Our family has twice made the decision to send an asynchronous, intellectually ready but otherwise questionable and young for grade kid to Kindergarten on time. For the first one, it made for some bumpy years, but we are now quite happy that we did send him on time, as the lack of intellectual fit would over time have become a huge problem, and gradeskipping not a great choice for a kid with social challenges. Too soon to tell how the second time will turn out, but I'm thinking it was still the right thing among our particular menu of choices.
When we were deciding, we read some studies saying that even if a kid has a disability, redshirting is a poor choice; rather, best practice is to place them with age-peers, giving them opportunities to advance, but also give them extra supports to try to catch them up. For a kid with no known disability but challenges in class participation skills, I would think the same case could be made. This is, of course, controversial.
DeeDee
ETA: re: "catching up" socially from earlier in this thread: if we had waited for that to happen before letting DS10 advance academically, we'd still be waiting, because he has Asperger's Syndrome. It was much better to make a plan that met his academic needs and kept working on his social needs as we went along, rather than holding him back with peers who had similar social skills to his, because no matter how hard he and we all try, he is going to be asynchronous in this area for the foreseeable future.
Last edited by DeeDee; 09/03/12 11:46 AM.
