I'm just contenplating here. We are really not ready to grade accellorate. I would like to hear others opinion.

My son could use grade accelloration but the sports are very important to our family. There are some very good athlelets in our family. My husband even held records for many years at his highschool. Some have received Sport college scholarships.

My son does well. Not a superstar. He is one of the smaller kids but not smallest. If he moved up in school then he would have a disadvantage. I feel like sports are a big link with him and the kids in his grade. There are a few boys that are excelling in the sports that are also smart. I'm not sure if they are where my son is. Intellectually I think he feels a little outside with his peers but ok.

This year he just started basketball. I'm so excited for him playing with all his teammates from school. This feels very different from his community sports. Even after 3 years, of the same soccer team we feel a little outside because the boys go to public school together. He could keep in his age with the community sports and miss the school sports but that would be sad.

That is one of the area the Iowa Acceleration Manual looks at. I answered in your other post too. If sports are a big part of your lives, I could definitely see where grade acceleration would be difficult especially if the sports were largely size driven, football, basketball etc. Now maybe swimming, tennis, golf, etc. wouldn't have such a large impact. There still would be earlier muscle development though. It's hard to say though as there are family tendencies towards earlier or later puberty. Where we lived in TX though red-shirting was so popular for boys to give them an edge on getting a starting position, accelerating there would really place them two years behind most boys in their class. Of course as you mentioned there is always community sports and I know our community has very competitive traveling sports for kids.

When is your son's birthday?

He has a summer birthday. So he is among the older boy in his grade. We held him back for maturity and size. Not academics. We did not realize his abilities/situation would be so bad when he started 1st grade. We thought they have a gifted program so that might be good. We thought 2nd grade would be better but it felt like being hit with a reality brick. I wish I could just feel comfortable like so many here that would just put their kids ahead. I just have to know more rather than making so many changes which are hard for him.

In Georgia at least, summer swim teams are age-based and have no connection to your child's academic grade placement. Seems like the kids compete against age mates in a 2 year window (like 7-8, 9-10). In that situation, your child's summer birthday can be an advantage :-) My younger one (now 5) has a late June bday - at the end of the season- so in a few summers he could swim in the 6 Unders despite turning 7 a week before the season ends. We like swimming because it is the kid against the clock. and everyone gets to swim, at least on the local team, nobody gets left on the sidelines. It has been a HUGE confidence booster for DS8.

We will, I think, be in the same situation you are. DS5 will be starting K late... we set that in motion before we figured out what was going on with older brother (8 on Monday). Now we are thinking about asking for acceleration for DS8 and realizing DS5 might actually be as bright as older brother. So... do we skip him to First? Enrich after school? Ask for placement in the so-so gifted program? (portfolio based in K, based on Cogats and ITBS's only afterwards) Just dunno.

This may sound harsh, but for every adult that people can actually name as being 'harmed' by acceleration, I can name 2 adults who were redshirted for athletics and their world fell apart when they realized that high school athletics was the best it would ever be for them.

The private school where DS attended K wanted to accelerate him one year, but we knew that eventually DS would want to play school sports so that was one of the (lesser) considerations in declining the skip. We have since learned that there are 2 public schools in the metropolitan area with HG programs which have the children working 2+ grade levels ahead. We plan to put DS into one of those programs next fall for 2nd. Are there possibly any small programs like this in your area which you don't yet know about?

We did not hold him back because of college scholarship. Sports at his age is very important socially. We did not do this for scholarship. He was initially held back for maturity, not to stand out as the best. I would like him to feel more average is some ways. I'm not to worried about his world falling apart by sports maxing out in HS. I think it great he is hanging with the better team mates and that gives him confidence and freindships.

My son did not want to grade skip because he is so passionate about sport (he is subject accelerated). It had nothing to do with scholarships as we don't have the same system in Australia. It has given him wonderful age mates that have no issue in accepting him for who he is, in fact they embrace his giftedness. I found this pathway the best for our son due to the fact that most of the gifted extracurricular programs here were of no interest to him and he didn't seem to 'fit' there either.
Is it more unusual to be gifted and your main interest (outside of academics) to be sport???

This is just our personal experience.

I think athletics are one factor. They should not be the most important factor.

More important, I think, is this sentence:

This seems to really be the issue. It sounds to me as if sports are just one more reason that supports your gut reaction. (Though I could always be wrong...)

There are plenty of solutions besides acceleration if you think it's not the right solution for your particular child. Are there other solutions that might work better? Acceleration isn't necessarily right for all HG+ kids.

Even so, I'd suggest considering why you think acceleration is not right for your child. Maybe make out a pros and cons list and weigh the relative importance of each pro and con.

I'm also wondering, if your son is decent-but-not-amazing at sports, is he even likely to make the school teams if he doesn't skip? If he did make them, would he ride the bench? Would *he* care if he missed that, or is it your DH or you who would miss it?

I was a good-but-not amazing athlete myself. I was sometimes a starter, sometimes a sub, sometimes a bench-warmer. Bench-warming is not worth staying in a poor academic fit for, IMHO. It does nothing for one's confidence. The friendships with teammates are good, and it's good for a GT child to have a challenge in life. But bench-warming typically doesn't do much for a person socially, especially not an HG+ kid. Athletes know the "brains" from the "jocks," even when the "brains" also play sports.

I guess I'm saying that I'd recommend thinking over the pros you've listed here re: sports and be sure your child would actually reap those benefits if he didn't skip.

Also, I'd defnitely second the idea of looking at the Iowa Acceleration Scale. It helps with weighing pros and cons.

Also, you should talk with your DYS family consultant about these sorts of issues. They're very good about helping you figure things out, asking useful questions, supplying info for decision-making, etc.

HTH!

You are absolutely right at this moment we are not ready to accellorate. I would be open to it maybe in the future. I need more info. first. When and if we make a change I want to feel good about it.

I probally could of talked the school into moving him up 1 grade but I think it would of just felt like more work load instead of good work. This is what happened in his 4th Gr. Math. They made some adjustments in the Math which is a little better. I think feels a bit betrayed with this work still.

I feel like if he could stay with his class and they could make a few subject adjustments it might be good. I do see potential problems because he would like to blend in. After he is more socially confident and hopefully establishes stronger local freindships then move him up or somewhere else. He still wants to pretend and play.

Luckily at school everyone gets to play the same amount until several grades later when they have to try out. He is not the star player but he hangs with the upper part of the team. I am seeing him loving basketball this year. It feels like he is apart of this group and it's helping his freindships.

Thanks Kriston. This is complex. It helps to hear what others have to say to help me know things to consider.

If you are just asking about the sports, yes, it will make it harder for a boy to compete against older boys for a place on a school team based upon years of play and physical development (which might not matter in your son's case as you say he is a year older anyway). As someone else pointed out, it does not matter for outside of school competitive sports which are based on age, but school teams are based on grade level. If he is accelerated and has a hard time making school teams with older boys, you might be able to look at age-based sports outside of school, e.g., AAU basketball. http://www.aauboysbasketball.org/RulesInfo/AgeCalculator.aspx

We have had similar issues with my son. He is 12 now and skipped one year. He has just finished his first year of high school (Yr 7 here) and is the youngest in the school. He is in a pretty good academic fit and has been selected for most of the advanced classes on offer. However his passion is for sports and being the youngest has impacted on this.

He has still made quite a few school teams (6 in the last 2 years) and has done very well in them but he just missed out on being selected for the advanced sport class (they call it Elite sport and fitness - it is sport therefore it is ok to be elitist!). The main reason he didn't get in was that his test times were not quite as fast as some of the other boys even though some of them are a year to 18months older than him ( a lot of boys are held back around here). He is a late developer too which doesn't help. There can be a HUGE difference between a late developing 12 year old and a 14 yo that has already gone though puberty and their growth spurt.

The school aknowledged that he did extremely well considering his age but they couldn't take that into account as they have to select on results. They do that for all their accelerated classes which means that they are full of pushed high achievers - there are a lot of them in our area - and the underachieving gifted kids miss out - but that is another post altogether!

Apparently next year he is actually able to compete with his agemates in the year below for the big school sports competitions,(there wasn't a lower year this year), but he will always be with his classmates for sports teams and classes.

I do second guess myself at times and wonder if we did the right thing. He would be an outstanding sportman if he was one of the older kids instead of the youngest. He holds his own against the older kids and most of the time I think it is actually helping - giving him challenge and something to strive for instead of always being the best - same as academic acceleration I guess. It is just occasionally when he misses out on something that he would otherwise have probably achieved that it is difficult for him. On the whole I think he is better off where he is.

He does play local sport as well with his age group but even there he is one of the younger ones due to the cut off dates for age groupings. He has been in teams with kids that he went to kinder with who are now a year below him at school. Nobody has said anything to me about it - I don't think it is an issue for anyone.

Good luck with your decision - it is a tough one, we agonised for months before we decided and we still wonder what it is going to be like in years to come.

Cheers
Teri

My son is whole grade accelerated. He plays sports with his age group, not his grade level. Should he be a superstar athlete when he plays sports through school (i.e., middle & high school), then this is where his athletic ability will be the reason he's on the team.

My brother and I both played sports. As a freshman, I was on the Varsity squads with Juniors & Seniors. As a 10 year old, my brother played on the 12 & under league, not the 10 & under league. So I'm personally not worried about DS6.

I thought of this conversation when reading Mindset by Carol Dweck:

With a double grade skip, I played up, but wasn't nearly as talented athletically as academically. Personally, there was long term value in having to work hard just to be on the team.

Why not do both?

I played sports with my age peers and my older classmates. Sports are what kept me connected to both groups when we had little else in common.

When I was radically accelerated, I spent time in middle school with my age peers for sports only.

Soccer is easy to play with both groups and I did play on teams where I was 3 years younger than others. Football, track, and basketball had to be played with my age peers, although I played pick up football with my older classmates as well.

There is value to being with older kids. By playing sports with his older classmates, he will get some maturity lessons he would miss out on.

So, I'd say that if a team will take him and dad will work with him, and he is committed, then he has a place with older kids.

Edit: I read the rest of the posts on this. Its ok to get cut from varsity teams when a younger kid. That is not the card you are dealt. Let the other kids have their glory because yours is still decades ahead and it all rests on what is in your head.

Great post.

I think that is all we can do with these kids Dottie, there is never going to be a perfect situation for them. I asked my son who has inventive leanings to come up with a "what if" machine where you can enter all the parameters and come up with an answer. He hasn't quite managed it yet though, but if he does I am sure he will do a roaring trade!

What I don't get is why people place so much importance on sports that they redshirt a 5 year old? If a kid is good at sports, that talent will develop and the opportunity to redshirt a kid at the college level would make more sense.

My son is 6 1/2, in 1st grade (though goes to 2nd grade for math and also to a pull-out session with the gifted teacher). He loves loves loves soccer - has been playing since he was 4, spring, summer, fall, and this year indoor winter soccer (in the 5 and 6 year old co-ed group). The last day of this session is this coming weekend, and today I got an e-mail from the soccer person telling me that next session I sign him up for, I should sign him up with the age group above him (7 and 8 year old boys) Apparently, he IS as good as we think he is It'll certainly be interesting - he's already the smallest in his group, so he'll be tiny compared to the 7 and 8 year olds - but he is SO up for the challenge - yeah

It is so important to teach kids that the process and the challenge are the reward more than the ribbon. Internal prizes are the best.

I told my son I would rather see him get Bs and get more out of the work than his easy As. This does get tricky.

Dottie,
This makes my heart sing! I always had faith that you would come to enjoy those 'potentially awkward' moments. Go Dottie!

Sister Grinity

I agree for myself, but I think that people who are motivated by their social standing are just as legitimate as we who are have internal motivation. Also, I can't help but notice that they give out those trophies for a reason. They motivate many kids.

We like trophies too. Don't get me wrong. I just want my kids to feel good for participating too.

I've got a very different perspective here, but the difference might be attributed to personality. It seems like I entered and won every coloring, drawing, writing, spelling and science competition that came along while I was in elementary school (I even had poems published in the newspaper and dioramas displayed on public access tv!), and in the end it was a very damaging experience for me. Being at the top became my identity and by junior high I was avoiding any competition I couldn't win for fear of being revealed as a fraud. This included any and all forms of sport. By high school, I was a poor performer in competitive activities that I should have been good at, like debate, because I was so stressed out about appearing smart. Carol Dweck has written about the difference between documenting intelligence and developing it, and too often, competitions were a way for me to do the former--to "prove" how smart I was.

Ultimately, I think the biggest problem was that the competitions I entered in elementary school were all rigged in my favor. Until high school, I wasn't competing against anyone close to an intellectual peer (my mom turned down a second grade grade skip), so I never learned how to lose. For this reason, I let my uncoordinated DS4 participate in sports with kids his age (he still has soccer with his friends from preschool), but I would not want him entering any kind of academic or art contest against kids his age. It wouldn't be fair to anyone, including my son.