I met with the public school GT coordinator long ago when my daughter attended 1st grade at public school. We were advocating for a grade skip for dd and felt panicked about what to do with her younger (now YS) brother.
This teacher first relayed how her own grown daughter had always been perfectly positioned as the youngest in her grade due to an August birthday. (Each of our kids missed the September 1 cut-off by 6 weeks or less so, we were asking for approximately the same placement as her daughter + we had a FSIQ over 140 for our daughter as evidence.) The GT teacher proceeded to relay an anecdote illustrating the folly of early entrance or grade acceleration (even if only by half a year). Her story was of a boy who had been allowed slightly early entrance once upon at time. She stated that although he had an IQ of almost 150, he just did not seem to fit in with the �older� kids, even in the gifted pullout class. She attributed his lack of fit exclusively to being 6 months younger than his average classmate. Lastly, she made the point that it was not necessary to be gifted in order to instruct gifted children.
