Thanks, everyone, for adding your stories. It does give me a broader perspective on it all. I'm glad to hear a story about a happy accelerated man, for example, b/c I'd never even heard of one before. (I just learned that both my dad and my grandmother, in addition to my mom and BIL, were grade-skipped, and not entirely happy about it, so it really does help to hear people who are. My dad was homeschooled and then grade skipped, so he had the whole toolbox I guess. Funny that he never talked about it til now).
had there been preparation, monitoring, and support through the process, it might have gone differently.
acs, what preparation and support do you think might have made a difference? (I had an email at 8:30 monday saying they wanted to grade-skip my son...which makes me worry that it's a teacher convenience thing and that there's not much more than 15 minutes of thought gone into it - and less preparation!)
Dottie, this young man who is down to earth and happy...do you know him enough to give some basic personality adjectives? The things in my ds that worry me are shortness, not-good gross-motor skills, rejection-sensitivity, a negative first reaction to everything, tendency to dwell on the negative, perfectionism, very slow to adjust to change, and self-blaming for any perceived 'failure'. When he was in preschool with kids close to a year older than him, he got occasionally teased for being a slow runner. This made him soooo miserable he actually once told me he wished he wasn't alive any more. I really really don't want to be hearing that from him as he compares himself to classmates in future! especially as we have depression on both sides of the family. So I'm looking closely for experiences that might touch on what a young boy like *this* might feel in a grade skip.
Our goal is much more his happiness and ability to form good, supportive relationships in life than his career success. It's just hard to decide what will best do that! (or, as some of you have put it, least-worst!) Especially when he's decidedly UNhappy with this class's current academics.
I'm finding it hard to get into his head and figure this out! It feels like the first decision he could later hate me for, and makes me nervous. He's private enough - and of course another person - that I can't tell which imperatives are more important for him!
thanks for everything you all wrote...there were several perspectives that hadn't occurred to me. And Minnie...good GRIEF, the teacher had you do the teaching when she was sick??? that's rough.
