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<p>LOL!!!</p>
<p>I’m sorry COllegeMom. I can’t imagne this is real. THe OP could write for The Onion or Scrappleface. If it is real, I’m calling DYFS.</p>
<p>JHS: My husband & I watched many youth soccer games where our ADD son seemed to be in another world. I’d always turn to him & say, “Well, at least he’s the best LOOKING kid on the team…”</p>
<p>“Let’s proceed without accusations of “■■■■■”, thanks.” Uh, no thanks.</p>
<p>OP-never hold back a child! You need to get into the gifted and talented websites ( Davidson Institute, area talent search- eg Johns Hopkins or Midwest thru Northwestern), read up on GT education; do not obsess about college. Get a copy of Karen Rogers “Reforming Gifted Education”. Your job is to nurture the child, LETTING him proceed at his pace. My son will be 17 this month and is a happy college freshman. By middle school you will know which courses are best for him, and by then he’ll be telling you what he wants. Also do not obsess about Ivy league schools, they may not be the best choice for your son when the time comes. The worst thing you can do is to try to control your son’s life, it will backfire when your sweet 7 yr old becomes a terrible teen. His grades could actually be worse if you force him to go at a slow pace and he is bored.</p>
<p>Carla, you didn’t describe your child’s preschool experience. Depending on what he has done to date, it may be too late to consider the Ivy League. It is well established that attendance at the “right” preschool is the fastlane ticket to Harvard.</p>
<p>It might be great for him to splash in a puddle…make mud pies…go out and play with his friends… If he is a gifted child, it’s important to let him have lots of non-academic opportunities, too. He might like painting, playing an instrument, sports, theater…any of a number of things that will enrich him and expose him to other parts of life. If you are serious about Ivy’s…???..this will help round him out. If not, it can’t hurt! LOL!</p>
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<p>If that’s the case, why wait? He’s probably too late for this year’s class, but should be a shoo-in for next year. Does the name “Doogie Houser” ring a bell?</p>
<p>Audiophile, that’s the quote I liked too.</p>
<p>I think the post is for real. I think the child has plenty of time to make up his own mind, and should, when the time comes. </p>
<p>The reply by wis75 mentions some helpful resources. Looking at the [Davidson</a> Young Scholar](<a href=“http://www.ditdservices.org/Articles.aspx?ArticleID=147&NavID=0_0]Davidson”>http://www.ditdservices.org/Articles.aspx?ArticleID=147&NavID=0_0) program would definitely be in order. </p>
<p>The question is whether acceleration will increase the chance of Ivy admission, and I think the general answer to that question is no. Ivy applicants have to be ready socially and emotionally for Ivy attendance as well as intellectually, and becoming ready is not the work of a moment. Some young people are ready for Harvard at age sixteen, but many do better by waiting until eighteen. </p>
<p>For a good discussion of early college entrance at an elite college, see the blog post "[Doogie</a> Howser, et al.](<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/homeschooled_applicants_helpful_tips/doogie_howser_et_al.shtml]Doogie">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/homeschooled_applicants_helpful_tips/doogie_howser_et_al.shtml)" by MIT admissions officer Matt McGann, who himself entered MIT a year early.</p>
<p>Carla - </p>
<p>I think the primary goal of placement at your son’s young age should be to make sure he is feels comfortable and successful both academically and socially. College worries will come soon enough I promise! 
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<p>I understand your concerns though. My son was also a December baby. He was diagnosed as being both highly gifted and as being on the high end of the autism spectrum. He was never given a specific diagnosis other than communication disorder, but I would say he primarily has a semantic-pragmatic issues. Because he was socially immature, we opted to place him in a bridge program between pre-K and K, so he started kindergarten as a 6 year old. After first grade, it seemed we had made a mistake. He was reading chapter books and doing 4th and 5th grade math. (The reading was self-taught; my husband, the fiend, encouraged the math business.) The district suggested we have him tested to skip 2nd grade and get him back with his age group. Seemed like a good idea…thought if we had scores in hand, maybe they’d look at some of his skills and perhaps create special lesson plans that allowed him to work on the upper level stuff where necessary. Also thought that we’d have the option to look at how he well he did on the tests and then make the decision as to whether or not he should jump a grade. </p>
<p>Test day comes, I drop him off. Many, many kids are there and I’m truly surprised! Most were just trying to skip grades to graduate early. The kids were instructed the test would take all morning and then they would have a lunch break followed by parent pickup. Less than an hour later, the test administrators called me to pick my son up. I thought to myself he must have been unwilling to sit still and finish the test and ‘oh well…easy decision now’. When I walked into the office at about 10:15 a.m., there was my son sitting in a chair, swinging his legs and munching his sandwich. He wasn’t hungry, but the teachers told me he insisted that the instructions were to take the test and then eat lunch and that was what he intended to do. That’s how it is with kids with semantic-pragmatic disorder.</p>
<p>Scores come in, his are nearly perfect and we are notified by the district, he will be placed in third grade. Ooops! We were new to the district and did not read the fine print obviously. We didn’t realize if he passed the test, advancement was automatic. Major error. He has struggled…not academically, but socially. He is now in 8th grade and is finally finding his way, but it’s been hard. Everything is easy for him academically, he’ll start h.s. with at least 7 high school classes completed. But he is small, and naive…and still doesn’t get the jokes. And this does cause some isolation. We work hard to overcome that by involving him in band, music, golf, etc… And he has a little gang of friends now. But social skills will never be easy for him.</p>
<p>So the lesson we learned is that the most important thing is that your child feel comfortable and like they belong. The rest of the details, including academic success, will fall into place.</p>
<p>First you need to learn how to spell “League”.</p>
<p>Wow, this is depressing . . . after reading how merit aid was increasing over the last several years, do you all think this is a trend in the opposite direction? Because need-based aid at most of the universities whose sites I’ve looked at seems so unrealistic for many families, such as, for instance, mine.</p>
<p>Sorry, posted in the wrong thread. Been that kind of a day.</p>
<p>i’m a bit confused. isn’t your child the right age for his grade? I turned 8 in June after 3rd grade.</p>
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<p>For public schools, it depends on the state (and sometimes on the district within the state, because some states leave it up to local option to determine the cutoff birthdate for kindergarten or first grade entry.) </p>
<p>In public schools in most states across the country, the child is supposed to turn 5 by September of the year in which he enters kindergarten, so the OP’s son would be young relative to that cutoff in most public schools across the country. But some have later deadlines. Hawaii’s requires only that the child turn 5 by December 31.</p>
<p>For sure, if you turned 8 after third grade, you would be considered accelerated compared to the cutoff in every state.</p>
<p><a href=“http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=32[/url]”>http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=32</a></p>
<p>As far as the OP’s question, I agree that it’s silly to let issues of college admission down the road dictate elementary school grade placement decisions.</p>
<p>At this point, if he’s happy and thriving in school and has friends in his grade, I think it would be a total travesty to hold him back.</p>
<p>EDIT: It should be noted that there is an increasing trend to move the cutoff birthday dates for entry earlier in the year. Perhaps this is due to NCLB, since requiring that children enter at slightly older ages may improve the cosmetics of reported standardized test scores for kids in a given grade.</p>
<p>Even in the few places that theoretically permit kids with fall birthday to enter kindergarten before they turn 5, school officials are increasingly encouraging parents to hold their kids back. Again, I think the motivation is partly NCLB. The increasingly availability of public pre-K programs may be another reason.</p>
<p>All of this means that a kid turning 8 in December is likely to be significantly younger than most third grade classmates. But if he’s adapted well so far, moving at this point sounds like a terrible idea.</p>
<p>Heartless. You people are just heartless. I’m truly sorry I was gone to the courthouse all day making the world safe for Hooter’s waitresses. (Hey. It’s a living. And I get 10% off my next bucket of cheese-wings!) I may could have stopped some of this. </p>
<p>This parent comes to us in a time of great need and she is met by Ridicule and Derision. Scorn and Contempt. She has been driven from our town square and branded a ■■■■■. Clearly someone needs to extend a helping hand, a concerned hand, a non-judgmental hand to our sister in need. I for one am willing to search for her under the bridges in my neighborhood. Will anybody else lend a hand?</p>
<p>Just gotta be a joke. Just gotta be. And if by some one in a million chance I’m wrong - I apologize for not believing you and my heartfelt advice is to consider immediate counseling with a professional. Tonight. For the whole family.</p>
<p>I love the way you write, Cur!</p>
<p>My suggestion … along the lines of 'it worked for me" is to keep that extra year in your hip pocket. Do the best you can for your child right now. When you get to high school, and he’s young for his grade, you have the option of switching to the elite private school and doing a repeat freshman or sophomore year. Make sure to pick a school that offers lots of great courses including APs. Or … if you hang tough with the public school, but think your boy isn’t quite ready for prime time as a senior, you can always look into the Post Grad year at a boarding school, making sure that the PG year will be beneficial in terms of academics. It’s possible to apply to both PG years and colleges at the same time and make your decision in April.</p>
<p>LOL, curmudgeon. I keep checking in to see if Carla crawls out from under the bridge and shouts “Fooled Ya!”</p>
<p>Re: Hooters. Do you really represent Hooters waitresses? Because, if you do…purely hypothetical of course…let’s just say a 48 year old mom from NJ (who nursed her kids by the way) and who now suffers from varicose veins…again hypothetical…decides to apply for a Hooters girl job and for some inexplicable reason, is turned down…just wondering…could you represent her and how much free money would she be able to rake in?</p>
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Carl Sagan numbers. Billions and billions. ;)</p>