What does the school think, or the incoming teacher for the skip? The psychologist who tested my DD in pre-K recommended skipping K and entering 1st but the principal refused. He was very, very against acceleration for anyone (I think mostly he was afraid of opening the floodgates for skip-eager parents). The incoming 1st grade teacher went to bat to take DD but she was turned down also.
With my DD she would have done fine with one skip but would still be bored, honestly the curriculum advances quite slowly from year to year these days and in the early years there is so much focus on getting most of the kids up and running with literacy. DD's writing issues would have still have been an issue one year ahead, but maybe we would have had to deal with it head on a year earlier and have been further ahead by now (we've been up against resistance to acknowledging a problem because of her being so sidelined since K, also due to people thinking she just needs time to gain writing maturity...) Now the school philosophy has jumped suddenly from "wait and see" to going on and on about how behind she is!! If people had listened to me and her lowest subscores a few years ago maybe we'd be further ahead by now....but that's another issue.
We thought about skipping 5th next year and her entering 6th at a private school that starts in 6th and does academic acceleration, but they took one look at her processing speed scores, put her paperwork down and said "she'll never be able to handle AP Classes" then proceeded to talk about if they did accept her and the program was accelerated anyway, she'd be only age 15 for graduation (her birthday is late) and then WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER THEN? Anyway we decided not to go with them.
Now my DD is at the point where she would not agree to a skip, she is very into being with kids born the same year as her. She's in a private school where she learns ahead of the pack, struggles with writing, is so-so socially (but most of them are way over our socio-economic range and don't live near us so it's not a big deal) but they have enough extras to keep her motoring along, most days.
When she was accelerated in her voice program and with girls 2+ years older, she absolutely hated it. The tended to be more overly-groomed "sophisticated" types, and had no interest in even superficial interaction with DD. OTOH, DD's taking a tech class outside of school now and is with girls 3+ years older (she has special permission because she can handle it, is very quick to catch on and independent) and she doesn't mind because the girls tend to be quirkier/less socially "advanced" than the girls in the voice program, and will give her a chance and listen to her. But her true friends for social activities are only her age. She always gets along very well with boys as friends and they talk to her and are just a little bit afraid of her - though a strong one will rise out of the pack sometimes and they'll have intellectual sparring, which DD thinks is just great. I suspect she will always be like that.
As the others said there are always nay-sayers and hindsight is 20/20, that's for anything you do in life for yourself or your kids.
Last edited by bzylzy; 02/06/13 08:01 AM.
