Depends on the club/area. Most of the clubs and even some bars in some areas permitted 18+ to come in to dance/hang out. The 21+ requirement is only if one wants to order an alcoholic drink.
Even with the 18+ entry rules being an issue for 17 or under college students, many clubs IME will accept college ID as proof one’s 18+ so YMMV on whether it’s a big deal or not.
Wait? You mean we might have to get to know each individual case separately? But how are we supposed to make loud pronouncements about how other parents are making bad choices? It’s like you’re ruining our entire reason for existence!
ETA: , in case it wasn’t obvious enough.
You got me, cobrat. Parents should consider what particular clubs their kids might want to frequent before deciding on whether to skip first grade.
Even though S1 skipped a grade in elementary school, we still opted to send him to a private school for gifted kids by the time he was in 7th grade. Our public middle school wouldn’t let him advance in math. It was unbelievable when they couldn’t even recognize why this formerly well-behaved student was now disruptive in math class. I’m not sure what we would’ve done had we not had the resources to send him to private school.
The toxic 3rd grade teacher told me I’d have to quit my job by the time S1 was in 10th grade if she gave him 4th grade math because I’d have to drive him to the flagship. (Nope. The HS offered multivariable calc that year.) We heard the driving, driving and prom tropes, too. S1 was never into any of that – and still doesn’t drink or drive.
Most of my friends graduated a year ahead of me in school – but were only a couple of months older.
Know thy kid, know thy school system, and don’t count on CC aunties to make a decision for your family.
As for friends and age, I have always tended to have more friends older and younger than me…sometimes much older from childhood onwards and never felt there was a problem.
And even having older friends didn’t necessarily mean I would be treated as the “youngest” or the “baby” of the group as some older friends have needed/preferred to treat me as the “older brother” in the group because they needed advice/help or simply because they felt less inclined to “take charge” of planning/leading group activities and deferred to me in those instances. As a result, many random folks who interacted with us assumed I was the older/more mature person in a group where I was actually the youngest because it was apparent I was the one “in charge”.
Dating wasn’t a big issue as the HS I attended was one where the vast majority prioritized academics well-above dating or social activities of that sort.
I personally always felt it was odd people felt it was necessary or fine to limit one’s social circle solely to those of similar age groups or interests in childhood and in some cases…in life. IMO…that’s too restrictive socially and socializing outside of one’s age groups or interests makes one’s life and social activities much more interesting and fun. If my parents* had the idea I needed to stick to kids/people my own age or similar aged groups as a kid/teen…my mind would be screaming “Boring!”
Actually, this isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds.
When deciding whether a kid should skip first grade, parents do need to think about the long-term ramifications. How will the child feel about being younger than his classmates in later elementary school? middle school? college?
How will the child feel when he’s not eligible for some of the extracurricular activities his friends are involved in because he doesn’t meet the age cutoff? When they can get driver’s licenses and he can’t? When they can get part-time jobs and he can’t? When they can drink alcohol and get admitted to clubs and he can’t?
Of course, you can’t answer these questions when you only know the child as a first grader. But they may arise later if you decide that the first grader should skip a grade.
The teen years where children begin to develop can be difficult for the child who skipped a grade when same-grade peers are beginning to develop in the middle school and high school years. Girls begin to look like women, boys look like men, and the younger ones often stand out emotionally and socially as well as physically. The physical differences can make school sports participation more difficult when same grade peers have gone through a growth spurt and the child who skipped a grade has not. And travel sports are typically arranged by age, so a child who skipped a grade would have no (few) travel teammates in the same grade as he/she. Then there’s the fact that all the peers will be driving a full year ahead of the child who skipped a grade.
"Some gifted kids have problems with early testing like kindergarten readiness. My daughter was marked deficient in color knowledge because she told the teacher that bananas are white. Later she said indignantly that if they wanted to know the color of the banana skin they should have been more specific.
@KKmama - Your daughter will go far in life!"
She’s just accepted a new job. Her contract has a clause giving her permission to take a leave of absence should she ever be selected to take part in the television show, Survivor.
This is a young woman with spunk. She never skipped a grade because she was already the youngest in her class.
Think long and hard about this. I would only do it if outside sources (teachers, counselors, etc.) agree that she is uniformly one year ahead of her peers in every single area, including social and emotional maturity. Not many kids meet this standard, no matter how gifted they are.
In our experience, these things are usually initiated by the teacher, not the student or parent. Our daughter’s K teacher made a similar recommendation (but even she wasn’t sure about the emotional aspects). We moved to another state mid-year, and it was very clear that keeping her with her grade level was the right thing to do. It is possible to accommodate the academic needs of gifted children, but their emotional and social development is every bit as important.
My younger child was definitely gifted but it was never suggested that he be skipped. Probably being a boy and not a particularly mature one played into that. It was fine with me. The school was able to accommodate him academically.
I find it interesting that folks hold perfectly able children out a year with very little of this hand wringing “He will be driving too soon!” that we hear about the social and emotional life of children who are skipped ahead. I totally agree that this is a very individual decision. And there can be points in a child/teen’s development when they hit a bump and it’s easy to blame that on the decision to skip a grade. But ALL kids hit bumps. There is no magic to being in the same 12 month span of age as your classmates. (And since so many kids are held out to give them some kind of “advantage” it’s already more than 24 months in most classes.) There are not many other activities in life that are so age regimented. We looked for sports where kids train by expertise rather than age. We engaged musical/theater activities that were the same. I don’t believe that there is a body of research that shows that skipping a grade is as risky as many here seem to believe. And being in some kind of uniform lock step emotional/social development with age mate is not something we ever valued.
My favorite years in school were the ones when I was in a one room school house. I played with kids of all ages, just like you do in a family. The school years are the only time we are artificially regimented by year - it certainly isn’t the way we were evolved to be.
There’s hand wringing about that, too. Just not in this thread.
I gave my advice, and don’t listen to the parents talking about size difference adn stuff and how genetics are more of a factor than age.
I am 5’9" 137 pounds as a senior, healthy size and very in shape. 8th grade I was 100 and 5’2", i grew 5 inches and was 115 freshman year, I continued to grow and I peaked at 125 natural body weight junior year end. I would be left in the dust in the social group and I am an athlete…BEing small as an athlete is really tough. I am now doing weight training and will be projected to be a 150 pound freshman at same height.
Think about this, do you want your kid to have a disadvantage in sports? They may not get a college scholarship but if they choose to pursue that path or even to a high ranked d3 team… well you want them to be as old as possible. I know i wouldn’t have been able to survive college having just turned 18, I do know that I will be ready as a 19 year old.
Like I said, maybe do higschool courses and keep them in their grade with a required english. They can’t graduate her at 17 if she has everything except an english credit. Then if she chooses to go to college early she can, but that wouldn’t be forced upon her. If she wanted she could take extra aps that senior year as electives to max out her resume?
Despite being among the youngest and smallest kids in my grade and subsequent two grades for most of my K-12 years, I didn’t stay that way. Before the end of sophomore year in HS, I was ~5’2"…by the time I started junior year in September I was 5’7" and dwarfed most classmates including some older classmates who were a year or two older for our grade. By freshman year of college at 17, I reached my present height…a smidgen under 6’ which turned out to be the perfect height for me*. Weight from that point on fluctuated between 120 and 160. 
As for athletics…while I never was athletically inclined…I had no issues playing rough sports with my much more larger athletic relatives and their friends. Before my growth spurt, an older 6’2" cousin who was well-built and outweighed me by almost 200 pounds tried to push me around physically and ended up getting knocked flat on his back by yours truly for his trouble.
Later on when I was playing a friendly soccer match which got a bit rough in the excitement, it was my older larger more athletic cousin who ended up on the ground when we ran right into each other at full speed while scrambling for the ball. I was still standing not realizing what happened as I felt nothing and was wondering where he went until I heard his voice coming from the ground.
** Even at my more mainstream height, I sometimes still have issues bumping some ceiling fixtures in some of the smaller subway cars if I forget I need to duck to avoid them.
I have a kid with an August 18 birthday. This makes her consistently the youngest kid in her class. (cutoff is Sept 1 here)
She also scored a 1700 on the Lexile by the time she was 11. She probably would have pegged this needle earlier but she figured out by 3rd grade that if she answered the questions correctly they’d only let her read “boring” books.
I wish I had not let her be the youngest in her grade. If I could have gone back and done it again I’d let her be the older one. Her social ability is fantastic, but the self discipline and executive function skills are typical, so you’ve got this super smart, socially facile kid that just doesn’t want to make long term plans and would rather go run around outside than do her homework.
No, there are no learning disabilities; we had her checked when she kept getting B’s in everything. That’s just who she is.
Size-eh. I’m 5’9", hubby is 6’4". She was teeny until 6 months ago when she suddenly shot up to 5’8" at 15. You can’t predict how kids will grow. If she’d been a freshman right now instead of sophomore, she still would have fit in fine. She’s still getting used to the idea that she’s tall.
So, yeah, I would never skip a grade with a kid knowing what I know now, no matter how smart they are. Just because one part of them is super bright doesn’t mean all the parts are-and in my opinion, it’s better to have the academic part be extra super ahead than the self-discipline/plan ahead part be constantly scrambling.
My MIL tells me I’d have an entirely different set of problems if I’d started her later, and she’s probably right. However, I think I would trade the “being bored in school” issues (because we are good at enriching outside of the classroom) for the “this requires too much focus for how old I am” stuff, which is really not fixable without time and practice (which is what we’re doing).
@cobrat No disrespect here, but it really is tough being a small athlete. I compete nationally in my sport and had d1 offers and turned them down as they weren’t great schools. If I had been a freshman this year, I would have been redshirted to the gym and not been able to compete.
As a freshman I was put on varsity as a starter and got first team all district honors. 1 year earlier I would have been benched or jv.
No. Sarah may be smart but in long term it’s better socially, academically, psychologically to stay with your own age group. In Texas, people actually do red shirting to give their kids an edge in athletics and leadership roles.
@MotherOfDragons I moved to texas and i have an august birthday. I had perfect scores and regularly placed in the top percentile for the country on benchmarks. My mom had me held back in kinder because “i was still learning english” best decision she ever made. I can see how it is rough
and @WorryHurry411 I am texan, I can vouch…my grade has december born 19 year olds. Huge difference between 17 & 20 in college as a freshman.