Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Adults who were accelerated themselves?

For me, the stories are helpful. I know they aren't studies...but the studies, by conflating the experiences of lots of different kids, can only give me an average idea of what happens in a skip. Supplementing the studies' general approval of grade skips for HG+ kids with stories about specific people's experience lets me try to think of ways that a skip might or might not work well for my specific child. And hearing about more people's experiences makes me feel less that I'm getting swayed by any one anecdote. Just hearing that studies support the skip makes me feel pushed to skip. Knowing the experiences of family members and close friends, who had what AmyEJ mentioned as problems of decision-making, makes me feel against skipping. The additional stories help me mediate that and decide what I think might be good for my son without feeling either pushed or rejecting without consideration. So I hope more people post - especially if there are stories about men's experiences. My husband tells me all the time that it's harder for a smart boy, and I can't really know what that's like. (though how he'd know what it's like for a smart girl to make the comparison....)

I mentioned my experience on another thread, but to have it here for people searching in future, I was subject-accelerated, mixed-age classroomed, independent studied, pulled out, mentored, talent-searched, and basically pretty happy. The older I got, the more my school let me do what I wanted. I was a comparatively late developer, and really hated that. I felt happier with my age mates and allowed to work independently than I did in classes with people two years older, b/c I felt too out of place socially to enjoy the instruction. (I am perhaps excessively socially oriented - too much thought for other people's opinions). If Hoagie's comparison chart is right, I'd have been an EG/PG kid. My last two years of high school I did not have great teaching in many subjects, but that had to do with the available teachers, not the grade I was at. Good teachers kept me challenged, poor ones didn't. I did a lot of things like AFS that took me out of school for months at a time. I kept myself busy with music, plays, sports, etc. I never dated anyone in my town/school, but I did date people I met at various activities in other towns (or states! which kept my social life pretty tame). I was different, but not picked on.

The pros were, I had time to really enjoy developing non-intellectual talents, as well as plenty of time to pursue my own writing and reading. I was with kids I felt more comfortable with. I did not develop my grade-skipped mother, BIL, and friends' apparently life-long social anxiety. I got into a very good college with scholarships and was happy with my activities, friendships, and general A- studenthood. I felt the activities I had time for helped me get into good colleges and have given me a happier, broader life.

The cons were, I definitely could have learned more and been better prepared for college...but I think that is likely rural school, not not-skipped. But it's true, that if there HAD been AP classes available, then being skipped would have let me take more, and then I could have taken more classes in college than I did. I did feel strongly I wished I could have had a fifth year of college b/c I was not 'done.' People who came to school testing out of language and full of APs had an advantage in college course flexibility. Probably it was unideal to have me spend so much time in classes just writing in my notebooks or reading something independently, though those two skills are central to my life now! It is also true that I did not have a challenge that required me to work consistently until my dissertation, and that being so hard made me tearful and self-doubting. I am career-stalled right now and unsure what direction I will take when the baby's a little older. It's possible that this stall and all the end of grad school misery would have been easier if I'd been working hard all along. Or, as this is all unknowable in what Kriston says about one life to live, maybe I'd have burned out long ago.

When I was around 6 or 7 I had some testing done. I don't know what the testing was. Nothing was shared with me, I just remember sitting in a room with this guy asking me questions and I remember that I was really hungry so he gave me a candy bar at one point.

The people involved in this school meeting strongly suggested that I be skipped from 2nd to 4th. I would be entering 2nd that fall. I was really small for my age and very shy. My parents decided to have me go to 2nd for social reasons.

By the time I hit puberty I was pretty much done with school. I used to skip school and sit in the book store so I could learn on my own. I really did not talk to my peers at all. I felt like I never learned anything in school. My parents were nice parents but did not do any enrichment or anything at home and always treated me like I was a little strange.

I did not know anything about GT kids untill a teacher in highschool gave me some articles, by then I was always in independent study which was reading random stuff and writing reports on it.

Now I have three children of my own and I am trying to figure out what to do as the school years get closer. I found out today that my husband had testing done too when he was little and the tester told him one of his scores was the highest he had seen. I am really thinking about having our kids tested, my husband is not sure it will make a difference.

My advise would be that parents have to be advocates for thier children. If things are not working change them. A grade skip might not be the perfect fit but it will be a change and give you more information about what works for your child. At least your child will know you are trying to help.

In retrospect I think I should have gone to 4th and then done secondary options around 14. The social part really was not an issue because I did not really relate to children my own age and found older peers anyway like my husband who was older.

sorry about the long post.

I started kindergarten at 4 (late birthday = October) because I had been reading for nearly two years. My parents made efforts to have me skip 5th, but the school was very much against it (used my late birthday as one reason) and so provided transportation to another school 1 or 2x/week for a fun enrichment class. Though I enjoyed the class quite a lot, I really wish I had been skipped.

In early elementary school, I enjoyed being "number 1" in all subjects in the classroom. Unfortunately, it didn't take me long to discover that I didn't need to put in much effort to maintain my status and still be No1. This lack of effort and attitude hurt me in high school and especially in college as I came to recognize that I didn't know how to study. Everything had always come so naturally in the past.

Our DS13 was offered a mid-year skip from 1st to 2nd. The teacher situation would have been awful, so we didn't do it. So, the next school year they were going to move him to 3rd instead of 2nd, and we (regretfully) decided not to do it for a number of reasons: others sharing horror stories about skipping, misguided info on skipping gifted kids, but mostly because we decided it wouldn't be a long-term solution. We were afraid that it would have only been a temporary fix and we'd end up needing to skip him again. So, we tested him for two competive private schools. They both wanted him. One said they'd start him in 3rd, the other started all their students a year late anyway, so we put him there in their 2nd grade class. Unfortunately, it was a very poor match. I ended up homeschooling him after the winter break.

Hindsight - we wish we would have kept him in the very good public school and skipped him into 3rd. When in 7th, his counselor recommended a skip to 9th, and the principal concurred. Unfortunately, the district rejected it completely and commented that that's why they have honors classes. It is frustrating.

We have learned to take each year as we go. Nothing is set in stone, and his input is very important. If he hadn't gotten "double-bumped" (two years ahead) in math, he had asked to be home-schooled or virtual schooled (and we would have started him in 9th.)

I learned from Dr. Rick Olenchek to listen and discuss with your kids the ramifications of their educational pursuits. What do they really want? You have to sift through some of the things they say, and you also have to understand them and their strengths and weaknesses.

I wish you the best of luck!! Sorry for the long post!

I definitely didn't mean to suggest that people shouldn't post, Montana. Sorry if it sounded like that!

By all means, post like mad, people, please!

P.S. I had a pretty significant post-grad school stall, too. I wonder if that's common for us "subject-accelerated, mixed-age classroomed, independent studied, pulled out, mentored, talent-searched, and basically pretty happy" kids when we grow up...

On the bright side, I finally figured it all out (I think...). So there's hope, right?

At the very least, you're not alone!

P.P.S. I meant to add that if you don't think grade-skipping is the right thing to do for your child, Montana, then I really hope you don't feel pressured to do it. Not even by the studies.

I think skipping is a valid choice and one that works great for some kids. But with my "deep but not fast kid," I think a grade skip (or two) would have been bad for him. So I will campaign like mad for other people to accept skipping as a valid option even as I reject it in practice for now.

It's another tool in the toolbelt, but that doesn't mean we have to use it.

Well, I think in many ways it depends so much on the school and the community in which you find yourself (not to mention the personalities of the child, the class, and the teacher). My husband skipped and was happy--he loved school, and remembers it very fondly--but he was in a unique situation, growing up in a "closed" community--essentially an isolated company town for a scientific research facility, and every student in the school had at least one parent with a Ph.D. There were several children in each grade who had skipped at least once, and several in the school as a whole who had skipped more than once.

I was told I needn't show up for kindergarten, had a mid-year skip from first to second, which my parents accepted primarily for social reasons (in one of those demographic anomalies that occasionally pop up in small towns, there were no other girls in my original class); they rejected another offered skip because it would have put me in the same class as my sister, and my sister said she didn't want me there (it was a small school--only one class per grade). I wasn't very happy, but I'm not sure I would have been happy there anyway--and it got me out the door having spent only 11 years in the building instead of 13, a remission of my "sentence" which seemed worth the occasional skip-related inconveniences (track meets, driver's ed, etc.). It wasn't a place that valued academics--many of the boys dropped out as soon as they were legally able, in order to work in the fields. I was doomed socially from the get-go, anyway, skip or no skip, as we were the "wrong" ethnicity/religion in an otherwise utterly homogeneous community. Also, in those days, teachers had to pay their own substitutes, so my first-grade teacher used me every time she was sick, to save money, and therefore I never really had a chance to feel like just a regular member of the group anyway. It was nice to go to university, though, and make some friends!

I've realized, on looking this over, that we both grew up in such weird places that our stories will be of no help to you whatsoever!!!!!! So maybe I shouldn't post this, I don't know.

minnie

Hoagies has a good list:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/grade_skipped.htm

For all of grade school, I was not allowed to accelerate in any subject or full-grade because I was too disruptive in class. However, I sort of managed it anyway, as I made friends with some middle school teachers and stayed in their classes when I would get kicked out of my lower grade classes. In middle school, my science and math teachers allowed me to subject accelerate a bit (and work much ahead at home and during the summer). By high school, my teachers saw a need to accelerate, so they let me work on college material during the regular class that I needed to officially take instead of making me sit through class.
I liked being challenged when I accelerated, but I have had problems along the way. It was too little too late, mainly. Taking classes with seniors my 8th grade/freshman/sophomore years helped me academically, but I wasn't able to graduate with all of my friends, which was really hard each year. Also, working through college material but not getting credit for it has hurt during college, as I've had to repeat what I already know. Grade skips would probably have helped with the social aspect (not having to say good-bye to my friends every year), as well as the academic aspects.
That being said, I enjoyed athletics very much, and I probably would not have been able to enjoy as much athletic success (winning state tournaments...) if I had been whole grade accelerated to the extent that I would have needed it. I also really liked my friends on the teams (my age or a little older). In addition, I don't think I would have lasted through school without any acceleration...

Thanks, everyone, for adding your stories. It does give me a broader perspective on it all. I'm glad to hear a story about a happy accelerated man, for example, b/c I'd never even heard of one before. (I just learned that both my dad and my grandmother, in addition to my mom and BIL, were grade-skipped, and not entirely happy about it, so it really does help to hear people who are. My dad was homeschooled and then grade skipped, so he had the whole toolbox I guess. Funny that he never talked about it til now).


acs, what preparation and support do you think might have made a difference? (I had an email at 8:30 monday saying they wanted to grade-skip my son...which makes me worry that it's a teacher convenience thing and that there's not much more than 15 minutes of thought gone into it - and less preparation!)

Dottie, this young man who is down to earth and happy...do you know him enough to give some basic personality adjectives? The things in my ds that worry me are shortness, not-good gross-motor skills, rejection-sensitivity, a negative first reaction to everything, tendency to dwell on the negative, perfectionism, very slow to adjust to change, and self-blaming for any perceived 'failure'. When he was in preschool with kids close to a year older than him, he got occasionally teased for being a slow runner. This made him soooo miserable he actually once told me he wished he wasn't alive any more. I really really don't want to be hearing that from him as he compares himself to classmates in future! especially as we have depression on both sides of the family. So I'm looking closely for experiences that might touch on what a young boy like *this* might feel in a grade skip.

Our goal is much more his happiness and ability to form good, supportive relationships in life than his career success. It's just hard to decide what will best do that! (or, as some of you have put it, least-worst!) Especially when he's decidedly UNhappy with this class's current academics.

I'm finding it hard to get into his head and figure this out! It feels like the first decision he could later hate me for, and makes me nervous. He's private enough - and of course another person - that I can't tell which imperatives are more important for him!

thanks for everything you all wrote...there were several perspectives that hadn't occurred to me. And Minnie...good GRIEF, the teacher had you do the teaching when she was sick??? that's rough.

Hi Montana, I don't know what exactly could have been done. What got me thinking about good prep and support was this book http://www.amazon.com/Re-Forming-Gi...mp;s=books&qid=1227630941&sr=1-9 I think it has some useful checklists etc that can be used for prep and follow-up.

I have heard of kids "visiting" the potentially receiving classroom before deciding to move there. Perhaps he could join the older class after afternoon recess for a week, then after lunch for the next week before finally joining all day. This visiting would be to see if it is a good fit for him and during that time, people can decide not to skip if it doesn't work out.

Also, have you already done the Iowa scale? That may give you insights into where he is most likely to run into trouble with the skip and then focus your support in those areas.

I hope this helps.