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Hi Sunday

I can't tackle the kinder question yet, because we haven't gotten there, but we frequently ask ourselves "What are we going to do when he gets to kindergarten?"

We just moved our DS (3 years 11 months) to a Montessori preschool, and although it has only been two weeks, it is a definite improvement over his "age-graded preschool." Even though we got him "accelerated" to the four year old room at age 3 1/2, he was still doing "letter of the day" and "how much is 10?" type work. At the Montessori school he's in a classroom with 3-6 year olds, he's able to choose his works and his teachers (in 2 weeks) understand much more about his learning strengths than his previous teachers ever did.

Thinking forward to kindergarten, I don't think DS will be allowed to start as a four year old (he has a late February birthday), but once we have some test scores, I'm going to consider asking for a grade skip (straight to 1st grade) or at the minimum, acceleration for reading and math. We'll see what happens!

Good luck, and welcome!

Kathie

I'm pondering the K issue too. A local private school takes gifted 4-year-olds for K, and I realized that's the last thing I want for Hanni (almost 4). I want to keep her in a play-based environment as long as possible, and then skip the whole K scene altogether.

Hanni is not an early reader, but she has the vocabulary and syntax and conceptual grasp of -- rough guess -- probably a 3rd or 4th grader. The whole "cat sat on the mat" thing is never going to be the right fit for her.

Welcome Sunday! It sounds like you have two very fun girls FWIW, my advice is to not overthink or worry about things too early on. Enjoy the time you have with your little ones while they are still so little, and worry about where they'll go to school when they are closer to school age. Little gifted kiddos are *so* much fun to be with, to watch them discover their world, to be a part of their deep questions etc. It's easy to get overwhelmed thinking where on earth are they going to go to school.. and someday that might very well be an issue. But for now, give them lots of time to just be themselves! Giftedness is about much more than just how early a child reads or how quickly they absorb facts - it's also about the depth and creative aspects of their thought process. Some of our kids are never going to "fit" well into any traditional school, and the cool thing about their early years is there are so many options in preschools. Step back from the mindset that you need to feed your child ahead-of-the-curve math or reading, and instead let them do what they want to do with that at home, but at preschool look for a school that let's kids play/create/etc.

It was evident from the time our ds opened his mouth to talk that he was clearly gifted - the kind of gifted that made adults who didn't know him drop their jaws back then. We didn't have the option of accelerating him when he started elementary, and he also was "gifted" with a very late birthday so he just missed the cutoff in the year that really he should have gone to kindergarten gifted or not. I was frustrated with it all at the time, because I just knew he is really really bright and was ready for school - but you know what? I got an extra year at home with him before the world was full of homework and doing things that other people wanted him to do. I get an extra year before he moves on to college (even though he'll be taking college courses before he actually "goes" away to college), and, for him, it was an ok fit socially. I won't say that I wouldn't have jumped at the chance to accelerate him right at the start, just wanted to put out there that sometimes you can't, and it's not always a bad thing, it can work out ok!

polarbear

I can�t help wondering about the future too. I am pretty sure DS2 is unusual (Grinity�s home test of �not wanting/able to share with the other playgroup moms� is so true), but it�s hard to say what the whole picture will look like in several years. If we still live in our current location, my tentative plan is to homeschool DS2 for K and 1st. He misses the K cutoff by a month and a half, but even if he made it, most of the K students at the school come from Spanish homes and spend the first year(s) learning English. DS2 needs a high level of novelty and has major meltdowns when bored/frustrated/in a controlled environment. I�ve started doing a little bit of structured learning (casual and fun), mostly because if I don�t feed the beastie, he�ll eat me up!

hmm, my earlier reply didn't stick, maybe I hit preview and didn't submit. I will try again. First, thanks for all the comments. I agree that looking for innovative solutions may be the key to the pre-k/k cutoff problem, and that I have some reading to do.

She is transitioning into the next level group (more 3 yr olds) in the day care this week (their initiation but fine by me), and we'll see where that goes in terms of new experiences. It should be fine for her emotionally since she has friends in that room already who were with her before they moved over.

To fill in some other information, she knows her colors, rote counts to 30, counts objects (not sure how high, I haven't quizzed her), recognizes upper case letters, recognizes her name and her sister's name written (both are short), sings too many songs for me to track, memorizes books, knows her full name w/ st address town state (probably should? teach phone number), letter/sound matching, loves doing puzzles (we do this one together frequently http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-African-Plains-Jigsaw/dp/B000FPE038/ref=dp_cp_ob_t_title_1), much of this I've read is pre-k/k type stuff. I could just blather on about the stuff she is doing or saying... but you get the idea.

Polarbear, thanks also for your comments to try to keep my mind level, that it will work out if she takes the long track too.

This is a concern I've been having as well as my son has mid-December birthday. He's just turned three and according to a checklist I was given, he's already mastered most of the kindergarten skills. However, I'm concerned that accelerating him wouldn't be good for him socially. He seems to be an introverted kid and is quite shy around strangers. Polarbear, I note that things turned out fine with your son, despite a late birthday. Does anyone else have experience or advice on this? How wise is it socially to accelerate introverted (and possibly shy) children, despite their intellectual abilities?

I think children have the easiest time developing social skills if they are with true peers - others who share common interests, who communicate with them easily, and who have similar levels of mental, physical, and emotional development. Obviously, gifted asynchrony makes it hard for gifted kids to find this anywhere outside a self-contained gifted classroom, and for HG and PG youngsters, it might not even happen there. The greater the obvious differences (both in number and in magnitude) between the gifted child and the other children in the class, the harder it will be for the gifted child to feel like they fit in and to develop good social skills and appropriate peer relationships at school.

For kids whose vocabulary, interests, and intellectual development are so far ahead of the norm that they find it frustrating to even try to communicate with their age peers in pre-school and Kindergarten, grade skipping is often a godsend, because the physical differences between the older children and the younger gifted child are typically not as significant in these situations as the mental differences between the highly gifted child and age peers.

I don't think that going to school with peers who don't understand you or share the same interests does a lot to improve shyness or develop good social skills, so I'd be sure to provide lots of opportunities for a shy, not-very-socially adept kid to interact with others who were at a similar mental level and who had similar interests, so that there was some actual payoff for the child for putting forth the effort of trying to interact.

Former PG kid from small, Appalachian town, here. My social life exploded when I got to college (sorority vice president, etc.), but middle and high school were miserable! I've lived long enough for the president of my high school class to say, a bit apologetically, that I didn't get as good an education as he got because I was excluded from certain social circles. He once told me, "We all liked you well enough. We just didn't understand what you were saying half the time!"

The extremes in my social life contributed to my underachievement in middle school, high school, and college. Not the only factor, of course.

Mcswones, my DS4 was just like yours at age 3. He was completely antisocial. Wouldn't smile at people and there was no way he would ever speak to anyone. When I put him in the 3's program at 2yr9mo he was with kids that were over a year older than him. He did fine except he would mostly observe others instead of getting involved, in the beginning.

Slowly but surely he started to open up and after about a year or so he was like a different kid! I really think accelerating him was GREAT for his social skills. The older kids could communicate with him on a more mature level, which he responded to, making him comfortable to start to open up. Now he is the kid everyone in the class turns to. The teacher says the kids seem to respond to his calmness and I think they feel he is the "rock" in the class.

Thinking back to my early pre-school, early elementary days, I got lots of unsatisfactory marks for my "needing self-control".

I wasn't asocial as much as I was, uh, dys-social, but that was mostly with respect to the teachers. I wasn't grade-skipped, but I got over that particular problem by second grade. I don't recall having problems interacting with the other kids, in general. I always wanted to skip a grade, but my parents never liked that idea.

I was always much more intellectually advanced than my classmates, while being much less emotionally/socially mature than my age.

I don't recall not enjoying school, but that's probably because I wasn't particularly bothered by the fact that it was easy.