follow natural grade level progressions?

This is all assuming of course you are not grade skipping.

I am not sure how you "put the brakes on" apart from restricting learning opportunities and this I would never recommend. When our DD has had difficulty accessing learning at an appropriate level in Maths then a few things happen and none of them good. Frustration, disappointment, loss of interest, depression and then lack of self confidence and self efficacy. All of these things are difficult to deal with unless she feels as though she is progressing in her learning. And Maths is not her "passion" per se.

We have tried focussing on other areas when we haven't been able to advocate for better learning options....drama, music, languages. That's all well and good but does not make up for appropriate academic progress.

We tend to find that the confidence and self efficacy that comes from progressing in areas of interest or high achievement has a positive spill over it all areas of development so I would go with option two.

Just to alter the perspective.....if your child was a brilliant swimmer would you make them switch to running so they didn't get too far ahead of their peers?

I think this is the gist of the question I have. Do you compare school to a sport where if you are a swimmer running does not matter except to cross train or to you have to think of if more as a Decathlon, i.e., you need to catch up on the sciences, humanities etc of the grades in the middle. If this was post-graduate education this would be clear: you specialize. In elementary school I am more wary. No idea what the kids want to do at this age

I would take the decathlon view. There are certain baseline levels that every student needs to achieve in every subject and in every developmental domain, and all of those need work, especially the weakest areas.

So yeah, that shotput activity is really awkward, but it's part of the game, and you have to keep working. But by all means, keep on long jumping, if that's your thing. There's still plenty of room for improvement, and doing a favored activity is a nice mental recharge from the grind of working on weaknesses all day.

Along these lines my DH is very athletic and is always reading sports articles which emphasise the importance of young athletes engaging in a variety of sports, even (especially?) those who are likely to commit to one particular sport later. Apparently it encourages the development of a wider range of skills and is protective against injury.