Has anyone skipped K for their DC? How did it go?


I have a fall birthday DC, who missed the K cut-off by 6 weeks. He was accepted to a gifted school for early K, but it was all day, M-F, and I just felt it was too much for him this year.


That being said, he will be well past any K curriculum next year, (probably even the gifted curriculum, but I'll definitely talk to them more about it to be sure.)

I went back and forth about sending him because I know he is mentally ready, but I also know he is not physically ready for that long day.


Maybe we should just start in K and then skip later if need be?

I have a spring birthday boy who skipped first grade. I think that there is something to be said about starting in K - it is mainly about learning the social/group aspect of school and the activities will not be challenging perhaps but still fun.

It also gives you time to see where he is at academically towards the end of the year and then start brainstorming/planning.

That being said...most kindergartners in full day programs come home whipped until later in the year as they get used to it. And most full day programs have a rest and less academic activities in the afternoon so maybe he would be okay all day.

My DS7 skipped K and it has worked out well. In our case, he did two years of 3-day-a-week morning preschool first. We knew he was ready for K early, but didn't think the SD would ever go for it since he has a Thanksgiving birthday, so we just enrolled him in the second year of preschool. However, as we neared K, we realized (partly after speaking with K teachers we knew) that K was no longer right for him. So, after ability and achievement testing and meeting with 1st grade teachers, he skipped K.

Honestly, he had very little difficulty assimilating. He already knew the basics of school from preschool, and was a little familiar with the elementary school because he has older siblings. He did have a bit of difficulty sitting still during circle time and actually sitting at his desk all day (he liked to stand, but not move around), which the teacher attributed to his young age and I attributed to his boredome with the academics.

We gave him several months to adjust to the school day before we brought up the academic mismatch, but the adjustment -- according to us and his teacher -- really only took a few weeks. It was much like it would be for any student new to a school for any reason.

Of course, the academics eventually had to be addressed, and once they were, he was better able to sit still during those better-fit activities.

Anyway, our take on it was that our DS didn't have the same expectations for school that we had, so he just went along with the 1st grade routine without comparing it to what he would have gotten in K. He already knew about standing in lines, sharing, putting on his shoes and coats, etc. from preschool, and those same social skills that he would have gotten in K he was able to use in 1st. Of course, DS is a confident, social kid who never had any problems with separation anxiety or it may have made us a little more wary. I would guess that K teachers might be more accommodating to these kinds of issues than 1st grade teachers, who may be less patient with these insecurities.

Edited to add: DS had good handwriting and liked writing. This is not always the case, particularly with boys. 1st grade did assume he could write decently, so, if he could not, K would likely have been a good choice. Lots to consider!

My DS has a January birthday, and was academically beyond K when he started at age 5 with agemates. He went to an all-day K, having had experience with 2 hours of preschool 3 days a week. He came home exhausted for a few months. Since 1st grade in our district is a "learn-to-read" and learn basic math year, we decided to do kindy with differentiation and then skip first. Our son also refused to learn to write before K, so it was a good place for him to learn something that everyone else was learning too.

Looking back (just a bit, as DS7 is a rising 3rd grader), I still feel that it was the right decision for us to send DS to K and skip 1st. For our kid, it was best to learn "how to do school" with other kids experiencing that for the first time too, rather than being dropped in with 1st graders who already knew what was going on. When he got to second, he was still underchallenged, but that's another story.

I should also mention that he will not be in school at all this year. We will be doing "home school light," and he will start next year. So having a whole year off, I'm sure he will need to adjust to being back in a classroom.


Thanks for the replies and BTDT's. (I just made that "word" up.)

Well in that case, I change my answer to "it is too soon to tell" what to do next year. GT kids can change quickly during this time, and if you are homeschooling this year, you might find that even 1st grade will not really be enough next year. I would not recommend putting a GT kid in kindy next year if he's going to be a year older than all the other kids. But of course, each situation is different. You will probably have to revisit your plan for next year in the spring.

ETA: May I ask why you aren't sending him to early K this upcoming year?

Well, there are a lot of small reasons that added up to "not a great fit right now."

- he would have been an early k, so he won't be a year older than the other kindies next year, he will be same age or 6 months older. There were a few parents of fall bdays a full year older than him this year that I spoke with, and I admit, it did scare me a little.

- we live 40-60 minutes away from the school, depending on weather and traffic. so on top of a full day of kindy, he would have the commute time.

- large class size, 24 kids, one teacher, no aides. This isn't a huge deal, but definitely added to the "cons."

- most importantly, he has multiple food allergies, and is contact sensitive to dairy. The school has a few rules in place, like hand washing, no food sharing, etc, but there is a chance he would need to sit alone at lunch, which I hate the thought of, and we don't feel comfortable having him be 45 minutes away if something were to happen.


Maybe we are a smidge over protective.

Wait a sec, did I write that post? My DS also has multiple food allergies. Sorry, I misunderstood the age difference. I completely understand your decision to keep kiddo home another year. I still stand by my "too early to tell for next year" comment. I'm sending you a PM (flashing envelope).

We are skipping K for DS5 and sending him to 1st this fall. So, obviously no experience with it yet, but I can keep you posted as we go through the year if you'd like. DS has a Feb bday which puts him generally in the middle of his current class age-wise, so he'll likely only be about 6 months younger than the youngest students.

We're not worried too much about the school "transition" because he was in a preK+Spanish immersion program at the same school that was a full day. He's familiar with the school and how it works, and their K is more similar to the preK (they actually swapped rooms with the K class after lunch, so it was all the same materials for both classes) than to 1st, so it would be a transition anyway. He did very well with the full day as a 4-year-old, but this is a kid who hasn't had a nap since about 18 mo. and for whom energy is not a problem.

My DD6 skipped K and started 1st a month before her 5th birthday. She would have been one of the youngest in K and the kids in her class were from 10 months to 2.5 years older. She fit in well and the classroom experience was just right for her, but the academics were too easy. She did have a few minor behavior things (playing outside after school instead of going to the daycare room, seeing what it was like to be sent to the principal, roughhousing with the boys) that the school was quick to put down to immaturity, but we felt were do to boredom, her try-things-to-see-what-happens attitude, and tomboy nature.

The school is also 50 minutes away, and she was in carpool with kids ranging in age from 6 - 14, leaving at 7:15 and getting home at 4:00. she was (and is!) a complete rock star with it all. We did, however, did have many days of left lunch boxes, coats, and sweaters, lost water bottles, and homework folder not turned in.

Last year she was in a 2nd-3rd multi-age classroom where she was grouped with the 3rd graders. Still not challenging, but better by a long shot than 1st grade where she would have been chronologically (or K where she would have been in 30 other states!). She got much better at remembering her things to and from home, began advocating for herself, and enjoyed the overnight field trip her class took. She wanted to be friends with the 3rd grade girls, but wanted them to like the things she was into - fairies, forming nature clubs, running around outside - when they were more interested in just sitting and talking. It was a lonely year in that respect and we ended up doing lots of play dates with age-mates from around our home.

Next year she goes to the all 3rd grade, back with the group of kids she was in 1st with. That's great socially, she's looking forward to the 2 weeks of "pioneer days" where they all dress up and some other extras, but we are very worried about what the academics will be like with her repeating 3rd grade. We are hoping the school will change their mind and allow her to continue her subject acceleration by going to 4th (or 5th!) for math, reading, and spelling.

Really, school has been mostly for being social and the extras. The real learning is at home.

All that is a long way of saying, yes, my child skipped K, we are happy that she did, and still fighting for appropriate academic placement.

We had to fight for 6 months to get her school to grudgingly admit her to 1st and I would have loved to have a gifted school offering us early admission.

Hi Nikita,

So the school is putting her in 3rd without offering subject acceleration? This is a reversal of her skip? How do they rationalize that if she was grouped with the 3rd graders last year?

Wonderful she is looking forward to it but I can imagine your concern over her repeating 3rd grade material must be substantial.

Polly

Yes, we realize that we had what most people would have considered an unusually great option, but it just wasn't the right answer for us, at this time.

Hi Amber - I wanted to let you know that doing k with agepeers and skipping 1st is a commonly recommended path for gifted boys. Ruf, for example, seems to blanket recommend it for boys who are highly likely to need a skip.

Is your local Kindy a half-day program? If so I think that this is a fine plan, particularly if your son was 'behaviorally ok' in preschool with agemates. Some kids start acting out or getting tummy aches when placed with agemates due to poor fit even at age 3. Some kids don't.

It seems to me that preschool and kindy teachers are the most comfortable with a large range of development in their classrooms - which is nice for the asynchronous gifted kid. Trouble starts up as kids move into full day, let's get everyone on the same page with reading grades (1st around here, kindy in some places.)

My son came home with 'books' from school every week in 1st grade, and he seemed to be shamed by their existence. I didn't really know what I was seeing at the time - just that the books upset him for some reason. By the end of the year the little pamphlets, which look to have been printed from a computer, had a full sentence on each page. My son wasn't an early reader - but he felt that he was being personally insulted that he had been given books like this. I thought that by explaining that 'everyone got the same book' and 'that's the way school is some of the time' and 'you just have to get used to it' that I was parenting him effectively. Within about a year it was obvious that I had misjudged the situation.

I wasn't the only one who didn't get it, of course. The teachers and staff said: "He was such a good boy in kindergarden, so polite, we wonder why he is acting out now. Let's start a behavior chart." I was very trusting of school authority at that time.

So by the middle of 1st grade the whole 'problem' was cast as his 'bad attitude.'

Amber, you are way way ahead of the game compared to where I was when my son was 4. I don't blame you for not wanting to drive 50 minutes to school. To me, the best thing about early entrance is that it is sweet to see the kids making in friends in kindy that they 'grow up' with. But unless you stay at this private school, he'll have to make new friends anyway. And for most of the kids here, a single skip isn't enough anyway. So if the local school was offering your half day kindy early entrance, then I can see the upside, but a year of driving doesn't seem appealing to me compared to a year of homeschooling/unschooling.

I would say that I doubt your son will be needing to 'relearn' the school rules because of a year of homeschooling (unless he had problem with the rules in the first place - that's a different story.) Most kids are great at looking over their shoulder at what the other kids are doing and doing the same. Sometimes the problem is that they are too good at this. Some kids don't, but being in a poor fit classroom doesn't seem to help with that one.

Hope that helps,
Grinity

It helps immensely! Thank you.

Local ps is a full day as well, so I think taking a little detour this year will be for the best in the long run.


Thanks again Grin, your words of wisdom have once again calmed me down.

Yippee! So glad to hear! Have a wonderful year!

Smiles,
Grinity

For what it is worth... which may be nothing....DS went to K with his age peers for half a way before we pulled him out. The psych who tested his IQ told us "I can't tell you what to do with your son, but I can tell you what not to do. Do not leave him with that teacher for another day."

Said teacher ridiculed him regularly in front of the class because handwriting was sloppy. The kids treated him like a leper because he had such different interests - reading, science, etc.

We homeschooled the rest of K and then skipped first grade.

I guess the morals are -
- skipping first is fairly normal for boys, as Grinity said.
- never check your heart at the door. if the classroom experience seems to be hurting your kid, stop it.
- not every kindergarten teacher is up to handling a gifted kid.
- at 12, DS doesn't remember the pain of kindergarten anymore. <grin>. I take this to mean that even if you screw up, there is hope.

Great advice, and I understand why one might want to start out his/her child in K (esp. boys!), but what if the curriculum isn't stimulating or challenging enough in K?
My son just started and has already told us that he asked his teacher if she could teach him how to count in Roman Numerals b/c counting things from 1-5 is baby work.

That being said, Amber, I don't know if you have the same issues:
1. Handwriting--he hates it and wants no part of it, so how can he possibly skip even if a skip is in his best interest

2. Social skills--sometimes lacking in social boundaries, spacial awareness etc.

Sorry, Amber, didn't mean to hijack your thread, but I have the same question!

Ah, kindergarten. How I remember getting "Unsatisfactory" under "Self-control" for that entire year.

I'm one of those people who was always annoyed that I never got to grade-skip. Although, with me, my "self-control" was not going to get better if I skipped K. It took me until Second Grade (at least) until I figured out what I was exactly I was supposed to control.

I still remember some of it. Not the parts where I went wild and destroyed the room, though.

Has he had an evaluation with a psych who is familiar with giftedness and 2-E issues? Intellectually advanced but with lousy handwriting, poor spatial awareness, and sometimes lacking social boundaries sounds a lot like my son at that age. You might want to rule out NVLD issues and maybe investigate the possibility an OT evaluation for fine and gross motor, proprioception, and visual processing.

NVLD--had to Google that one! lol We have had him evaluated for IQ test and one year later an Achievement test. The Psychologist (very familiar w/gifted kids) didn't see anything glaring; then again, we didn't have him evaluated for any of the above mentioned issues. We've also had him evaluated for OT and the agency said he didn't qualify for services (which I find hard to believe), so we're having him evaluated by a different agency (I had issues w/the first agency who did his eval. any way).

NVLD--from what I've read, he doesn't exactly fit, but certainly worth exploring. Thanks!

Hello bbq797. Does your school have a gifted coordinator you can talk to about getting some differentiation for your son? Kinder teachers have their hands full, and it would be helpful if someone at the school can help out with differentiation ideas/materials/pullouts. That might be a good route to investigate if a skip isn't an option. And with the writing, it may not be. First grade is many times a very writing-centric year, and I think that would be hard for a kid who wants no part of it.

My DS7 had the same issue with handwriting. For us, I'm pretty sure it started out as a perfectionist thing, since around age 2 he was forming letters and excited about it, but then things didn't turn out how he wanted and so he refused to try to write anymore. We felt kindy was a perfect place for learning to write. He is still behind in writing as a grade-skipped 3rd grader, but he can write very neatly if he tries, and this year his writing is much, much better. I suspect part of it is developmental, and part of it is lack of practice and also trying to write too fast. But it took until this year for me to see any real improvement.

Thanks st. paulie girl, unfortunately, there is no gifted coordinator, but we do have an appointment to meet w/his teacher next week; she does seem open to trying to differentiate instruction.

Unlike your son, he had never been excited about writing. But, I understand what you're saying about the perfectionist issue.

@aculady-did some more reading about NVLD; very interesting, but doesn't seem to fit our son. I do however, see certain issues that he struggles with (social, spatial), but not NVLD overall.

I do have a question about OT eval--
Do I mention these issues? Do I mention his IQ test/giftedness etc. Sometimes I wonder if once you put a thought or a suggestion into an evaluator's head, he/she might read into it or try to make an evaluation "fit" what you're suggestion. Is it better to say nothing and just see what the evaluator determines on her own.

I think that's great the the teacher is willing to differentiate. Flexibility and a willing teacher is really a big part of having a good year. I like your son's suggestion of doing roman numerals - maybe she can take him up on his offer and have him do his math in roman numerals while the rest of the class is doing 1 to 5, for starters.

I'm not sure about OT stuff, but I would say it probably depends on the situation whether or not it's useful to share the IQ/GT information before the evaluation. Even if the OT doesn't find that your DS doesn't qualify for services, I am sure that they would be full of useful tips that you could use, and I think the tips could be better tailored if you gave the full information. Hopefully someone with experience in this area will chime in.

I would absolutely give the OT all the information you have about how your child functions, things you have noticed that he does well and things that he has difficulty with. My son's primary OT told us flat out that my son was very adept using his intelligence both to compensate for some of his deficits and to avoid tasks where he had to use those areas where he had difficulty. If she hadn't known beforehand how bright he was, she might have been really puzzled by what she was seeing, because he didn't present like a typically-developing 5 year old, but he also didn't present like a typical child with these disabilities, either.

Good point, thanks!

DD went to pre-K, and the teacher promptly admitted to my wife that she had nothing to teach her. But DD enjoyed the school experience, and fit in very well with her classmates socially, who even openly admired DD for her brains. The teacher went out of her way to help my daughter shine, even allowing DD to read aloud to the class instead of doing it herself.

At the end of pre-K, the teacher was emphatic that she should skip K and go straight to first grade, and was prepared to recommend the same to the school administration, except we were switching states (TX to LA).

Once we got to LA, there was a whole different mindset. There's a gifted program available, but it's closed to kindergarteners unless they test in the HG range (DD is MG). They kept trying all these patchwork solutions until she reached 6yo and could be accepted into the gifted program, but the patchwork solutions weren't working, DD was learning to hate school, and was dumbing herself down... this child whose beautiful penmanship at age 3 was beyond any I have created to this day declared that she'd forgotten how to write 't's.

We began to argue for her to be skipped to 1st grade, and the school refused to even listen to us, so to do so we'd have had to take it all the way to the district superintendent. By this time it was becoming obvious that the staff had decided to internalize the issue and make it about themselves instead of my child, so we pulled her out and homeschooled her for the rest of the year instead. She recaptured her love for learning, and even started flirting with 3rd grade math.

Now she's back in the same school district, though thankfully in a different school with a different staff. She's still in 1st grade, and administrators keep saying nonsense about "gaps", as though this is something that can't be measured and can only be feared. She's now in the gifted program each day for math and language, and she loves that. It's the rest of the day in her regular 1st grade class that's a problem. When she's getting math in GT and then getting the more boring math again later in the day in the regular class, that's a problem. When her regular class is out doing PE while she's in GT, that's a problem... especially when this whole "age grouping" nonsense is supposed to be for socialization, and isn't PE an important social activity?

Life would have been so much easier if they'd just listened to us and skipped her ahead... but with the gifted program being such a political football in the school district these days, I think they served her poorly because this was an obvious candidate for those services and she'd be another number they could use to help justify its existence. If she's half the kid we think she is (and more importantly, the one the tests say she is), she'd have ended up in the gifted program in another year or two despite being skipped.

/rant

hmmm timely thread- thank you for sharing experiences everyone- I've got a bright 4 yo with an August bday, and have heard feedback from well meaning family that he should skip Kindergarten.
He does have some good skills, is social, listens/follows directions well, but he's not reading fluently and although he is in a good pre-k, I am worried he lacks experience of schoolday structure/routines...ex- the bus, going to gym class, recess, etc. It would all be new to him.

He is physically advanced gross motor wise, draws people with hands, feet, neck, torso, ears, etc etc, and wrote his first sentence last week while I was in the shower- 'So, I luv u'- put it on a drawing, wrote Mama on it and slid it under the door- a love letter for me.

It is hard to know what to do!

Speechie: Breaking down your post, I note two concerns:

1) "He's not reading fluently" - This does not appear to be a requirement for entry to first grade. My DD's K class required the kids to learn a small selection of sight words, and to be able to read extremely simple books with repetitive vocabulary. The requirement for reading fluency is something they work on in first grade.

2) "I am worried he lacks experience of schoolday structure/routines..." - There's a first time for everything.

In your place, I wouldn't be too concerned.

Thanks for your input, Dude!

I'm resurrecting this thread, because I still don't know what to do. Lol.

I've been in a similar situation. I decided that I need to have confidence that I know what's best for my child because I know him better than anyone. He is much better socially with kids a year ahead of him and I think skipping K plus differentiation and online courses will work well for him. We are going to talk to the school about the skip this week. So far from what I've read this is our best option since we have no gifted schools and subject acceleration is too difficult with scheduling. My son went to full day prek this year because I thought full day would be an issue too but it hasn't been at all and now he's bored. I wouldn't worry too much about the full days. That transition happens quickly. Anyway that's my opinion and what we are doing =]. Good luck!

May I ask: who is Ruf, and where can I find his/her work?

If you can give any other pointers to source material on gifted boys likely to need a skip, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

Ruf Estimates™ Gifted Assessment FAQs | TalentIgniter
What are the Ruf Estimates of Five Levels of Gifted and how do I learn more about this before I pay for this assessment?

www.talentigniter.com/faqs

Educational Options
School Issues and Educational Options (2005) (formerly titled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind) by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D.
educationaloptions.com

If you think about the bell curve, then you will see that about 2/3rd of gifted kids cluster right up against the cut off (this is true no for most of the commonly used cut offs)

It's good to figure out if you child is in the big group fairly close to the line, or way off in the tippy tail, because the more unusual a child is, the less the usual advice will work.

The main question to ask is: is my local kindy a full day or half day program? Is my kid 'in the ballpark' for our local school district? (We call this optimally gifted or 'in good company' gifted here.)

In other words, if you put up a 'lets read together' club for kids your child's age at the local library, would you find any other participants. Plenty of wildly gifted kids don't read early, but most of the very early reading kids are gifted. Particularly the ones that learn with very little adult help.

That's logical, becuase cracking the code of reading is a good signal of advanced problem solving.

Smiles,
Grinity

I'm vaguely considering a skip for my DS, who is reading and writing, and can count as high as you'd like him to, do basic math, and read 4-digit numbers, but will not start K till fall 2013. (He just turned 4.) He happens to be very tall, is not psychomotor excitable, and can sit and work. However, emotionally he is very much his age. It's a tough call.

If you extrapolate to where he will be academically in a year and a half, a skip will probably not seem like a tough call.

My son started K at 4, and he was horribly insulted by the level of the "work", and decided that the teacher must have thought he was stupid or she wouldn't have been offering him such low-level stuff.

Well, he will presumably have his sister's gifted magnet available to him in 2nd grade, which is great. He isn't as driven as his sister, either, despite the fact that I suspect he will start K reading even better than she did (she wasn't reading till almost 5, so he's going to have an additional year to build skills, which are rocketing along; yesterday he was reading me phrases like "North American Owls" and the "The female anglerfish has a glowing lure to attract fish"). So if we skip, we're looking at a skipped kid in a GT magnet, most likely, which I would want to consider carefully, though his sister could probably handle a skip right now except perhaps for the writing and research element, which is big there. The good news is that the school where the magnet is is open to skipping--I know of at least one recent case where a K kid was skipped to 1 on the school's initiative because of the skills he came in with.

Thanks for the info!

(I suspect the answer to "...would you find any other participants?" is no, given the look I got from the librarian when I asked about grade 1 books, but with preschool appropriate content.)

Most Ks are really boring. If your kiddo is doing 2 digit addition and reading on his/her own, skip to 1st grade. Kinders are writing A,B,C and learning 1, 2 ,3 and taking 1 hr nap, LOL.

Both of my DDs skipped (1 birthday is in late Oct and the other in late March). The kiddo needs to take the test anyway and if the result come back >95%, you should strongly consider moving up.

1st and 2nd grades were a breeze for both of them. Last 2 years (3rd and 4th grade), we wonder if we made the right decision for older DD (although she skipped only 2 months), she is shy and not as organized as younger DD. But somehow, she is doing fine in the 5th. My younger DDs never had any problems.

I guess, different strokes for different folks.

K and first grade are, IMHO, mostly social, not so academic. However, in third and fourth grade, there is a huge leap up in terms of the work load and focus required. Some posters on this site who have skipped grades seem to find their kids' executive functional and organizational skills lack when they get to the upper grades. Something to think of.

I skipped kindergarten. I'm a middle-aged middle school teacher now, and I still speak when it's someone else's turn to talk and forget to tuck my chair under the desk (or remind my students).

I decided against skipping. It was a tough call but I wanted him to grow on an emotional level with the other kids his age.

We did not skip our son, who was reading at a 3rd or 4th grade level at the start of kindergarten. Additionally, the math placement test they gave him put him between the average level for an 8 year old and the average level for a 10 year old. He was doing multiplication and division without problem before school started. I taught him division in about 5 seconds in the dressing room at Old Navy while I was trying on jeans and he was playing a math app on the ipad.

We don't have a legitimate gifted school option, and we have determined that he is way out of the ordinary even among his bright/gifted peers. (We live in a college town, and he still is way beyond the children of the professors and doctors and doctoral students who attended daycare and preschool with him). We debated pushing for him to skip kindergarten, but ultimately decided against it--mainly due to issues like fine motor skills/handwriting, attention span, work production, and social navigation issues.

We are very happy with our decision, but most of that satisfaction comes from the fact that our school offered him services with the gifted teacher even though he is not yet identified by the school. they also subject accelerated him for language arts, and have him receiving differentiated instruction in math, as well as two periods a week of science/social studies enrichment with the first graders.

He is still ahead of all of the first graders and ahead of many of the second graders. Because we are not currently interested in radical acceleration, the school's programs are serving their purpose.