Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Tell me about your multiple grade skips.

What grades were skipped? How did it go? What were the biggest challenges?
I'm also looking for a foreign exchange program for a middle schooler. Does anyone have any info? Most programs are for older kids.

My oldest DS8 skipped 1st through 3rd grade and went from K to 4th grade directly.

He did both 5th and 6th grades in one academic year and is now completing 7th grade.

He finds the academic work challenging for the most part and is starting to work hard on emotion control and social interaction


Our youngest (DS5) skipped 1st grade and is completing 2nd and 3rd grade this academic year.

Academically he is mostly challenged but he is a very free spirit and anti-conformist and is acting out because he chafes at the schedule of doing work on demand an in the time allotted as opposed to being allowed to do work on his own timetable.

At my most recent mtg. at school, someone brought up a few kids who had done multiple skips in elementary and were thriving, for whatever that is worth.

DD9 skipped from gr 3 to grade 6 last year, after having done K and 1 in a year when she first started school.
The biggest challenge was convincing the teachers and administration that it would work and was appropriate for her. The problem we had was that it was really not enough of a skip - she still needs to put in limited amounts of effort, although the time it takes her to complete her work has increased, the intellectual input doesn't seem to be much greater. However, she has made friends in her gifted English class who seem to be pretty close to her intellectually and this has been the best educational situation we have found so far for her.
I would recommend talking to any teachers involved individually about your child's characteristics and let them have a chance to talk to your child before the school year starts so they can have a chance to get used to the idea of having a significantly younger child in their class than they may have ever taught before. (One of DD's teachers this year was very concerned because she had never taught anyone younger than 12 before and didn't know what she would do with someone so young. This teacher now sings praises of DD and wishes she had a class full of kids like her.)

I would also check out what happens in terms of social situation at the school. In our case, it is a small K-12 school on 1 campus (it is a public school), and I teach there, so lots of the older kids know me and knew DD before she came as a student, at least by sight, so we have not had any problems with bullying or being ostracized by others. In fact, there are a few kids who go out of their way to be sure that DD is hanging out with the "right type of kid".

"like"

DD, 13, skipped K-3 (well, okay, she effectively was homeschooled for preschool and kindy, and there we were at 6 yo)... compacted 4-5, and is currently "skipping" tenth grade.

She really hasn't "skipped" so much as been allowed to accelerate through the curriculum at a faster pace. She's actually completed GT/Honors curriculum via her public school for grades 3 through 10, mostly-- she's just done it in 6 years, not 8. So that amounts to a total of what, four skips? Hard to keep track of.

She'll graduate when she's fourteen. While we have some concerns about her maturity with respect to her ability to live on her own... she handles herself with her academic peers just fine aside from occasional wistfulness/angst that they are all driving and much more independent than she is (well, go figure-- they are mostly 16-18!); she fits in just fine and has made friends without much trouble.



One thing to be prepared for with multiple skips is the fact that emotional maturity and life-experience will of necessity lead to your child interacting with standard curriculum in some surprising/unexpected ways.

My DD was shocked by information re: eating disorders as an 8yo, and thoroughly grossed out by human reproduction in high school honors biology at 11-12 (she's decided that she is NEVER having sex or delivering a baby... LOL), and her second experience with Romeo and Juliet in freshman English (at 11) led her to the conclusion that Juliet is an manipulative brat who should have listened to her elders, and Romeo is a flake who is being driven by hormones. Completely irrational, both of them-- and look where it got them.

LOL.

As long as everyone is prepared for that, multiple skips tend to go pretty well for children that are ready and able.

Howler - I giggled! Your daughter sounds like a delightful person to learn with

Imp, sorry that I cannot help. We were offered a skip from mid-K into first or even second if necessary but decided to home school rather for various reasons. The main one being that it would most likely still be too slow for him, and I am not sure that he would have been thrilled to come to grips with the sitting still and writing loads and then still realising that it's not new work for the most part. I doubt I could've handled the anger and backlash from that...

I'd say mutiple skips will work as long as you can be sure it's into an academic situation where your child will be thriving, not just kept busy but actually learning at the level and pace that they need.