There might be a better forum for this or maybe there's a post related to this already (please redirect me if so). DS7 is gifted and entered K a year early so he's in 2nd grade now. He is doing great academically. However, he is physically very small even for his own age (5th %tile), so when he is with his classmates, he looks ridiculously tiny. He is starting to realize during PE and recess that he is not good at sports compared to his classmates. He is not particularly athletic but he is not NOT-athletic either. He would do fine if he were with his age peers. We should've thought of this sooner, but we're starting to worry that his self-esteem might suffer, especially as he gets older. When his classmates all hit puberty, he is going to feel left behind. So now we're thinking, instead of waiting for that crisis, maybe we should have him repeat 2nd grade. Any advice?

Well if he's doing great academically you'll likely create more problems by having him repeat a grade. I wonder if he can "unskip" just for PE?

I've taught kids arriving or not arriving at puberty (grades 5-7) for several years. I can tell you that there are always a few kids who are physically behind the other kids, who hit puberty a couple of years later than their same age peers. That can be a big deal to the kid and his parents for a couple of months, maybe. At that age, any number of things can be an intense big deal at the time. In terms of long-term effects on ability to maintain relationships and hold down a job, not that big a deal.

Retaining him for a grade where he has already performed well academically would be the worst kind of punishment. If you want him to be convinced early on that there is no meaningful connection between his effort and achievement and his future, making him repeat second grade would be an effective way to do that.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was in mixed-age classes at a rural elementary school as a PG child. There was some discussion of skipping me from second grade to third, but because I could not catch a ball, I was not skipped. I took ballet and weight-training for PE credit in college as part of my lifelong plan to avoid projectiles, and I grew up to be a Profound Underachiever. So I've always believed the team made the wrong call when they decided not to skip me.

Seems like good advice.

I'd second Beckee's point of view. If self esteem is meant to be wrapped up in physical activities, then choose an outside school one for him to participate in; possibly gymnastics where small size is an advantage?

Thanks for your advice. I agree with all of you for the most part, but I'm still not 100% convinced. I have an older child who grade accelerated and is doing great because he is tall for his age, does not care about what other kids think, and he hates sports. He's a perfect nerd and proud of it. DS7, on the other hand, wants more than anything to play basketball and football (of all things! lol!) with his best friends who are literally a foot taller than him! His friends are nice enough about it, but as a mother, it is painful to watch because it really means a lot to him to get his friends approval in that way. He is a different kid when he is at home and is reading Harry Potter books (he's reading the 4th book right now, which of course none of his friends are doing) or making amazing comic books by himself. He looks so comfortable and confident when he's by himself. I wish all of his self-esteem was wrapped up in things like that, but for some reason, he seems to care more about physical prowess right now. Of course that may very well change over time. I was thinking that maybe what I should do is have him repeat 2nd grade but ask the teachers if he could take academic classes with 3rd/4th graders. Taking only PE with age peers and/or doing sports outside of school are good options I should look into. I don't know... I will just have to think more about this.

There seem to be two issues here: 1) He's small 2) He's not extremely athletic.

He could be average-sized and still not all that athletic due to the skip. Or he could be small and athletic. (DD has a male friend who fits this description. It's very possible.)

He will be small no matter what, sounds like. So, is this year difference in athleticism worthy of holding him back?

It sounds like socially, he's doing great. Academically, he's doing great. If you remove his unusual age from the equation, you have an extremely small 2nd grader, likely to hit puberty on the late side, who is otherwise happy and successful. If he were not young, but his doctor gave him a diagnosis amounting to this, would you hold him back?

We look for a solution that works one kid at a time, one year at a time. It is very hard to know if the solution you think of today will actually work tomorrow. By middle school, he might need another skip to be comfortable socially, or he might have other issues that mean a change in school, or... At the beginning of 2nd grade, we had a pretty happy kid. By the end of 3rd, she was badly anxious, depressed, unwilling to dress herself or walk to the classroom, and we pulled her out to another environment. I certainly don't think everyone has this experience, but giving up today to plan for tomorrow with an unusual child (or any child, for that matter) has its drawbacks.

For this year, would it solve the problem for him to have outside athletics with other kids his own age? If you hold him back he will need to make new friends to do sports with anyway. If you ask for the school to help, would it make more sense for him to do PE with younger kids rather than all his academics with older ones? What age are his friends - in a mixed-age group, does he gravitate toward 7-year-olds, or 2nd graders?

yes to this.

My DS8 is grade-skipped and also fairly small for his age anyway, but he has some good company in his class with some other kids the same size who are just naturally smaller. But some of his best friends are at least a foot taller. He leans toward being nonathletic, but really he's probably OK but just extremely cautious. He has not been eager to play team sports, ever, but he really enjoys fencing, for which age/size doesn't matter so much. Around here, many sports activities that are outside of school are based on age, not grade (hockey, soccer, etc). You could see if he's interested in individual sports too, where age doesn't really matter.

I personally would not recommend undoing a grade skip in elementary school for this reason alone. From your post, it sounds like he wants to play with his friends, not necessarily his agemates. His friends will then be a grade ahead of him, so he will lose out on that if he repeats a grade.

Elementary school is so circular and repetitive (usually), that I imagine it would be pretty awful for a kid who already does well with agemates to go down a grade. If going down a grade for PE is an option, and your kiddo wants to try that, it can't hurt to ask.

Sports outside of school at this age are age-based, not grade-based, so that represents a great opportunity for him to compete with other kids his age. I strongly recommend that option.

I'd also strongly caution you against rushing to judgement on the athletic tendencies or abilities of a 7yo... especially a gifted one, since their abilities in all other areas have a tendency to lag for a bit, then take a sudden, giant leap forward.

I'm not sure if this will help you or not because I have a girl who is actually fairly tall for her age. But she is two years younger than her classmates. As she is in middle school she is playing school sports, all of which are quite competitive around here. For the last few years she has always been among the smallest kids on her teams, but not always the shortest (she has kids who are naturally small and not redshirted along with a few girls who were redshirted specifically for sports), but she is now starting to grow and will be one of the tallest girls in a couple years.

The biggest advantage we have seen with her playing sports with her classmates, though, is that she is taught at a higher level and her athletic skills - she's a decent athlete, but definitely not a natural-born "athlete" - have risen to the challenge. For her it's been similar to how it's been with academics: if you teach it she will learn. I'm convinced that if she was playing with her agemates she'd be an decent athlete playing like the other 11 year olds. But since she's always gotten to play with her grademates she's a decent athlete playing like the other 13 year olds.

Too, she has skills that will help her athletically that other kids don't always have. She learns plays and rules incredibly quickly, she's very consistent in her performance because she's a bit of a perfectionist, and she understands the nuanced coaching she receives.

If he's small it's possible he's always going to be small compared to both his grademates and his agemates, and you can't keep holding him back until he's average-sized. But maybe emphasize to your DS the things he brings to athletics that other kids might not that could really benefit him. And, maybe see how much stock *he* is putting into these things.

In the meantime, I like the suggestion to find him a sport where small height is an advantage or at least doesn't really matter, or an individual sport like swimming or martial arts where he can build his athleticism without the direct comparisons to other boys.

Your ds sounds about the same age for grade as my dd12, who turned 7 about a month and a half into 2nd grade. She has always been young for grade b/c we started her a little early, but she's not atypically young IMO, but I also grew up where the K cut-off was 5 by Dec. 31st.

Mine is also very, very small. As a 7th grader now, she's just a hair under 4'8" and no more than 65 lbs. I also have a grade skipped dd who started school at a similar age to my dd12 and then skipped the last year of elementary. She, like others have mentioned, is taller than typical for our family so she doesn't stand out as younger.

While mine are girls and I'm sure that the issues are different for boys, a few things probably apply for both.

* Will he likely be short his entire life? Some boys just come from families where the men grow later in life and don't tend to be shorter forever. Some kids, like my dd, will be lucky to be 5'1" or so based on genetics. For a kid who is always going to be shorter than average, I figure that s/he is going to have to get used to the idea that s/he is just small and may not be competitive at sports that rely on height like volleyball and basketball. Even if the child is the oldest in grade and doesn't look as short as a result, eventually age stops being a benefit when everyone reaches their full height.

* Like others have mentioned, doing extracurricular sports with age peers might be a good alternative, but if he's in the 5th percentile of height for age, he's still probably going to be shorter than most of his age peers.

* What does your ds want? Does he mention wanting to be in the younger grade and, if so, have you talked with him about how he would feel about repeating academics?

* I can say that my dd12 was self conscious about her height in elementary. She was bothered by always being the smallest and we had some issues even up until 6th grade where her "friends" would pick her up, swing her around, and generally be too rough with her given the size discrepancy. I can say that she has reached a point in middle school now where she's pretty comfortable with who she is and her size. This came about not b/c she is no longer smaller, but b/c she has found some good friends with whom she connects on more than a superficial basis and the academic fit has become, probably for the first time in her life, pretty good. She's really starting to do better as she reaches higher level math that relies not just on rote memorization and she's had a few years to be subject accelerated there. Her classes just hit more on her strengths this year especially and I believe that she sees the benefit to being where she is academically and socially.

You are are all wonderful! Thank you so much for all your ideas. To answer some of your questions, DS missed the cut off by only a month; meaning, if he had entered as he should, he would've been one of the oldest kids in his class. So with that fact and since he was academically so advanced, it was a no brainer to put him in school early. He has always been small but then, I was always small until high school and then grew overnight to become taller than average. I hope that's the case for him.

I've asked him whether he would like to repeat 2nd grade and he was pretty ambivalent about it. He will be OK either way. Like mnmom23's kid, DS tends to adapt very quickly to whatever situation he finds himself in. He becomes very lazy if he's put in a situation where he is not challenged but does not complain of boredom; if we teach him stuff that seems way ahead of his age, he goes into an alert mode and surprises everyone by mastering it quickly. In fact, he probably would quickly catch up if we were to grade skip him again in the future. He's like a chameleon.

So... from what you guys have all said (and now I agree) it is probably a good idea to not repeat 2nd grade. I'll try to steer him toward sports that's not so height-dependent. I'll let you know how he does! Thank you!

Junior,

My DD8 is in 4th grade. She is the youngest as well as the smallest in her class. She is even smaller than her reading buddy from the 1st grade. Last month, she said it was kind of embarassing that she is the smallest in her grade. I sat down with her and explain to her about genetics (me and my DW are short) and nutrition. She is at peace now (we made her feel proud that although she is the smallest in size, she is the smartest in class and all those stories like David and Goliah helps too) but she started eating more vege and protein. She is now taking her multivitamin on her own too.

Boys are a little different especially if he is interested in organized sports.

My middle kid, now 15, repeated 2nd grade. Though our circumstances were a bit different, she is also small and she was immature.

She attended a school from PreK through 2nd where the birthday cutoff was end of calendar year. She then switched to the public school which has an end of September cutoff (birthday is in October).

While she did know a few kids at the public school through rec sports, I don't think any of them knew she was repeating a grade. She could have gone to 3rd - public school said she was ready academically - but left the decision to us. For social reasons, we chose to repeat 2nd.

Around here, most rec sports are grade based, but we only made the mistake once, just one sport, one season, of putting her in with grade mates (this is prior to the repeat year). She is not a natural athlete, and we didn't think she would even play rec sports beyond the age of 12. However, around that age, she expressed interest in playing travel softball, and started playing volleyball for the school because a friend asked her to go to tryouts.

She is now in her 3rd year of travel softball, made JV volleyball at school (got a good amount of playing time), and is a practice player for a club volleyball team (can't commit to play tournaments due to softball conflicts). She is not big, but did finally grow, and is now 5'-4" and almost 100 lbs.

Your son could play pound football until he reaches HS age so he isn't greatly outsized. Baseball is great for kids of all sizes - we have seen a lot of softball as our older two both play, and there are tiny kids to huge kids who are great players.

I realize that our situation is different due to the school switch, and I will note that she was bored in elementary, though she is not the type to complain about it. Good luck with your decision.

DD is very small. 9yo and 50 inches/44lbs and in 6th. so around 5%tile in height.
When we skipped her the first time we knew her physical ability was very poor and she was very uncoordinated.

So we started training her and picking sports that height didn't matter. Skiing/snowboarding, archery and running. She started running 5ks. She started going pushups/pullups/crunches to strengthen for archery. She passed her 3rd grade PE exam which was a huge relief.

In this latest grade skip to 6th grade it was a piece of cake! She was ready. She passed her 6th grade tests beating many 6th graders. She's made friends very easily and yes it's crazy to see her with them as she is a size of a big 1st grader, but her friends don't seem to be bothered.

The boys are talking about snowboarding and hanging out with her and she likes to ride motorcycles so they talk about that. Again all things that don't require height.

So it's possible to be proactive and find things they can do physically. GL.

Oh by the way, in this new grade she found friends who like to go out so she invited them to her archery lesson. There were four of them that I took to the shooting place and boy did they have a ball!! They all want to join archery now and admired her for her ability to shoot.

It's so nice to see because Dh and I know how long of a road this has been. GL!!

You think he would be competitive against his agemates? Really? When 95% of kids are bigger and stronger and taller?

More like damage his self esteem further by placing sole importance on an area he can't hope to excel in (apart from the out of school sports others have mentioned). At least right now he can blame his age.

DS is small and grade skipped. He loves gymnastics and tennis with age mates outside of school. He is competitive at school sports and comes in the middle of the pack with sporting things - it's one thing he is not the best in and he is quite happy to work on /practice.

Spud Webb won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest at the 1986 All-Star exhibition. He was smaller than 100% of the NBA, at a mere 5'6" (or 5'7", depending on your source).

David Eckstein is also 5'6". He has two World Series championship rings, and he was a key component of both teams.

Brian Gionta, at 5'7", scored 48 goals in the NHL one year, and his name will live forever on the Stanley Cup.

Etc...

In far less significant news, I played flag football at age 19, as a defensive tackle... all 145 pounds of me. I was regularly matched up against blockers that easily weighed over 200. And I got past the blockers so often that the other teams had to start game-planning around me.

I beat those guys by being smarter, not stronger. And since we're all here talking about a gifted kid, there's no reason to assume, at this stage, that he can't do the same.

My youngest dd, 8 years old, is so tiny she's only occasionally in her life been tall enough to make it into the first percentile on the growth charts for her age. She's not only shorter than 100% of the kids her own age (and in her grade, where her age is right around the middle of the pack)... she's smaller than many of the kindergartners at her school (she's in third grade).

She's also an incredible athlete - strong, agile, great motor coordination, has yet to meet a sport she doesn't love. In 2nd grade her teacher put together a little book for each student on their birthday week, and included a page where each classmate wrote a little something about the student they admired. 9 out of 10 comments on dd's page were "Awesome cartwheeler!" "Best cartwheeler in 2nd grade!". She participates in competitive sports outside of school and is eagerly awaiting middle school when she can start playing competitive sports at school.

I'm not terribly athletically talented, but I played volleyball for fun for years and I did really well at it because I had fun playing it and because I practiced and learned and tried. And I'm about as vertcally challenged as people come

JMO, but it seems to me that *for the majority of sports* success at sports has less to do with size than it has to do with passion and skill and dedication/motivation.

Also, the student who is being discussed here is only one month younger than grade cut-off.... I'm guessing he wouldn't be all that tall among kids one grade lower. And I'm basing that guess based on the 2 out of 3 of my kids who are very short - my dd mentioned above, and my ds who is around 5th-10th percentile for height for his age.

polarbear

Since repeating 2nd grade would make him one of the oldest and since he does not appear to be athletically gifted and he is well-placed academically and well-adjusted socially, I would not recommend repeating 2nd grade.

However, my sister had some regrets accelerating her DS in elementary due to high school team sports considerations. Her DS is an adult now but was 12 when he started high school and 16 when he started college. In his case, he was always obviously talented athletically but on the small to average size for age. As such, he always did well in sports or anything requiring athletic abilities even in comparision with his grade-mates who were two years older. However, once he got to high school, he could not compete with kids who were two years older and much larger and also athletically talented.

I have a relative the same age who's 15th percentile for height and I'd describe him as an excellent and competitive athlete: he's quick, a fighter, tenacious, dogged, well coordinated, agile, etc. He jumps out at me as someone who could be a fantastic high school wrestler when he gets there. He's currently doing great on a swim team and progressing rapidly through karate belts. As academics are not his forte, if he were in the same position I'd say yes what a great idea it would be to put him in a situation where he can be a bit more competitive athletically.

The original poster here though identified her son as "not particularly athletic", as having friends in his current grade and fitting his current grade okay right now, it was more fearing for the future that was prompting their concern. It is in this particular context that I have a hunch that undoing a skip for sports and general "fitting in" might backfire.

I do think in early elementary grades an awful lot of success with school sports is simple size, when later on skills and teamwork start to be important. Flag football is an excellent example of that, in 1st grade a big size kid who grabs the ball and barrels through with their elbows out deflecting the other kids can look great. But by maybe 6th grade there is actual planning and teamwork and a quick thinker who can keep his head under pressure might be highly appreciated as a running back. One may find ways to fit in with school sports even without changing grades.

In no way did I mean to generalize that people who are shorter than average have globally poor athletic aptitude, that's not what I intended at all, I can see it came across that way, I apologize for that.

Polly

I didn't mean to suggest that I would undo a skip for sports, but I think that if DD15 had not repeated 2nd grade, she would not be playing school sports.

Sports had nothing to do with the repeat - she was immature and had the chance to repeat in a different school (and be in the correct grade per the public school birthday cutoff). I also thought she was not the swiftest of kids in an academic sense. She was labeled gifted in 7th grade, FSIQ over 130, years after the repeat.

However, it did happen to work out well with the sports. Unfortunately, you might not know the "right answer" to the question until your kiddo is grown. Of course this happens with lots of decisions you make for your kid - some will turn out well, some not as well - but you just do your best.

Likewise for me. My dd12 isn't the best athlete probably due to lack of confidence when comparing herself to others who are bigger and lack of interest/practice. I do think that it can be somewhat harder to dunk a basketball, for instance, when you are 5' vs. 6', but there are always those who are superior athletes even when they are smaller than those against whom they are playing.

On your larger point, that undoing a grade skip due to sports is a bad thing, we agree 100%.

I still urge caution on rushing to judge the athletic abilities of a 7yo, though. At that age, my mom had labeled me as a hopeless clutz, and in 2-3 years I had outgrown that label. Earlier, I made the point about how gifted kids can leap forward in athletics just as they do with everything else, and we all (coaches and parents) saw my DD7 do just that in soccer last year. She showed up at practice one day as a different player, and carried it on from there.

Also, there are two ways in which a mentally gifted individual can gain an edge against physically superior opponents:

- Figuring out innovative ways to maximize their limited abilities and compensate for their deficits.
- Just plain outsmarting the opposition through superior tactics.

For example, that David Eckstein guy I mentioned earlier, the knock on him all the way up to the majors was that there was no way he'd be able to make the throws from the shortstop position to beat a runner headed for first base, because he didn't have the arm strength. And that was true... he most certainly did not have the arm strength to make those throws. So, he figured out a delivery that demanded more from stronger muscles in his torso and legs, probably by closely observing what pitchers do. The result didn't look pretty (it looked like he was throwing his entire body at the base, not just the ball), but it got the job done.

And don't even get me started on the guy who pitched in the majors with only one hand...

MIT has one of the top ballroom dance teams in the country. It's not because nerds intrinsically make better dancers; it's because nerds are really, really good at analyzing the complicated body mechanics of moving two people through space.