Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Acceleration/tiny child/sibling issue?

My child is a Chinese/American adoptee and has been small since the beginning! There are few tall people in her birth province. She hopefully will accept this someday.I started talking about "good things come in small packages" yesterday as someone else mentioned. It's a hard sell though, for her. I also mentioned that really tall girls sometimes don't like being tall, either!! She was interested in that!

Great progress. Developing Theory of Mind may help with her self-perception related to height and may also help tremendously with friendships.

I can reflect on my own personal experience. I am a twin (fraternal, we look nothing alike) and love my sister to pieces,however, being in the same grade and sometimes the same class sucked! You cannot escape from each other. You are together at home, school etc and you are always being compared to each other. Even if you don't compare your children other adults and peers will. Which one is smarter, prettier , more fun to be around etc... Personally, I think it will put both girls in a box they don't necessarily want to be in and regardless of how close they are will put stress on their relationship and create resentment that can last for years. Just a thought even if your older daughter does not tell you that it bothers her, it still may.


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It's something to think about for sure!! They already deal with that as it's a magnet school, and they take electives together plus they have gotten the same teacher twice!! They go to Girl Scouts together and have wanted to be in the same activities in the summer. I plan on placing them in different activities this year if they will let me. I remember that my little sister came along 4 years after me, and she STILL complains that she was compared to me.

One of my girls is small for her age and has been slow to loose her teeth (she lost her front teeth this fall in 3rd grade!). She looks younger than her age and younger than her twin.

Both my girls skipped and started 1st as 5 yr olds with Fall Bdays (turning 6). They are twins and are in the same class.

I will say generally- different age siblings are preferred to be in separate classes/grades.

I would avoid labels of any kind. My siblings and I all had varying levels of success in public schools and one of us was perceived as the 'smart one'. Later, as adults we found out our IQ scores were all within 5 points of each other.

Particularly since you are just talking subject acceleration, I don't think that the size issue is a huge deal. There really is a huge range in sizes among children in the same grade anyhow. However, I have to admit that size was a consideration in not grade-skipping DS back in 2nd grade and choosing math subject acceleration instead. The sibling issue is more difficult because your younger DD may end up in class with your older DD. For us, I think that removing DS from the same math class as his twin sister was actually a good choice for both even though it was another confirmation that one twin was much stronger in math than the other. However, if you look at it another way, they need to find out sometime so perhaps it might as well be now.