Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Against Accelerating the Gifted Child

I know it was possible; my parents turned down a skip for me. I was a huge beneficiary of being able to work far ahead of grade level with the quickest kids from the next grade up. IMO this pattern offers much more flexibility than a simple gradeskip, but could be combined with a gradeskip as needed.

DeeDee

Yes, I agree; my parents similarly turned down a skip for me. In my case, I ultimately feel it was a mistake.

Having seen this with my own DD, ability grouping in addition to radical acceleration comes much closer to actually meeting a PG student's academic needs without making the sacrifice unthinkable in social/emotional terms.

There are only problems when it still isn't enough. A 2y skip was not enough for DD-- 3-4 is what we needed, but we were wary of doing so with her too young. We sort of took things a little at a time and eventually wound up at 3y with additional ability grouping. It's gone well academically, though we still see signs that almost none of that coursework is anything like what she actually needs at this point in time (exceptions in AP Lit).

I can't even wrap my head around how damaging not accelerating my child would have been for her.

My DD8 is in fourth grade. Her birthday is such that many other kids her exact age are in second grade. Had she not skipped, she would still have been considered extremely young for THIRD grade.

I can't imagine her in third grade right now, much less second (neither can she; a friend who's a week younger than her is in second, and while this works for her friend, she cringes at the thought of being there herself).

My DD is skipped after half a year of K into a split 1/2 class. So the other children are a minimum of fully 1yr older, over half are fully 2yrs old (for some reason the birthdays in this class are more clustered around July/august than any other class any of my kids have been in). She is so very much better off socially than she was in her age appropriate class. Due to her birthdate, and our odd system in my state, she was going to get 6 terms of K had she note moved to yr1 this year. She would have been one of the oldest in her grade had she not skipped, so theoretically she should have some children in her class not far from her age, but it just hasn't worked out that way, also due to odd circumstance all other grade ones are boys and all the girls are in grade two, so ALL her female peers are fully 2yrs older. And that has been to her benefit, and it's been awesome for her to be placed in a class where she's not struggling at all but she's not at all the top student (yet) either.

We're struggling with the idea of skipping our current 2nd grader. She's young (May birthday) and very small. We've done all of the testing and she's definitely ready academically. She's very happy where she is socially. The school has gone way above and beyond to provide her accelerated 3rd grade gifted math (they actually started in 1st grade with a few kids because of her and have expanded this year).

We've read and the school has stressed that idea that she'll be fine if we skip her but I still am uncomfortable with the idea. I was a high achiever with social issues and know how the social side has plagued me throughout my life to this day, especially with professional networking and career confidence. I want her to be confident among her peers.

I was a PG kid who was never skipped--unless you count the mixed-grade classrooms of my tiny, rural, elementary school. I seriously missed my older peers when they went to middle school.

I had no real peer group until I got to college, and I was suddenly surrounded by people of a similar intellectual level and interests. Keeping me with my same age peers in middle school and high school did me no good whatsoever, socially.

What were the results of that? I was a bit immature when I got to college. My social life was a siren song I could not resist. I didn't learn to balance schoolwork with social life until about three years after I graduated from college. Since my work habits were abysmal as a result of no challenge from first grade to high school physics (and because my private liberal arts college did not inflate grades), my college GPA was under 2.5, and I almost flunked out at one point.

I had kind of the opposite problem. I was so socially immature in college that I was unable to form enough of a support network of friendships to the point where I socially withdrew and collapsed academically.

I also needed work habits, but I definitely needed some ability to function socially.