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.
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...
