Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Grade skipping - revisited

One day at a time! I'm with Dottie: be thrilled his teacher and the staff are on board and go with it! There are always ways to slow things down if you worry that they're too fast. Travel! Homeschool stuff he'd never get in school! Special programs!

Keep your eyes open now for opportunities like that, but worry later. Plenty of time to worry later! Now, celebrate that your son's teacher gets it! Hooray!

Upon entering sixth grade, my daughter now cares about friends. She was in many groups and had friends, but really did not connect when she was young. Now, this is very important for her. This is a total change at eleven. She is still an exceptional student and in accelerated classes. She focuses quite a bit of time on band (her new passion).

She is already young (with a June birthday), but she is turning into a teen and very interested in this process. It is strange to see such "normalcy" in her and she probably has done way more reading on the subject than other girls in her grade level.

Well, G3, I kind of am undoing a big skip by homeschooling other topics. He's taking Arabic, a creativity class, and a very focused art class that he'd never take if he weren't homeschooling.

It's easier than you think to do. Granted, it doesn't exactly undo the skip. He's still way ahead in everything. But he is learning other things that keep him going and growing besides the standard curriculum, and it does slow him down somewhat.

The standard curriculum isn't sacred. There's a lot of things not included in it that are fascinating.

you're probably right that I don't think I'd wait until the end of high school to introduce these things. I'd try to weave some learning speed bumps into the time between now and the end of high school. Lots of foreign language--probably more than one!--lots of music, art, science and history that he wouldn't get in school, etc. I think sometimes spending extra time in high school through a planned deacceleration is smart, since there's a lot there that is potentiallhy interesting and challenging. If there's a strong middle school with lots of opportunities I might even have the child stay there longer.

I really do think it's possible. It might not work for everyone. You know your kids. But it's absolutely possible to do!

I agree with Kriston. At home we have the opportunity to "go wide" in a way that the schools simply cannot. I also agree that there really isn't any undoing a skip. Homeschooling is, in a sense, removing the child from the idea of skips and grade levels. (If you can't remove the skip from the child, you can at least remove the child from the skip -- or something like that.)

Disclaimer: My kids have never been in school, and so haven't been skipped, but they're not labeled with any particular grade level and can work at various grade levels depending on what they need.

Ds will be heading to school for the first time in the fall, though, so I continue to read about how you all are meeting kids' academic needs in the school systems. Don't yet know how we're going to manage that.

Good point about homeschooling being in part about removing the whole concept of levels and skips, Z. Maybe becuase we're somehow just not as tied to that, the notion of slowing things down by going wide is easier for us to swallow? I'm not sure.

To me it seems perfectly natural to think about slowing things down in that way. It's really a major focus of my homeschooling. I was surprised to see that questioned as being unrealistic, frankly. It kind of flummoxed me!

I think of homeschooling less in terms of "undoing skips" and more as aiming a bit higher in the long run. So while DS is teetering on the edge of high school work right now (at 9 - math is definitely high school but taking a meandering path, science is nearly there, lit/comp and history I'm not sure but at least middle school...), I don't currently plan to send him to college in four years. Our school goes to whatever level we need it to go to until he's ready for college, whether that's early and accelerated or on time and with a really REALLY solid background. We do "go wide" but we also go fast... and if that means we go to grade 16, then so be it!

Yeah! What she said!



The question then is how that can be translated for someone who IS skipping and for whom school doesn't necessarily go to level 16.

I think it does translate, but maybe I'm wrong there...

I think it's possible in some schools, for some kids... Probably if you're in a large district with a lot of resources you could add on more and more specialty classes, beef up the arts program, do some independent study and internships... I don't see that happening in our local PS system (they have a full complement of AP offerings and all that, but nothing fabulously interesting that would keep one around for any longer than necessary...)

The more flexible they're willing to be the better, I think. And it probably helps to have a kid who can work independently or move between groups with ease... since it's unlikely you'd get a class-sized bunch in one place at one time.

You'll never actually "run out" of things to learn, and there are some areas that the traditional class sequence leaves out, which I personally thing are absolutely vital to all reponsible citizens (not just the gifted ones!) like more understanding of law and governance and international relations, a better grasp of statistics and science, more foreign language... Since we have "extra" time, we're spending a good bit of it on all of those!

Well, since the OP and G3 were arguing that the long-term problem was big for them, and since I think there are ways to solve that problem, at least to some extent, I was trying to take that next step.

I definitely side with the "worry about now" view myself. But I sympathize mightily with those afraid of what they'll do with a 13yo graduating from high school or whatever nutty situation might result.