Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Grade skipping and sports

I agree with everything sallymom's said about sports but also I'm not sure how grade skipping takes away from what sports teach re hard work/etc? The OP's child will still be swimming (at least for the near future, and as long as she's interested in it).

I suppose one flip side to sallysmom's advice is that it's also easy for a kid who is uber-focused on a competitive sport (this is taken straight from my competitive and talented athletic dd, not a hypothetical situation)... can be so focused on that sport that they aren't prioritizing school above sport, and hence they are very happy to skate by with easy academics so they can spend all their free hours working at their sport. I suspect my dd would not ask to grade skip if she thought there was any chance it would mean more homework - she already would like to homeschool to give herself more time for her sport. I would not, as a parent, let her choose an academic path that was too easy for her just to let her focus on her sport - I believe she needs to work at both.

polarbear

ITA -

pb

A little off topic but I remember years ago when the 2 top QB prospects in the NFL draft where Rick Mirer and Drew Bledsoe. The Patriots took Bledsoe because Bledsoe was much younger.

"One of the main criteria was the disparity in age," [Parcells] said. "One player (Mirer) was 23, the other player (Bledsoe) was 20. So I had to look at that and say, OK, where could this player who's 20 potentially be when he's 23? And what do I have as opposed to the other player, who will be 26?"

So good coaches do take age and its impact on the developmental arc into account when selecting athletes.

In reading between the lines of your post, I can't help but get the feeling that not skipping is the overall better choice in your DD's specific situation. There are social and resource considerations here as well as lack of track record for the 5th grade STEM program versus awesome teacher for the 4th grade GT class.

As you move into middle and high school, there are just so many opportunities for kids to challenge themselves in math and science, whether through tons of competitions or independent research or internships or dual programs with college courses as early as 9th grade.

Throwing sports into the mix just tilts the scale a bit more. I don't have an especially talented athlete but it has been pretty obvious that a couple of years can matter during the tween/early teen years after seeing DD compete (just regionally) against kids who are two grades higher, a foot taller and 50% heavier.

I think everything matters: social, emotional, music, art, sports. After all, it is not uncommon for many top students to get their academic challenge outside their standard classrooms. No matter how many years you skip, it will be difficult to find enough true academic peers in a single school (except for a select few across the country). If you look at the distribution of scores on tests like MAP or SAT, you can see what I am talking about. For example, on MAP math, a 99 percentile 6th grader outscores a 90 percentile 10th grader. When you have a kid who is considerably more rare than top 1%, even skipping her those 4 grades will net considerably fewer peers.

I'm on my phone and can't reply to everyone in detail at the moment, but I did want to clarify that we haven't refused to grade skip her for 2 years because of swimming. She only recently joined the swim team. When she first asked to skip in 1st grade she had just received entrance to the gt program for 2nd grade and were anticipating that that would be sufficient for her. It was for 2nd grade but not this year.

I consider that an argument *for* skipping a a grade in elementary school. For example, our eldest son enjoyed being on the middle school math team starting at age 10, and he was able to do so at that age because he was accelerated one year.

I am not anti-skip in every situation; rather, to me the OP's set of facts weighs in favor of sticking with the awesome teacher and giving the STEM school a chance to get their 5th grade program together. The OP's DD only has one more year of elementary school (and with an awesome teacher) since her middle school apparently starts with 5th grade.

You don't need to be in middle school to compete in middle school competitions or in high school to compete in high school competitions. DS, with one exception, has always competed on mixed school teams for math competitions. One of DS' teammates on a couple of his mixed school teams is a 5th grader who has excelled in many math competitions, including scoring decently on AIME.

All of the above can still be done by a grade skipped student. In fact, skipping my daughter ahead allowed her to encounter the need for good time management at an earlier age. She also knows that being the youngest (next year she'll just be AMONG the youngest) on her swim team means she has to work harder than others to get a spot to compete on meet days.



Depending on the kid, you might be taking her out of a socially awkward situation and into a better one. Most of my DDs friends and teachers have no idea she's younger until she is outed for some (often odd and/or humorous) reason.

--S.F.

Yes! Deciding to skip isn't just about swimming/sports, there are other things to take into consideration besides the swimming.

We went to the school yesterday and they determined dd to be a good candidate for a grade skip and would accept her. However, we decided it would be too many transitions for her in one year... transitioning to a new school, new friends, new homework expectations, new grade, etc.... if it was a skip within her school it wouldn't be too much of an issue.

Also, we took into consideration that this is their first year having a 5th grade and they didn't have too many answers as to how it would run/look. I'd like to give them a year to work the kinks out and let dd have the awesome 4th grade teacher she is set to have next year at her current school. In addition to this, dd has really come out of her shell the past 2 years and I'd hate it if this skip caused her to 'retreat' and be less outgoing in the classroom (sharing thoughts/answers/ideas). And lastly, I feel that this STEM school would be able to meet her needs academically even without a grade skip since they ability group and allow kids to go to higher grades for subjects (goes up to 12th grade). It's a school that attracts a great number of GT kids so I feel that it is possible to challenge her there.