Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Second grade skip - tell me positive stories!

I want to echo this sentiment from aeh. I would advise that, if a skip is available now, the cognitive abilities that justify that option will still be present in future should that option not be exercised now.

Through middle school, I was only accelerated one grade. My parents had unsuccessfully advocated for early entry in a recalcitrant district, and later opted against a double grade skip offered for me in elementary school. I was able to compact high school and first year university such that I ended up 3 years accelerated upon entering university anyway, even without the earlier double skip.

IMO, the back-end-loading of the acceleration in my case allowed me to be extremely involved in a wide range of competitive athletic and extra-curricular activities through university. I also had an active social life and was able to take courses across a wide variety of disciplines. As someone with cross-disciplinary interests, the opportunity to have a hand in many fields as I was deciding on career direction was important. Social fit was excellent, but it is easier for females to blend in with older peers than for males.

So take heart. You aren't making an irreversible decision.

Thank you all for your stories and words of wisdom. Sorry I am not responding directly to each of you - cannot navigate multiple quotations in one response somehow!

Here where it gets complicated for me to make a decision. She is well rounded kid meaning she is equally advanced in language/science (with confirmed reading comprehension above 12th grade). Her lowest scores this year were in Drama class... From what I observe she is more logical and I see engineering major in her future... But once and a while she would write those eloquent poems. She doesn't have close friends (the only one she made this year is moving away). She is friendly with everyone but an outsider in terms of finding her "crowd". She doesn't do band or any other team activities (even though we offered her any opportunities in the world). The only activities she is permanently excited about is programming and, of course, anything Minecraft. She is comfortable to talk to a room full of adults and have this resilience in her to brush off any comments she finds not favorable. She likes to be the youngest "smarty pants" in the room. She is perfect candidate to skip. But she is still 10 years old and will be 11 only next year. What if this skip will rob her off one extra year of figuring out who she is. What if this would be the year to finally make close friends with kids only a year older? What if, in terms of academics, I am taking away an advantage of being the smartest/close to smartest kid in the room and therefore be ahead in competing for the spot in a good college and moving her up bringing her more to her true academic pears will be too competitive for her since this is an academic magnet where kids already selected based on achievement. So there are lots of what if's... I truly wish this full grade skip opportunity would never come up... She is now so excited I cannot envision telling her no. Maybe she finally will apply herself and get interested in learning again. I am thinking to do the trail period and undo the skip and leave only Algebra placement... But I am absolutely uneasy about it. I am sick to my stomach every time I am thinking about it :-(

Beautifully put! And as Aquinas' school placement thread reminds me, a constantly moving target.

Listening to everyone's stories, I think a key consideration is where your daughter naturally tends to find her friends. Myself, I have always gravitated to people older than me (my mother claims when I was two I hung out with four-year olds). Skipping wasn't an option, but by the time I got to high school I was excruciatingly bored, doing well enough academically though doing nothing, and indescribably desperate to get out and start my life. I managed to find an unusual way at that time of compressing our then 5 years of high school into 3, graduating two years early. Which had me starting university with the kids two years older - who were the ones I spent all my time with anyway.

What would have been socially brutal for me would have been remaining behind in high school when the age group I could relate to moved on. I still shudder even to contemplate it. At university, I was finally able to come alive and be myself.

But I was extremely independent, no extra "Es", and always more comfortable with older peers. My own DS12 has academic needs considerably more extreme than my own ever were, but for him I can't even begin to fathom the possibility of moving to a new city on his own at 16, and independently taking on the challenges of university. Not a chance! Some kind of interim mixture of on-line and local university classes, mixed with chugging through non-math and science high school courses at the usual rate, may be a far more appropriate route for him. When I think of his future, I am looking to bluemagic and notherben as more likely models than my own pathway. To each his own asynchrony, indeed.

ETA: As a champion what-iffer, I totally sympathize with your currently whirling head. And looking at my own DS, totally agree with all the cautions above. A double grade skip could be disastrous for many kids. But if you are going to cover every contingency, do throw in: what if.... the second skip is the best thing that ever happened to her? She has her reasons to be that excited; listen closely to them. My parents were horrified. I was alive for the first time in my life.

This is the worst part. I have no idea what she really wants/needs. Yes she is excited but is it because there is something new that she hasn't tried yet and she gets to be with older kids as she likes or it is truly her need to be at that level. She is so internal with her feelings I really don't know how she feels... Yes, she is bored out of her mind. Yes, she spends 15 minutes on her homework jotting down something really fast and no thoughts put into. Yes, she disengaged from her studies. But is she truly unhappy? Maybe yes, maybe no. Our conversations about school always have words "fine", "good", "nothing special". That is all! She reminds me of my younger sister and it scares me to death. When we were growing up, and I know it just now going through it with my kid, we were both gifted. I am a "normal" outgoing one, with some friends and ways to compensate for feeling not fitting it. She was the quiet one with no friends but no enemies and she had that unbelievable inside world to share with someone who understands (I am thinking she is probably one profoundly gifted kid...) Got along well with others but always by herself. She was absolutely miserable in her life but because she was always compliant without issues and complains until she got to 14 years old everyone just saw a nice all-round quite girl, including my parents. She never made an unhappy sound until she was much older and all the problems showed up in once. She turned out fine as far as finding her people and has friends as strange and fascinating as her but much, much later in life. But there was so much pain in her journals that she kept and we discovered recently when cleaning the attic!!! I am aware of it now and don't want this to happened to my daughter... But in order to help her I am just playing guessing game at this time with no real access to her "inside" world. My kid is more resilient and internally determined to do her thing at all costs as far as I can tell but I might never know. :-(

Here's the thing. You will never know what is best, indeed, there likely is not a best. There are only different paths and then different things that arise from them you cannot predict.

You write that your daughter is truly excited about this opportunity and seems, from your description, to have a good sense of herself for her age. What would be wrong with figuring out, ahead of time with her (with parental guidance) how and when this skip would be evaluated and what might be done if it is determined not to work? (i.e., can go back to regular grade, get extra help, etc.) Going into it with your plan to undue it before giving it a go seems a little premature...

I might worry what you signal to her, given the school's support and her own excitement, about herself if you say no based on fears. She has a chance to do something she wants to do, feels she can do and then what? No... because she won't tell you her inner thoughts? Some of which she might not even be able to articulate.

Also, one of your posts asks something like what if staying where she is gives her the best things ever. I think you also have to ask what if moving on does. She gets another year and will change/grow/learn either way. When I read that section, it seems as if you are feeling like you are stealing an actual year. You are not in either case.

Based on my personal experience, I would rank this as the single worst reason to hold a kid back. Being the smartest kid in the room can put your child at a significant DISadvantage. When a child gets used to being the smartest kid in the room, they can become more worried about maintaining that status than they are about actually learning or challenging themselves academically. Because the bar is artificially low for them, they also miss out on the chance to learn how to deal with challenge and failure while the stakes are still relatively low. You don't want law school or med school to be your child's first experience of NOT being the smartest kid in the room. Sooner or later, there will ALWAYS be someone smarter, and you don't do your child a favor by delaying that realization.

My mom refused skips for the reason you describe, and it only set me up for perfectionism, anxiety, risk aversion and fear of failure, which I then had to work through as an adult.

You might also underestimate your daughter. My son has been skipped two years and he's still at the head of his class academically in a school with a disproportionate number of gifted kids. If your daughter really needs the second skip, there's no reason to assume it will lower her grades. She might have to work harder to stay at the top, but that can be a good thing.

Very true. The DC I referenced earlier in the thread did not see any drop in grades either, after the second skip.

This piece of PB's post up thread really resonates with our experiences. The issue with our DD is that she learns quickly - give her a new pier and she will still run off the end off it before her new NT peers are anywhere near to reaching the end. This is the primary reason why we haven't pushed for further whole grade skips actually.

I skipped two years and have a summer birthday. Graduated shortly before my 16th birthday and started college at 16. I would say don't do it. From the outside it would look like a success. I had no problems with college academics, have multiple graduate degrees and a career that I enjoy. I don't think that would have changed had I waited a few years. I also had friends. However, I feel like I was much more susceptible to the influence of those friends because I was the youngest person in the group. I was also exposed to things socially that I simply was not ready for. School is about a lot of things and academics usually comprise one of the smallest parts. I have a PG daughter who is very quirky;). Can she do academics years ahead of her grade? Sure, this does not change the fact that she is young and socially she needs time. I would have loved to have a bit more time to be a child myself.

Yes, this really does factor into the decision.