Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Sports and full grade accelloration

You are absolutely right at this moment we are not ready to accellorate. I would be open to it maybe in the future. I need more info. first. When and if we make a change I want to feel good about it.

I probally could of talked the school into moving him up 1 grade but I think it would of just felt like more work load instead of good work. This is what happened in his 4th Gr. Math. They made some adjustments in the Math which is a little better. I think feels a bit betrayed with this work still.

I feel like if he could stay with his class and they could make a few subject adjustments it might be good. I do see potential problems because he would like to blend in. After he is more socially confident and hopefully establishes stronger local freindships then move him up or somewhere else. He still wants to pretend and play.

Luckily at school everyone gets to play the same amount until several grades later when they have to try out. He is not the star player but he hangs with the upper part of the team. I am seeing him loving basketball this year. It feels like he is apart of this group and it's helping his freindships.

Thanks Kriston. This is complex. It helps to hear what others have to say to help me know things to consider.

If you are just asking about the sports, yes, it will make it harder for a boy to compete against older boys for a place on a school team based upon years of play and physical development (which might not matter in your son's case as you say he is a year older anyway). As someone else pointed out, it does not matter for outside of school competitive sports which are based on age, but school teams are based on grade level. If he is accelerated and has a hard time making school teams with older boys, you might be able to look at age-based sports outside of school, e.g., AAU basketball. http://www.aauboysbasketball.org/RulesInfo/AgeCalculator.aspx

We have had similar issues with my son. He is 12 now and skipped one year. He has just finished his first year of high school (Yr 7 here) and is the youngest in the school. He is in a pretty good academic fit and has been selected for most of the advanced classes on offer. However his passion is for sports and being the youngest has impacted on this.

He has still made quite a few school teams (6 in the last 2 years) and has done very well in them but he just missed out on being selected for the advanced sport class (they call it Elite sport and fitness - it is sport therefore it is ok to be elitist!). The main reason he didn't get in was that his test times were not quite as fast as some of the other boys even though some of them are a year to 18months older than him ( a lot of boys are held back around here). He is a late developer too which doesn't help. There can be a HUGE difference between a late developing 12 year old and a 14 yo that has already gone though puberty and their growth spurt.

The school aknowledged that he did extremely well considering his age but they couldn't take that into account as they have to select on results. They do that for all their accelerated classes which means that they are full of pushed high achievers - there are a lot of them in our area - and the underachieving gifted kids miss out - but that is another post altogether!

Apparently next year he is actually able to compete with his agemates in the year below for the big school sports competitions,(there wasn't a lower year this year), but he will always be with his classmates for sports teams and classes.

I do second guess myself at times and wonder if we did the right thing. He would be an outstanding sportman if he was one of the older kids instead of the youngest. He holds his own against the older kids and most of the time I think it is actually helping - giving him challenge and something to strive for instead of always being the best - same as academic acceleration I guess. It is just occasionally when he misses out on something that he would otherwise have probably achieved that it is difficult for him. On the whole I think he is better off where he is.

He does play local sport as well with his age group but even there he is one of the younger ones due to the cut off dates for age groupings. He has been in teams with kids that he went to kinder with who are now a year below him at school. Nobody has said anything to me about it - I don't think it is an issue for anyone.

Good luck with your decision - it is a tough one, we agonised for months before we decided and we still wonder what it is going to be like in years to come.

Cheers
Teri

My son is whole grade accelerated. He plays sports with his age group, not his grade level. Should he be a superstar athlete when he plays sports through school (i.e., middle & high school), then this is where his athletic ability will be the reason he's on the team.

My brother and I both played sports. As a freshman, I was on the Varsity squads with Juniors & Seniors. As a 10 year old, my brother played on the 12 & under league, not the 10 & under league. So I'm personally not worried about DS6.

I thought of this conversation when reading Mindset by Carol Dweck:

With a double grade skip, I played up, but wasn't nearly as talented athletically as academically. Personally, there was long term value in having to work hard just to be on the team.

Why not do both?

I played sports with my age peers and my older classmates. Sports are what kept me connected to both groups when we had little else in common.

When I was radically accelerated, I spent time in middle school with my age peers for sports only.

Soccer is easy to play with both groups and I did play on teams where I was 3 years younger than others. Football, track, and basketball had to be played with my age peers, although I played pick up football with my older classmates as well.

There is value to being with older kids. By playing sports with his older classmates, he will get some maturity lessons he would miss out on.

So, I'd say that if a team will take him and dad will work with him, and he is committed, then he has a place with older kids.

Edit: I read the rest of the posts on this. Its ok to get cut from varsity teams when a younger kid. That is not the card you are dealt. Let the other kids have their glory because yours is still decades ahead and it all rests on what is in your head.

Great post.

I think that is all we can do with these kids Dottie, there is never going to be a perfect situation for them. I asked my son who has inventive leanings to come up with a "what if" machine where you can enter all the parameters and come up with an answer. He hasn't quite managed it yet though, but if he does I am sure he will do a roaring trade!