Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Acceleration/ being older

Hi all,

My (suspected) gifted young daughter THANKFULLY just makes the cut off date to start school - if she was five weeks younger she would have to wait another year.

Due to a weird historical hiccup/ technicality/ oversight, acceleration is possible once the child has started, but s/he cannot start early.

I think/ hope that we will be able to manage my daughter's learning needs before she starts school with a combination of daycare and homeschooling.

Because of her birthday, she will be one of the youngest (possibly the youngest) child in her cohort - this in itself does not concern me.

However, if we decide to push for acceleration once she has started, she will be almost two years younger than the oldest childred in her cohort. Again, this in itself does not bother me and if this is what we need to do to meet her needs it's what we will do, but I've recently become concerned about the flow on effects to finishing age.

Most students finishing school will be between 17.5 - 18.5 when they graduate. (Driving age is 16, drinking/ voting/ legal adult is 18.) If we skip her early into grade one, then she will be 16.5 when she finishes (assuming no further grade skips are needed later on.)

I know this question is a long way off, but is 16.5 too young to be finishing school? I know that that depends on the child and the circumstances, but is there anyone here who experienced this with your child? The idea of not being able to go to the pub with your uni friend until halfway through second year uni? I would still need to sign permission slips for her to do field experience in her third sememster of uni!

Surely this has come up for families with children who have gifted traits before - is it an issue and what did you do with your 15/ 16yo finishing school?

There is so much wisdom shared by this then-12-year-old college student, Stephen Stafford, as he speaks about his experience. His story is a remarkable inspiration, including the parental support. (Youtube link)

In my experience, finishing at 16, drinking at 14 becomes the norm if your drinking age is 18, which it was when I was in high school. So yes, it depends on the child. Is she introverted or extroverted? Can you tell how much at this age? And reading some of these suicide stories about kids, bullying, the cyberage, I think it is hard to tell how much you can protect your children. And being young for the cohort doesn't tell a lot. NYC has a year end cut off. NJ has Oct 1. And they allow red shirting so a kid in public school in NYC could be turning 5 in Dec in K while a kid in NJ could have turned 6 in Aug and enter K that fall. No acceleration but the NYC kid will be more than a year younger when they enter college. I did my own subject acceleration and let her go through without grade acceleration, though it made me nuts at time, but filled in with another language, she got Spanish at school, and Chinese on Sat. And high level of dance. The social changes in the early years, I think are significant. In my opinion, those social skills could be key to successful adaption in later years.

I had hoped for the introverted dna from her father to be dominant but my extroverted, risk taker stuff took over in her body and my fears about those high school parties are sometimes overwhelming. And I am looking at good gifted schools for high schools, with no football team.

Read up on various ways teens make use of a gap year.

But don't worry too much about issues like this if your child hasn't even started school! Revisit those thoughts once you have a clearer sense of her adjustment and fit to school.

so with you on this, Wren - like everything, it depends on the kid. i was the youngest in my grade (sadly, in a program without hope of acceleration) and my friends still turned out to be university-age when i was in high school. interestingly, they never pressured me at all - though i definitely remember pressuring THEM about voting! i'm sure my mother wasn't overly thrilled about my much older boyfriends, but they really were very decent young men and she raised me to know my boundaries.

my kid is the same - only 5, but all her true friends are older, already - so whether we'd left her with age peers in school or done our multiple homeschooling grade skip, she'd still be mainly hanging out with kids who will move on to pointe class three years before her feet will be old enough. it probably looks weird from the outside, but they're the right friends for her right now.

what goes around comes around, i guess! (shudder)

My DD14 will turn 15 within a few days of her high school graduation-- we expect that she will graduate in the top 0.1% of her graduating class.

So that's the background-- she has NOT been accelerated to her intellectual capacity by any stretch of the imagination, but she HAS been accelerated to the limits of her social skills and we've pushed the envelope HARD on executive function development.

It's really a trio of considerations that you have to consider and it shifts under you as they get older.

My DD is risk-averse and always has been. While that sounds like a good thing, and it mostly IS, it also means that she comes off socially as aloof or painfully shy. It also tends to come with perfectionism as part of the package bargain-- inwardly directed, I mean; so socially-prescribed perfectionism is a serious risk and she's fallen prey to it.

She is introverted but HIGHLY socially skilled, so she gets on just fine with people of all ages, and is highly adaptable.

She will start Uni at 15yo as a regular admit next fall. What she will NOT be doing is living in the dorms. She will also be housed in an "honors college" (we hope, anyway-- still waiting on admission info for early decision).

This means two things-- she can still live at "home" with a parent for a few more years, and she will have a peer cohort which is mostly the goody-two-shoes kids who are not as prone to hard-core partying, or socializing that revolves around drugs or alcohol.

Those things WILL be present in a collegiate environment. My DD has grown up in a college town, so she's not unaware of what that is, and how to remain a bit distanced from it. She mostly makes friends with the goody-goody nerdy kids anyway.

Does any of that help?

I'm taking notes. We're in the same boat, here -- DS11 will be 15-turning-16 when he starts his senior year, assuming no more skipping. His birthday was six days past the cutoff when we skipped him over kindergarten and into 1st grade, and he just skipped 6th grade, too.

We're just starting to get close to the muddy waters, so I can't tell you how it's likely to pan out.

Great idea! The Davidson Database offers a variety of excellent guidebooks for parents, including a guidebook for investigating gap year opportunities (link)

My neice who was grade skipped 2 years in elementary school went to a college where they offer a "Gap year program" which allowed her to continue academics at the college level in areas where she did not have time to focus on as well as do some group traveling etc as part of the program. This Fall she will start university (different one to where she is now) to pursue her degree in Economics.
The important thing about this experience for her - the Gap year program she pursued had mostly 15-16 year olds. Her interests and career goals changed during that year - due to peer influence or more exposure to the world or more maturity? - she wanted to pursue International Business all through her teens and now she figured out that she loves Economics more.
So, just let your child lead the way for now. Because it is way too early to worry about what the future brings when the child is not even in K yet (I am like you and worry a lot about such things too and I am told this by too many people too many times!).
Good luck.

My DD12 is in eighth grade and is with her social peers. She will graduate from high school and start college at 16 and the idea that she wouldn't continue with these same peers into college is something she says she would never consider. These are her friends and, with guidance from us as necessary (although, at this point it still hasn't become necessary since we've run into no age-based issues thus far), I am confident that she will continue to do well as a part of this same social group. Our plan is to continue to have thoughtful conversations with her about all kinds of growing-up issues and then just trust (as all parents do) that she is equipped to deal with things that come her way, with our support.

On another note, I was never grade accelerated, mostly because I had a twin who wouldn't have done well with it, and all my best friends throughout high school were at least two years older than me. I did hate that my friends and I were separated in grade-based activities when these people were my true peers, and it was lonely when all my friends graduated and went to college before me when I knew that I was just as ready as they were.

So, any decision you make can go any way, and so much depends on the individual. I agree with the other posters, though, that while it is good to consider the ramifications of a skip, for now you just need to follow the needs of your child. And remember, almost any decision can be reversed if necessary.