Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School What warrants a skip?

I think this depends on much more than the child's level in various subjects. There is a lot to think about -- will the child want to do academic or sports competitions that may be grade based later? Will he likely be ready to leave home earlier? Are there good options for delaying if he doesn't want to do early college? What options exist for learning in the current grade? in the grade above? In middle school? In high school? Is there a level at which the district might meet his needs, or will this always be not enough? Is there a gifted program that might help find peers but not begin until a certain grade?

One concern is whether a year skip helps much. If a student is advanced by a few years, one skip doesn't offer much benefit academically. It may be worthwhile to get to a higher level sooner if another school or program fits better, but one year isn't that much different. One thing that does change with advancement tends to be workload and if you have a kid who is pushing and wanting to learn, increasing too easy school workload can interfere with time for enrichment learning at an appropriate level.

These are very individual decisions based partly on ability, but also on local resources, family dynamics, future goals, and personality.

Mumofthree-( I just got back to looking at this thread.)
We are awaiting some advice from a private neuropsychologist about what to do next year with ds. I had been given some indication that k would not go well, but had no idea it would be this bad. All I know is neither ds or me can survive another year like this one. Something has to change.

Agreed. I also like Kaibab's remarks above. It is VERY individual.

And also noting that the three-category descriptors completely misses some kids entirely. My DD fits none of those categories. She's simply not externally motivated. Ever-- so 'push' parenting, as described by 2 or 3 either one is simply a non-starter. We have to turn up the heat to get her to crank through the stuff that she is more than capable of... but sees as a complete and total waste of her time and energy (and mostly, she's right about that).

As Cricket notes, it's often not clear what the actual working level of a child like this is-- because you so seldom get their complete buy-in on evaluations of said working level, and because they may really prefer to work at a level that feels "effortless" even in enrichment activities... and how much of that is perfectionism... chicken, egg, rinse, repeat.

One thing which we found quite telling has been that additional challenges have been adapted to with mind-boggling ease. We were a bit concerned about the 3rd acceleration (in high school), but in retrospect, shouldn't have been. She's managed that one every bit as handily as going into 3rd grade as a 6yo. It would be easy to look at current working level and make assumptions on that basis. But there's no easy way to predict whether or not a particular child will relish the challenge and triumphantly conquer it (and then what, really? What do you do for the next act at that point??), or will decide that it's now "too hard" and that they are unhappy.

We simply have no idea what "throttle wide open" looks like, other than a few glimpses here and there. We certainly haven't wanted to put DD into a situation where that was required of her routinely, though, because that didn't seem appropriate for her given her relative youth. She needs to have the ability to be flakey, since she is at an age where that is completely appropriate. On the other hand, as Cricket notes, we also didn't want school to be effortless. Definitely NOT.

We settled for 97th percentile and up across all but one domain... but that, too, is a moving target. Within a year of each placement shift, that was usually back at 99th again, and the weak domain was edging from 85th+ up toward 95th+.


I think that is how you decide, honestly. Our thought process has been much like Cricket's.

That "breaking point" mentally was, in retrospect, often what indicated that it was time for an additional placement change.

When we were all miserable enough to feel like giving up and bailing out was the answer, it often meant that an additional acceleration was the answer.

HK it's funny, you and cricket are agreeing with each other and disagreeing with me, while I read crickets 1st post and felt I disagreed, but your post almost exactly described our child, ad our reasoning, except the last bit about percentiles, in part because our system doesn't use measures that would allow us to have that data, not in primary school. Also partly because my child seems better suited to being well placed in the class, rather than way out in front. The way our current school delivers the curriculum is also playing a part in our feeling she needs a second skip into 3rd (that she's probably not goin to get), I am fairly confident that at some other schools she would be less badly catered to.

MumofThree, I don't know that it is so much that I am disagreeing with you as realizing that there is no way to place a child who is many, many grades ahead of level in many areas at his/her instructional level and, even if there was, in order to do so, you'd wind up with putting a little kid in high school or beyond and also risking having said child have fewer opportunities as a result.

For instance, having our dd be about a year and half younger than the average kid in her grade and as much as 2+ yrs younger than some, already puts her in the position where we are not absolutely positive that she'll qualify for things like, say, National Merit semi-finals. If she were an 8th or 9th grader this year, rather than a 10th grader, all she'd have to do is show up for the PSAT in her junior year and she'd pretty much be a shoo in for NMSF. While she's pretty consistently testing at the 99th percentile on tests that give a clue as to how she'll do on the PSAT, it is possible that she'll have an "off" day and fall just a tad short.

I wouldn't *not* accelerate a kid at all in order to ensure that she wins competitions, is the valedictorian, or gets scholarships, but it is something that is in the back of my mind as we get toward the end of this K-12 journey. We've compromised. Dd is placed appropriately, like I mentioned, in her weakest subject. In her other subjects, she is placed more appropriately than she would be had she not been accelerated, but she's never really been placed at her instructional level in those areas. The quantity alone, though, of higher level work makes it such that she's busy and couldn't do more without feeling overwhelmed and without sacrificing a life outside of school.

This is all good information for us as well as we consider whether subject acceleration or whole grade skip is best.

How does it factor in if your older child keeps advocating for your younger child to skip a grade?

(Just injecting a bit of levity, really, but you'd be surprised how often this comes up. I don't even know how DD9 really knows about skipping, since we don't know any grade-skipped children that I'm aware of and she's never heard us discussing a skip unless she's eavesdropping after she's gone to bed, but she keeps saying how DS5 needs to skip kindergarten. "Mama, he really shouldn't go to kindergarten. He can already read so well and do so much math. What is he going to do all day? It's not a good idea." I'm thinking she's remembering what kindergarten was like for her....)

I will say, though, that neither dd nor I regrets at all skipping her. We did try subject acceleration before the skip and it wasn't enough. Even if she places lower in her class than she would have without the skip, she is far better placed both socially and academically and we would do it again if we had to do it over.

I mention that b/c I don't want people to think that I am anti-skip nor try to talk anyone out of it. When the alternative is totally unacceptable or, like others mention, your child is miserable, it is sometimes the best thing to do. We tried everything else before the skip: three different elementary schools, subject acceleration, homeschooling briefly when one year was unbearably bad, and GT pull out classes that met daily and replaced core subjects. I think that, when you get to the point that you've tried it all and are still desperately searching for something better b/c it isn't coming close to working, you're at the point of trying something more radical like a skip.

Ametrine, I tend to take a more holistic approach to these things. I favor keeping gifted kids with age mates for many reasons. One reason being that so many skills are purely developmental. Handwriting is a good example--not just handwriting, but writing. Social maturity. Interests. There is eye stuff, attention skills, executive function.

I do think academic fit is important, too. I think a skip might be a good idea when the need for academic acceleration is clearly greater than the difference in developmental skills compared to their new grade-mates that would be caused by the skip. So if a child with a high IQ is typically developing in all other areas they would be one year immature if skipped. Personally, I would want my child to be operating at least two grade levels ahead academically. I feel like only then would the skip be warranted.

So maybe that is where the "at least two years advanced" comes from. Also, depending on the school, there will be many kids operating comfortably above grade level in their respective grades. Again, depending on the school, a child who tests one year advanced might be in the middle of the pack.