Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need ideas for responses to age/grade questions

My DD13 and her Biology teacher unintentionally learned a lesson about de-anonymization of data. Two years ago, when my (twice skipped) DD was in 8th grade, she was part of a pilot program where 8th graders could take a handful of HS courses. The HS biology teacher thought it would be helpful (and it was) to plot birth year and grade for all of his classes to show that the 8th graders were succeeding. Way off to the left of the chart is a lonely data point for DD. Oops. Luckily she had a fairly high grade, so it was less embarrassing than it could have been. And what was even cooler is the biology teacher did not know he had an accelerated kid in his class until then.

As for the age/grade questions - we always seem to get them in pairs. As in, "Your daughter is how old?" ... "So that would put her in X grade?" Urgh. Just ask one question or the other and we can sneak by... We have various go to answers: she went to a great private school, she is a fast learner, look over there - an eagle!

--S.F.

My current go-to answer is: "Because DD was reading to the class for story time in pre-K. She didn't have anything to learn in kindergarten, so we skipped her." It's an easily-digested reason which has the benefit of being true, though it lacks nuance and skips over a whole lot of strife between K and skip.

DD is large-ish for her age and in an age-sorted soccer league, so it's important for us to be able to explain that, although she's in 5th grade, that doesn't mean we're cheating the system, she really does belong on a U10 team. There are three other kids on her team who go to her school, and two have been in gifted classes with her, so there's no keeping it a secret.

We experienced quite a bit of this, as DD was in kindergarten at the time and acceleration within the year rarely happens in our school district in kinder or even 1st grade. In fact, the principal and teacher in their combined 50 years of experience have never done it. Since she started attending 1st grade after the kinder class ended for the day and was standing in line to go to the 1st grade class along with the other 1st graders in the kinder/1st combo class next door, it was patently obvious to other parents. She also had a 2nd grade pullout too, so DD and I had to field a lot of questions from classmates and other parents.

In all honesty, it was hard to redirect or change the subject so I pretty much just said that the teachers and principal decided that she was better placed in those classes. That worked really well for me as many of the parents weren't too surprised anyway, as Kinder parents tend to volunteer and they had already noticed her and had made comments to that effect. I did have to mention that she was given end of year assessments because some of these parents wanted to approach the teacher after that. The difficulty was dealing with the parents from her 2nd grade class. It was really awkward, but the upside from the experience was that I made some great friendships with parents who were encouraging and supportive. I also realized who weren't likely to be people I wanted to hang around with as they avoided my company after quizzing me on "how I did it" or what special program I used to accelerate. One of them who happens to live down the street.

HAHA I really laughed out loud at these thank you!!

Back on topic - we have taught Aiden (7) to say "I'm homeschooled so I don't really have a specific grade" If they ask further he says "I work on different levels for different subjects"
If they ask further he directs them to me with a polite "My mom is there, you are welcome to chat to her if you need further clarity". If it's a child still asking he will drag them to me, introduce them and then walk off.

We had to work together he and I to come up with these answer strategies. He was getting stressed out with people not believing him, calling him a liar etc. And it's bizzarre for him because we don't do a set curriculum. He takes his "grade" cues from his Dreambox dashboard, the literacy workbook he is doing at the time or if he finds a series of something to study online they usually have a grade attached.

Now he is very careful of what he says to whom. And when they ask for specifics of what he is learning he finds it easier to say something non-academic, eg "tying my shoelaces, or to knit, to iron my own clothes, keep my room tidy etc.

Madoosa, those are elegant answers. I'm tucking them away.

If anyone asks us anything like this we just tell them. It's never been a problem.

Most people asking what grade your child is in are just kindly adults using it as a conversational gambit, like Elizabeth said. You could answer with "I'm seven" and it would suffice.

My kids know that "grade levels" on ixl or khan or math textbooks are just a guide for a certain collection of stuff, not an indicator of what grade the person using/doing them is in. You could tell your son this, that everyone does what's appropriate for them in each subject at any given time, but that second grade is just another way of saying seven years old to strangers.

Nothing wrong with acceleration/being too young in the class. Both of my DDs skipped to 1st. They never had problems and we will answer as a matter of factly. We really did not need to explain a lot.

This year, DD 10 is doing Algebra I and some of her older sister's friends are in the same class. They told my older daughter about her younger sister being smart and that's about it. It helps that it was not unprecedented.

Lisa Yee's book "Milicent Min-Girl Genius" is a good book about dealing with Muggles/nongifties It is a fun book to read as well for your DC.

We are in the comfortable situation that DS is "merely" entered early, so while a daring move in the eyes of many parents, not as outrageous as a grade skip, and he is very tall for his age. As long as the size and all around appearance fits the grade,the age mismatch doesn't people bother as much I've noticed. It rarely comes up, really only when he he is the last kid in class to turn 8 or whatever. When people did ask ("how could you? I'd never do that! I was so glad I could redshirt mine!" I answered, truthfully, that the preschool teachers recommended it and after trial day, the school teachers concurred. Not that we weren't determined to do it anyway, but I liked blaming it All on the professionals.
You could say "it's where the school placed him after testing" and leave it at that.

I occasionally get the odd passive aggressive response when my own grade skip, hardly ever these days, comes up "oh, I/ our child could have skipped a grade but my parents/ we weren't that ambitious/pushy etc. ". I usually go all gushy "oh but you should have, or seriously considered it, weren't you bored/not challenged/did you ever have to study, did you have test scores etc..." A few times, the person in question started to seriously discuss a gifted kids acceleration options, but most of the times it's pure fiction and people start mumbling and excuse themselves.

These age and grade questions come up no matter what. One of my kids, very asynchronous in his development, has a summer birthday, and benefited from a later start to Kindergarten. He eventually had a lot of subject acceleration, but we never regretted the additional Lego-playing, fort-building time he got.

Anyway, he often got questions about why he got "held back." He would just tell them that's what his parents decided, or that he wanted more play time. Either way, people are going to ask and make judgments, and it's often HOW you react more than what you tell them. Good luck