Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Kindergarten 2009-2010

If you think your son is not going to be alright, you are probably correct. My child is in K this year and the school just had him tested. He scored in the 99.99% and they are only willing to move him to 1st grade. I am not a big fan of skipping grades, but he is bored to tears.

We are currently searching for other options, but are lucky that we chose a Charter school, because in our county, it takes 1 year to complete the process to allow a child to skip a grade.

We would love anyone's suggestions as to what we should do, but would like suggest that you send him to a school that will be willing to allow him to be placed in the next grade level--

You may even want to have him tested, even though he is young so that you know where you stand. Are you dealing with a gifted child, or a profoundly gifted child?

I hope that helps--but people told me he would be fine also and he is currently in a class room learning to read, bored out of his mind!

Hi Fred, Welcome!
Which tests did they use to test your son. So sorry to hear that he is bored to tears. How soon can they do the skip? If it is going to take a while, I would reccomend:

a) immediate subject acceleration
b) homeschooling (permanently, or for now, until the school can figure something out for him.
c) if you can find a private school that is willing to determine what his 'readiness to learn' level is and put him in a classroom with kids at a similar readiness level
d) apply to the Davidson Young Scholar's Program.
Best Wishes,
Grinity

Jamie: I want you to head on up to Md. to put your DS in class with mine! The school moved one other girl who's also very far ahead along with DS into the same classroom. They read with a third girl, but I haven't heard whether she's as far along as the other two. The girl who moved isn't at the same level mathematically, but I think it will work out okay given that he's probably only a year or so accelerated in math.

DS is happy, though he did say the other night that he had to WORK all day -- not enough outdoors time, Mom! I took that as a great sign!!! ;-)

I wish that I could do that My husband is actually from MD and all of his family still lives there.

That's funny that he said that he had to work all day

Well DS got kicked out of the Thanksgiving program on Friday. They said that he wouldn't stop touching the decorations on Monday and then today I guess he kept touching the hats of the other kids.

I got in touch with somebody from the board of education today and they gave me a list of things that I can try with the school to get a better fit. She said that I can request an IEP meeting at any time and that if I go that route instead of asking for a grade skip the school should respond. I might try that but I'll need to get some sample IEPs from you guys. I want to make sure that we get it right this time.

Hi and welcome! So at his current school they're going to move him up now? Maybe once they do that they'll see that he needs even more?

Oh, no, Jamie, that's awful!!!

Thanks to everyone for all of the support! I was just feeling kinda alone "in the real world" - it is nice to have a place of understanding.

We had him tested a bit before his 4th birthday and he tested as HG. The tester felt that he'd likely score higher with a little maturity. We plan to test again soon because the new test scores will be just a little extra ammunition for the school advocacy. He's participating in EPGY and is working at the 3rd grade level in both math and language arts, so yes, I'm pretty sure he'd be bored in K or even the once-a-week pull-out.



I am enjoying homeschooling but I'm a little worried that another year at home (with his pacing), will put him so far out of the school league that he'll never be able to go back. His internal drive coupled with the time at home is a pace that a school could never match. (Is it sad that I want him to go to school to slow him down??)

Yes, the 1st grade programs we are hoping for are full-time gifted programs with fairly high IQ requirements (HG & PG). I was hoping this would allow him to have some true peers.

Once again, thanks everyone! It was exactly what I needed to hear.


Sorry about your DS, Jamie! I hope the IEP route works out.

I'm so sorry, Jamie!



It is a real possibility that your child will outpace school to the point that it will be hard to get him to fit in. The question we had to answer for our DS when we realized this was happening was "Does that mean he is better served outside of a standard bricks-and-mortar school?"

The common wisdom around this forum tends to be that you can only make fairly short-term (6 months to a year) decisions for HG+ kids. Things change too fast to know what life will be like 5 years or even two years down the road. That's not to say that you shouldn't consider the ramifications of your actions, but to realize that considering ramifications and making decisions based solely on some fear of the future are two different things. You can't know what you don't know, so you might as well work with the here and now as much as possible.

Yes, your DS is probably getting ahead. Is that a bad thing? Is that perhaps just an indication that you've found a better solution for him?

I don't know the answers there. If you want to go back to work or something, then homeschooling may not be a workable long-term solution for you, and that's got to factor into the decision! But our main reasons for choosing to homeschool DS8 long-term were 1) to slow him down (by going deeper and wider instead of just/mostly faster through the standard curriculum) so we didn't have to choose multiple grade-skips which didn't seem like they would suit his style of working, and 2)because our first foray into homeschooling was so successful for him.

No pressure here. The full-time GT program sounds like it could a be a GREAT option. But I think that if homeschooling is working for you and your child, you might want to at least consider sticking with it and dumping the "How will he fit back into school?" thing entirely. FWIW, we gave up on that after about 6 months of homeschooling. We decided that if we can't find a school to fit him--instead of finding a way to fit him into a school--then he'll just keep homeschooling.

I talked to the school counselor that's been working with DS and I -- the one that said that she didn't see any behavioral problems and that he needed something more than he was getting -- She said that she's tried speaking to the gifted department and they said no way would they let a kid skip a grade. She said that she tried to get them to meet with her and the principal at his school to talk about DS and they wouldn't do it. She said that she feels like she's letting me down but she's hit nothing but dead ends.

She did say that she think the school is evaluating him (which they've been doing for a month, I guess) and that they might be able to come up with a plan to help me.

Homeschool here we come, I guess.