Should Sarah skip first grade?

Parent Cafe
101

“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?”

That’s never happened, that I know of. Her dance classes were all-ages, though one happened to be all adults. So?Church groups have been for either kids through age 12 or 12+. She’s never been shut out from her friends. School EC’s are open to all grades.

“When they can get driver’s licenses and he can’t?”
So? Most kids she knows take the bus or train or ferry, or water taxi…

"When they can get part-time jobs and he can’t?
So? She doesn’t even have time to work during school. She’s volunteered FT every summer since she was 12.

“When they can drink alcohol and get admitted to clubs and he can’t?”
So? She has no interest in drinking or clubbing. She does have friends who party, who have invited her along, and she declines. She chose mostly to apply to schools that do not allow alcohol at all.

102

http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/research/grade_acceleration_wells_lohman_marron.pdf

here’s a quote.
"Students who are accelerated
tend to report more positive social and emotional feelings than
before acceleration (Kulik & Kulik, 1992; Rogers, 2002; Vialle
et al., 2001). For example, Vialle et al. found that students
reported high levels of satisfaction academically and emotionally
regarding acceleration, especially when they were included
in the design and execution of the curriculum plan. Gross (2003)
reported that profoundly gifted children (IQ 160 and above)
who were radically accelerated had more positive and healthier
levels of social self-esteem than their nonaccelerated counterparts.

I’m not saying anyone needs to accelerate their own kid. But, the research doesn’t support a doomsday view. And kids with learning and behavioral issues rarely “get better” just by being the oldest. Rather, you have a child with executive function issues (to use and above example) who is out of sync with peers by being the oldest in the class.

103

FWIW IMO - all the issues being discussed as reasons not to accelerate a student: physical size, socialization, athletic ability, maturity vary across students at all ages and across all grade levels whether they were accelerated or not.

I didn’t skip a grade, however as a very shy student who was academically advanced and a bit of a ‘nerd’ especially for a female of a few decades past, I never quite fit in with my peers socially. I was an only child and more comfortable with those who were older than me. It wasn’t until college that I really had a peer group that I felt like I belonged to and then and now as an adult many of my friends are a decade older than me.

Students mature at different rates physically and emotionally even within the same grade levels. I recall being teased in junior high gym class because my body wasn’t as developed as my peers and I was not among the youngest in my grade, it was just that genetically I hadn’t matured physically at the same pace as my classmates.

Some kids are larger, some are smaller… I have a co-worker whose son starts on the high school varsity football team as a freshman. Even if I’d held my son back he never had the size or speed to play sports like football or basketball competitively.

It took constant nagging to keep my son focused in high school, but I doubt waiting a single year would have made any difference because it often still takes constant nagging to make sure he stays focused in college.

There is always going to be the kid in their peer group that is the youngest…someone is always going to be the last to get their drivers license, the last to turn 21…(as this was usually my son, I will say somehow they always seem to survive).

While I appreciate the desire to make sure that kids fit in socially (especially since I never really did) and in fact said that if students are going to skip it should be done as early as possible so they can more easily transition to a new peer group, I would never have considered holding my son back academically because of it. He could form friendships through sports or activities or in the neighborhood with others who were older or younger if he felt out of place with his peers in classes. Although students move from other districts where they may start earlier or later and students get held back for academic or medical reasons often enough the students in a single grade are rarely if ever all born in the same calendar year.

In spite of petitioning to get my son into K a year before our state guidelines allowed, he was STILL bored enough in math that by junior high he was asking if he could have my old college calculus books to teach himself and we were not in or near any school that would offer him the enrichment he needed. While I could have chosen to hold him back another year and provide enrichment on my own, I think in the long run that would have made him feel MORE out of place with his peers.

104

I had to laugh at this statement because around here, that just isn’t happening. My older daughter (17, with a December birthday which places her right in the middle of her peers) was the FIRST kid in her friend group to get a permit and the FIRST kid to drive.

These kids do NOT want to get their licences. They want their parents to drive them everywhere. Instead of getting together, they GroupMe or Skype together. It’s so, so different than when we were growing up. I took my driver’s license test the day after a blizzard because I wanted it so badly. It was freedom!

I really pressured D17 to get her permit and license, and she drives into school now. We do have a rule that she’s never allowed to get into a boy’s car, ever, so that did help motivate her to get her own license. It was gaggingly expensive to get a parking permit on her high school campus, and we are required to keep comprehensive coverage on her car for her to be allowed to do so (also staggeringly expensive).

We suspect this is a HUGE reason why a lot of the kids aren’t driving-it costs too much to park on campus and insure a young driver, and they all can Skype. We’re going to cry when younger DD gets her license too-that’s going to suck in terms of how much it costs, but we feel it is a very tangible way to mature them because driving isn’t always fun, and if you don’t get good at it, can be lethal.

But that whole idea of driving too soon just doesn’t exist around here anymore.

105

In some ways minus the academically gifted part, she sounds like the cousin who is a few weeks older than me, but who ended up being placed a year behind me academically because California’s cutoff policies and then ended up being forced to take an involuntary gap year due to various issues at the end of HS which caused him to be two years behind me academically by start of his undergrad.

Maybe things are different now, but when I was growing up in NYC in the '80s…there was actually a strong stigma to being the oldest kid in a given class/grade…especially if one was a year or more older.

The common assumption among classmates and teachers was the older kid was left back at some point because he/she failed to meet the minimum academic and/or behavioral* requirements for promotion with his/her same/similar aged class. On the flipside, being the youngest in the class got one regarded a a bit of a prodigy by others IME and those of other classmates who were young for their grade.

This attitude continued in HS which was a key reason why a couple of HS buddies I had likely kept the fact they were born a year ahead of the “normal year” for my grade kept that fact well-hidden until it randomly came up in conversation several years afterwards***.

  • Ranging from being too immature for one's grade/school standards** to having bullying tendencies without arising to the level meriting being expelled or sent to "reform school".

** Mainly private/parochial schools in the NYC which had the power to leave students back a grade for behavioral reasons as well as academic ones and to expel wayward behaving students and weren’t hesitant about exercising it.

*** In one case, we were at a social event where there was a silly game where the leader of each team had to be the oldest. When determining that, I found two of my HS buddies had birth years which would have normally placed them in a class a year ahead of ours and one of them would have been the oldest in that prior class as he had a January birthday. And yes…the January dude ended up being the leader of our group much to his dismay as he and the other buddy were hoping I’d be the one to do it. Too bad I was ~2 years younger than the January dude. :slight_smile:

106

Parent who mentioned constant nagging needed even in college, isn’t that a recipe to push your kid away?

107

@WorryHurry411 It’s probably just a difference in what ‘constant’ means to you, me, and him.

I often only talk to my son once or twice a month, but if I mention his grades more than once or twice a semester he considers it ‘nagging’.

I consider it ensuring I’m getting a good ROI on all of the bills I’m paying for him…

FWIW he’s nearing 22 and he’s still talking to me.

108

Wasn’t an issue in my experience as all ECs in HS were opened to all ages. The ones who were selective did so on basis of skillsets and experience…not age(i.e. Math/Debate teams).

Growing up in NYC with public transportation and where owning/driving a car is a major expensive hassle…not a factor for the vast majority of us.

There may be a bit of a generational difference as nearly everyone in my old '80s era NYC neighborhood who could were working part-time from as early as 10 onwards. I had a part-time job after school and on weekends being the cashier/stockboy in a small store from late elementary school till the end of first semester of HS when I found commuting times and much steeper academic requirements meant I couldn’t continue.

I also attempted to work as a dishwasher at a neighborhood pizzeria at around 10 with two 11 year old classmates. They were kept on whereas I was gently fired by the boss for meaning well…but being so klutzy I broke too many dishes at the time.

Wasn’t an issue in many areas IME. Many clubs and even some bars were 18+ to enter and only 21+ to drink alcoholic beverages. And all of the latter accepted my college ID as proof I was 18+ even when I was still 17. Wasn’t big on drinking alcohol back in undergrad or associating much with folks who were and alcohol wasn’t really the vice of choice* on my undergrad campus.

  • Alcohol was widely considered by most college classmates during my undergrad years as the vice "for the establishment/conventional older folks from parents/older generations"....the complete opposite of "cool". Weed and psychedelics were the vices of choice at my undergrad....and I also had no interest in them.
109

When mine hit 21, they weren’t interested in 18+ clubs. In fact, they weren’t interested in them when they were 19. But really, when some you you have your own kids, you’ll see how phenomenally challenging it is to parent. To parent well, that is.

110

One thing my daughter had trouble with when she was in high school was R rated movies. You’d think it wasn’t a big deal, and I didn’t even know it was a problem, but she often couldn’t go to the movies with friends because she was 15 or 16 and needed to be 17. We were at a lacrosse tournament and they all wanted to go to some movie and she couldn’t because she didn’t have an ID.

Not a big deal, of course, but one of the many ‘little deals’ that add up. When she was in K she couldn’t go to girl scout camp because she wasn’t 6 yet (summer). She of course couldn’t drive when most of her friends could.

You can control what grade your child is in but not those of the school in general. My DD was 18 months younger than most in her elementary school grade (6 boys had started K late, so they all turned 6 and she was 4). Really, a good 1/2 of the class was more than a year older.

She does have an athletic scholarship and I do think she would have benefited by starting school a year later (with the birth group she should have been in). Was she ever bored in school? Sure. Was her sister ever bored, even though she was with the correct birth age group? Sure. Was I ever bored in school/work/life? Sure.

111

Lots of summer programs and job/internship things require you to be at least 14 or at least 16 by the first day of the program. Being younger than your classmates could potentially limit some of these opportunities. I’m just a teen though; this is just my observation. I’m not qualified to answer OP’s question.

112

Maybe it’s different elsewhere; in my area people have no problems with ignoring the age requirements…

I remember before I skipped a grade I was bored and miserable in school, and I felt out of place with the people around me. I was a trouble child and I went to the principal’s office on multiple occasions. After I skipped a grade, I was happier and socially more well rounded (and a bit of a teacher’s pet). It was definitely good for me - or it has been so far… Just my own experience.

113

@SeniorStruggling:
Your point about athletics is a valid one, for someone who wanted to play sports in college/get an atheletic scholarship, size will be a factor, and skipping would work against that, it is also why people are having kids start kindergarten late from what I hear in sports mad areas, so the kid will likely be bigger and stronger when they hit high school.

That said, we aren’t talking about skipping kids for the sake of ‘getting them out of school earlier’ (graduating HS earlier), this is about kids who are out there in learning, gifted or whatnot, who aren’t getting what they need in the classroom. If a kid is gifted in athletics and is also intellectually gifted, then it will come down to which is more important to the kid, if athletics is more their passion then the parents likely would not skip the kid, and settle with the academic side, if the lack of intellectual stimulation is more hurting the kid, then they might skip even if it hurts the athletic side of things. Also, given that with athletics, by the time you hit the end of middle school, participation in athletics declines dramatically and it becomes a model of the athletically gifted who are doing sports teams, it is likely that for many of the kids we are talking about, the athletics issue isn’t going to be a big deal. The analogy I would use comes from the world of sports, leaving a kid who is intellectually gifted in a classroom in their age level may be kind of like having a kid who is a dynamite baseball player, and instead of getting him/her coaching, getting them to play on travel teams/AAU teams, where they will be playing with peers, you instead insist they play on the local little league team, where everyone bats, has to play X innings, and where the level is not comparable, the kid is likely not to flourish. Skipping may be the only alternative for that kind of kid, though I personally think it shouldn’t be the first option.

114

@musicprnt I agree. That’s why I suggest getting the district to keep her in her grade but have her do work above her grade. In highschool especially she can take higher level classes and be a whole grade ahead so that she is only missing 1 credit after junior year to graduate. Then she can decide if she wants to spend another year in higshcool or graduate summer after junior year and go to college.

115

In a perfect world, skipping wouldn’t be needed, but the sad reality of most schools is that they are set up in the rigid model of old Horace Mann, the old school Prussian, whose goal was creating product for the Prussian state. As a result schools are kind of seen as producing a standardized product, where any deviation ruins the efficiency, and sadly kids who are gifted throw a monkey wrench in that. For example, it is kind of ridiculous to skip a kid who is extraordinary in math but relatively ‘normal’ in other areas, but in many school districts they haven’t figured out how to handle that (for example , schedule all the math classes at the same time, so if a 1st grader is ready for 4th grade math, they can do it, or a 6th grader taking algebra ). Montessori education is based around a kid progressing at their own rate if done the way it is supposed to be. For the most part, public schools are like the way the US auto industry used to produce cars, each assembly line produced only 1 model of car/truck (or related lines, so GM could produce a certain Buick and Olds because they used pretty much the same parts). What the schools should be able to do is what lean production firms do, they design the lines so they can make several product lines on the same assembly line, but the schools are still the sequential, blocked out structure old Horace worked out in the 19th century.

I personally think skipping should be a last resort, if there aren’t other alternatives, I do think there can be social and other issues with doing it (depending on the kid), but it can work, and it may be that the social issues are outweighed by having a kid stifled in an assembly line school with unsympathetic teachers and administrators, which I am sad to say is pretty much the norm.

116

@seniorstruggling:
The problem, sadly,is that many school districts won’t allow students that kind of flexibility, plus the problem is by high school the damage may already be done. The real problem is in middle and grade school, where there just isn’t the flexibility to allow kids to take more challenging work, and worse, the teachers and administration will tell parents that their kid will have to deal with all kinds of people in life, so it is a ‘good experience’ for them to have to deal with a mixed classroom (which is the biggest crock of BS ever to come out of teacher’s colleges and the like, it is basically an excuse to do nothing and claim that it is ‘better’ for the student). The problem is that in the lower schools, the kid can get tuned out, or will get into the habit of not doing things like studying because it all comes to easy, which will hurt them later (not to mention the kids who get bored, act out, and then some doofus of a school psychologist is claiming they have ADHD).

117

So let’s say the kid is having these problems in first grade, and the decision is made to have the kid skip second grade. The problems will be alleviated in third grade because the kid is scrambling to catch up; he may be stressed, but he certainly won’t be bored. But by fourth grade, the kid will be caught up, will still be in an assembly-line school, and will be bored again, with all the problems that creates. (I skipped a grade and after a year was bored again. I’m speaking from that experience.)

So all that has been achieved is a short-term benefit. But as we have seen from the situations described earlier in the thread, this benefit may be offset by long-term risks – risks of not fitting in socially or physically, of not being eligible for activities (whether they’re travel sports teams, internships, or R movies) that are strictly age-restricted, and of not being mature enough to do some of the things that classmates will do (such as going away to camp or college).

Does the benefit-risk balance really make sense?

Perhaps it does if there are long-term benefits from skipping. Can anyone speak to that issue?

118

@musicprnt I understand that. I would suggest homeschooling through an online provider like connections or another over the summer 7th and 8th grade to build up credits for highschool. They can’t force you to retake a class.

Smart kids typically do have add. I have add, I was never hyper but I never did homework or sudied because I could get a’s without trying. I never developed an attention span for studying and when I tried to learn in ap classes I failed miserably(at studying). It is strange because it is more of an environmental cause.

In 5th grade I made a bet with my teacher because she called me out for not paying attention in math. She told me I would fail the taks test and I told her I could get a 100. She wrote my name on the board and told me I could do things my way. She basically gave up on me and I told her I would get a 100 anyways.

2 months later of me not having to do all the stupid things she was teaching, I got a 100 in the test(state test).

She was so bitter she ruined my birthday, handed out my cake while I was at a dentist appointment…when I got back the cake was all gone and none of my friends had gotten any. I still won the bet though

119

I see lots of recommendations for homeschooling on this thread, and I think it’s a great idea for some.

But some families can’t homeschool because they can’t afford to have a parent give up full-time work to do it. In other cases, the parent may not be qualified to homeschool, particularly for advanced work. And the dynamics of some parent-child relationships are such that homeschooling would be a disaster.

120

“Smart kids typically do have add. I have add, I was never hyper but I never did homework or sudied because I could get a’s without trying. I never developed an attention span for studying and when I tried to learn in ap classes I failed miserably(at studying). It is strange because it is more of an environmental cause.”

That isn’t ADD, which is a real condition, what you are describing is what I and many others go through, and it is not ADD, it is not having to work, not being made to work, and when you hit the hard stuff, where studying is required, you don’t have a basis for doing it. That is very, very common with gifted kids, where things come naturally, and it is why schools fail them, because the schools see the kid got an A, and says “well, my work is done”. It is why sometimes it is much better not to be that gifted, because to achieve you have to work. There is a parallel to this in music, there are kids who are musically gifted, but in the end that means very little, and it often hurts them, because they can “Cheat”. I had an uncle who could play almost anything by ear, and when he was learning piano he never really learned to read music, because he would ask the teacher to play the music, and then he could play it back. When my son was first learning violin in suzuki, he could play the piece a couple of times, and play it well enough that the teacher didn’t realize he hadn’t really practiced…but in music, a lot of it is about the discipline to do the work, and when you get to the higher levels of music relying on ‘natural talent’ will fail miserably, as it does with higher level academics.

One of the things I am grateful for with the private school my son went to for grade school was they emphasized study skills, they forced the kids to do notes and checked their notebooks, they got them into the habit of doing the work, of studying. With my son, they also recognized where he was, and they gave him extra work, not the same old stupid worksheets which are busy work, but rather work that would challenge him and make him work.

Contrast this to the conversation we had with the supposed gifted coordinator of our local district, who when we pressed him, basically admitted they didn’t need to do much for the 'really bright kids", that they achieved great grades and blew out test scores without them having to do much work to achieve that with them…(tells you what Gifted coordinator meant, it meant giving a position that had extra pay to some long serving NEA hack)