Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Mid-Year Grade Skip?

Great idea.

We are working on a mid year skip now. Mr W has visited his new class once and we are talking to him about it. We'll go back right before the break, then talk about it over the two week holiday to include driving by every other day.

Whereas I personally gave a huge amount of weight to the opinion of my then-7yo.

I do think that the anticipation of the skip in the last week or two of summer was very hard on her, and a mid-year skip would have been better for her in that respect. (She also would have benefited from a few weeks or months as a 2nd grader, IMHO - she felt really behind for the first quarter of 3rd, until the class was covering material new to the other kids.)

OTOH, she was miserable and bored the last half of 1st grade, and was desperate to skip -- but if a mid-year skip had been offered to her (it wasn't!) and she was opposed to it, I wouldn't have forced her. She is the kid who needs to come to things her own way, and for her, a good "sell" works better than "this is the way it's going to be, kid."

We were somewhere in between. We knew that DS needed to skip 1st; it just was going to be too hard in the local school to differentiate so much. But at that point, DS was all for the skip. When we moved him mid-year in 2nd to an accelerated program, amounting to a second skip, he had misgivings, but we talked it through and after he visited the school, he was on board too. We let him air his feelings, but then discussed the pros and cons in a way so that he would see that the move was beneficial too. (Boy, that sounds like we tricked him!) All in all, we framed it mainly as a parental decision. DS was 6 at the time the 2nd skip decision was made.

ETA: I wonder if the studies that IAS are based on considered very young HG skippers when they made the rule that no skip should be entertained if the kid is against it. I also tend to agree with CFK that 7 and younger shouldn't be able to have that much control of the educational situation.

DS is very capable of understanding the issues here. He's one of those kids who really thinks about things and understands stuff taht should be way above his head.

That said, he doesn't get full veto power over much. That isn't at all our parenting style. He's very much in favor of a skip to third next year. If skipping him mid-year against his will to save a few months is going to ruin the experience for him, I'd rather wait.

I think you're in a great position - either way sounds good. The pros of swiching mid-year don't seem to outweigh the cons in your situation, and he'll be getting the skip in the end.

I have only had time to skim the thread but I wanted to share our mid-year grade skip experience.

The one major problem my DS had was that the staff at school had not been made aware of his skip. In an effort to not make much of a "to-do" about it, the principal didn't tell anyone other than the receiving teacher.

Day 1 of the skip, my DS was in trouble at recess for being out with the wrong kids, in trouble at the lunch table for sitting with the wrong class and in trouble in the library for coming in with a different class. His teacher did a good job of shielding him from some of the questions but she couldn't catch all of it.

It took about a week for the message to spread so that people stopped questioning him, taking him back to the wrong class, telling him to go to the office or putting him in the wrong line at morning line up.

If you care, you'll want to make sure this stuff doesn't happen! We had practiced how to answer why he was in a new class "The principal said I'd passed the tests" but not what happened when people sent him back to the wrong class!

CAMom, I hope you don't mind, but I'm sitting here laughing. Your poor son! SOmetimes these things are funnier in retrospect. I can only imagine my own son getting completely frustrated and angry when nobody believes him!

St. Pauli, I think you're absolutely right. I thik I"m going to see if the principal might allow him to go to 2nd grade just for part of the day. Even though he *is* wasting his time this year, I think it might really be best to wait a few months.

Doclori- He thought it was funny day 1. Day 2, it was a little annoying. By Day 3, he called me from the office at lunch and told me to fix it or come get him. I didn't realize how much the staff paid attention to what was going on outside the classroom!

Eh! Hilarious

My aunt graduated from high school at 16 after 2 grade skips and came back as a teacher at 20. She was not only about 5 years younger than the average beginning teacher, she is small, slight, and quiet looking. On her first day at her new job she was scolded for using the staff entrance and redirected to the students' gate, and then kicked out when she tried to get into the staff lounge.