Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Radical acceleration down the road - any regrets?

I just looked it up. It seems that some middle colleges are with community colleges and some with universities. Depends on where you live. Too bad they couldn't do the university courses online with supplemental labs. Remember that CT high school student that was dual enrolled at Fairfield U but then went to Yale because the courses at Fairfield were not challenging enough? Nice to get some standardization.

I've have been keeping my eye on Middle/Early Colleges for the past few years. I have friends who have send their children to programs in other areas with a lot of success. Unfortunately we don't seem to have a problem in my school district.

We've managed some radical acceleration by homeschooling with a local learning center. (They are excellent BTW, so if you are in the PDX area, PM me for the lowdown.) DD is currently around 3 years accelerated and we've seen both negatives and positives.

DD would be entering 6th grade in public school, but is about to start with a mostly high school level curriculum (with a few upper middle school classes for various reasons). The school situation (which I appreciate is unique) has provided mitigation for some possible negatives. This past year it was middle school level classes.

On the positive side, she's much happier being able to learn new things and actually having to work. Regular school wasn't good for her intellectual or emotional health. Her work load last year could have been more rigorous, but this year should actually be a challenge (AP Biology!).

Because the classes have broad age ranges, she get's to be the youngest on a continuum, rather than the youngest by several years. This helps keep her from feeling like too much of an outlier. Or rather it did. This year she she will go from being the youngest in the age band to younger than the age band and probably will be an outlier in some classes (though her biology last year had a 9-year-old so...).

Because the school has mixed ages, grades, everything, she can easily connect to a peer group with more similar ages (for her this means kids 1-2 years older, which is where she's comfortable). It also helps with the flirting/dating issue (which she is only just dipping her toes into). We've made it clear that any boy more than a year older is TOO OLD at her age. She's comfortable with that too. Basically, she's not cordoned off from kids her age.

Another good thing about the school is that they are super flexible about homework and grades (optional and nonexistent). This might be a negative for some kids, but for DD it's perfect. She can learn the material without being crushed by a too-heavy workload or too much need for executive function skills (which are not at all advanced in my DD). We do insist on her doing homework and give her grades (at her request actually, though you should have seen her face when I gave her a C!). The negative is that college might crush her... but more on that below.

Honestly though, I don't know that a straight acceleration in public school would have worked as well. Academically it'd be fine, but the social issues and PE and workload might have been too much for her.

Sports are all outside of school and are run by age. Many kids here play outside of grade if they are very good and there are many other's who've been skipped a grade. So the disconnect isn't too bad. DD has found ways of dodging school talk, though sometimes it bums her out.

Summer camp is by entering fall grade, but we naturally enroll her at the appropriate age and not grade, which is what they really mean anyway. She has permission to tell any story she wants to the kids at camp about school. She can describe herself as a homeschooler without a grade or as attending a private school. Since the assumption is that all the kids are entering the same grade, it usually doesn't come up.

There's a particular early admission program she has her eye on, but otherwise we are taking it year by year. It's given her some focus to have that as a goal and the process of applying (taking the SAT and ACT, essays, campus visit) will give us all a sense of whether she's ready or not. That will start next year. She will also take her first community college class in spring of next year and this should help her dip her toes into college level workload. We are looking at a science class with a lab. I realize that CC is not the same as a 4-year in terms of rigor, but it's a start.

As she ages there seem to be more and more options. For example, she could spend a year abroad. She can decelerate to attend a rigorous boarding prep school. She can go wider for a while and explore more interests through high school level classes and community college, without necessarily launching on a full-time degree track. She can do an online / middle college option (classes at the CC, but enrolled as an official high school student). She can attend college part or full time and live at home. If there's a need to slow her down, there are more ways to do so without it feeling like a retread.

I wish I'd had the opportunity to accelerate (or really to skip high school entirely). School was mostly a boring kind of torture and there was enough of a disconnect between me and most other kids that it wouldn't have been worse if I'd have been younger. Mostly I skipped class, doing just enough for the grades. My sophomore year in college was a bit of a shock, being as it was the first time I needed to expel effort.

I notice that very few of you appear to consider learning more foreign languages and/or spending a year abroad as an exchange student as a deceleration option, rather than early college classes, online options, dual enrolment etc. Is that rather a European thing? Or do you feel it would be too hard finding the right learning environment abroad, seeing that it is so hard to find in ones own country?

The article isn't focused on students but I still think this covers some of the possible reason's it isn't as common in the U.S. (of course this is just a broad generalization) -
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domestically/
I would add that I think a second/third/etc language through school is more common outside of the U.S..

FWIW I personally know quite a few Canadians who did something along those lines (although admittedly some of the families I'm thinking of weren't necessarily looking for deceleration due to gifted issues - they just wanted their kids to experience travelling).

We are pulling our kids out of school for a month this year to travel and are planning a larger trip in the next couple of years. If they were struggling (or being challenged) in school we would schedule it around school rather than purposely giving them a break from school.

I don't think gap years are as common in NA, in general, so it's probably not naturally in our awareness. Also, there's the issue of truancy laws, which require school enrollment until age 16 or 18, depending on the state.

I and my siblings used the time at the post-college level: for additional bachelor's, master's, work experiences, volunteering.

Many of the most ambitious Canadians will wind up in the U.S., and if I were a Canadian parent, I might want my children to spend some time in the U.S. To be successful, it's not as important for Americans as it is for people from many other countries to travel abroad or to learn a second language. My eldest son is starting to take French this year, and I want him to do well. But for me a foreign language has just been a hoop to jump though to get into a good college, and it may well be the same for him. His learning of computer languages will probably be more valuable to him.

Tigerle - no, that's definitely not true in our case. My ds is a dual US/UK citizen and we'd move or send him to the UK or an EEC country in a heartbeat, if $$ wasn't an issue. I've lived over there on/off with my UK husband before we had ds. We just visited family there in May since my fil isn't well at all.

Ds has been doing languages online with Memrise. Then again, dh is a Brit and learned two languages in public elementary/primary school. Ds is not interested in learning computer languages yet, but there are many ways to learn them today.

I know Jake Barnett is studying for his master's in Canada at Perimeter right now. He looked at the ivies here, Cambridge, and Oxford (I think) and probably many other places before heading north.

We've been looking at what's offered in terms of MOOCs (massive open online courses) with UK's Future Learn and Australia's Open 2 Study. Both offer some interesting courses that you wouldn't find here in the US. Newcastle U, for instance, has an archaeology/history course on Hadrian's Wall and the Romans. The chances of that type of course being offered here in the US are slim to none.

There are many opportunities around and ways to expose your kids to the wider world and beyond. There are many ways to keep them engaged in learning.

As for beyond gap years or truancy laws, if you receive approval or are ok to un/homeschool in your city/town/state then you should be free to pursue any type of gap year experience. In our state, we're only legally bound to submit paperwork for un/homeschooling until a child is 16 years old. Once a child turns 16 years old, you don't have to report and a child can, technically, drop out of school.

I'm not sure whether there are federal laws governing 16 years and 18 years old and public school but I would hazard to guess that each state allows a child to withdraw from public school at 16 yrs old without being considered a truant. After all, high school drop outs do find employment.

It's state-by-state. The range is entry by 5-8 and exit after 16-18. Homeschool statutes are state-by-state, as well, with some very loosely regulated, and others quite closely.

Thanks. I knew about un/homeschool statutes being state-by-state and by even city/town with the paperwork. That's enough of a headache.

I knew the situation changed after 16 yrs old with reporting for un/homeschooling and with public education in my state (and others), but was hoping that there was a tad more consistency between states with the 16-18-yr-old range. Sigh. Of course not. Pooh.