Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do You Have an Gifted Child Who's Also Athletic?

DS6 is currently homeschooled. If he was in school, he'd be a young-for-grade 1st grader. His birthday is just two weeks before the cut-off. We're now at a point where I'm starting to feel like a grade skip would be doable, should we ever need/want to have him go to school. (His normal age would have him graduating high school at 17. If we grade-skipped, he'd be 16.)

However, he's also fairly athletic, and his ability to participate in sports now has me doubting whether the grade-skip would be good. With "redshirting" trends combined with his already young-for-grade age, a grade skip would probably put him 2-3 years younger than some of the other kids on the team.

At the moment, his sport is gymnastics, which is sort of less worrisome than if it was a school sport, but his interests could change.

I know that there are so many variables at this point because my son's so young, but I'm just curious how this has played out for others.

My son who is in 4th grade is a very good baseball player and he is naturally very athletic and loves sports. However, we have run into a lot of issues because he gets very upset when he does not play well and showing disappointment on the mound is not acceptable at all in our league. His perfectionism in the game is both a blessing and a curse. He's the starting pitcher for his team and can play any position well but he is never chosen for All Stars because he cannot contain his emotions when something goes wrong in the game. It's one of the toughest issues we deal with raising him.

club sports seem to be age grouped except for school sports. DS is youngest in his year academically but one of the oldest in his soccer grade.

My sons participate in club sports divided by age not grade. Once high school level they participate as a whole team (and the school lets everyone participate). So as a freshman you are competing against seniors. And my boys particular sport high school season is for fun, club is the competitive.

In club things change around high school too. once you are 15 sometimes you compete Open (which is open to any age but generally is 15 and over including Olympians), sometimes there is a 15/16 category separate from the open category but not often.

So my children are not future Olympians. Heck my son rarely places top eight in club competition his entire career (if he did it was because not many people entered that event). He is still good he is just really small and many many others are just better.

He has never really needed a skip so sports and skip never entered the equation but he would be considered small for a grade or two behind him, his grade and the next grade up. So...I make academic decisions based on academics and sports just don't enter into those decisions...just as academics don't enter into sports decisions (other than not impacting his ability to do his homework).

In our area, competitive team sports are strictly by age. You can "play up" (young for grade) if you are very good, but cannot play old-for-grade, as there are closely-enforced birthdate cutoffs (usually in two year brackets). So redshirting only affects sports before third grade and after eighth grade. That's both too early and too late for me to use sports as a primary determining factor for grade placement. Of course, we homeschool, so, in practice, we report grade levels according to the activity.

DS4 is very athletic, obsessed with sports, and probably gifted, though he's different from his older sister who read as a baby. He'll start school at nearly six thanks to his fall birthday. I'd be open to a skip down the line but our experience around here makes me think he'd just get accelerated in math. He needs the time for social growth and drawing/writing (perfectionism is slowing him down I think). But I'm not concerned about him being in the wrong grade for sports. Our neighbor with very athletically gifted kids said it's just a bad fit until they're nearly ten, when they can join club sports by skill and enough other kids are as into it.

Look into youth sports in your area. We have found that many competitive leagues are age-based, not grade based. I am sure it depends on the "climate" in your area, but for some of these sports, such as soccer, the kids prefer to be on the club teams rather than the school team.

I wouldn't hold him back because of the sports, if he needs to move forward. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't be able to play sports with his age mates, no matter his grade in school.

The recent Grade skipping and sports thread was about a similar question.