skipping a grade in school

what do you think, guys? buncha brainiacs all up in this bitch (sorry, the juggalo thread on ilm has corrupted me forever). my kid rufus got admitted to a cool "progressive" day school here where we live (shit is exepensive, yo. but we will get some financial aid and some help from family). everyone says its the greatest. kids love it. very small and hands-on and all that. anyway, when they called us to say that he had "aced" his screening, they asked us how we felt about rufus going into the 2nd grade instead of first grade! i wasn't expecting that at all. but the person who did the screening apparently thought that he would do well with the group that will be in the 2nd grade class. anyway, i already knew he was a smartypants, he could friggin' read when he was two. and he's always had friends who were a year or two older. usually girls. adults, when talking to him, have been kinda stunned by him for years. both of maria's parents started college at 16. oh, also, he LOVES the idea. he's so excited. it's a no-brainer to him.

i'm just wondering about drawbacks if there are any.

some guy who comes into my store, he's a teacher at a private scool, when i told him about this said something like: oh, be careful! it can be tricky. especially for boys!

i have no idea what he meant.

it's a no pressure thing with the school. they say if he's unhappy or it's not working out he can simply join the first grade class. but i'm kind of worried about that! if that happens will he feel like he failed or something?

we're excited about the new school though! should be cool.

thoughts?

While I started out in kindergarten after about a week the school and the parents agreed to bump me up a grade level because they figured kindergarten would just be a waste of my time. (They were right.) The school actually wanted to bump me up to second grade but my parents figured that would be a little too much. (And they were probably right.) I adjusted pretty quickly and it was all good, and I always kinda enjoyed being a little younger than everyone else in my grade level, really.

And I turned out fine. Right?

*crickets*

Teacher referring specifically to boys - maybe dating? Girls from his class that he interacts with most often won't want to date the boy a year younger? Getting picked on because he's smaller? One of my best friends in school skipped a grade and was a little young for the grade he would have been in to boot, that didn't bother girls at all.

I can't foresee socialization being a problem if it's only one year and he's a healthy size - outside of elementary school (when no one would notice), I don't remember being confined to my grade (and age) in social interaction anyway.

well it's because young boys are slightly behind young girls in maturity typically but that's just one factor. i don't have any kids or anything but i remember my brother was going through this in a public school. they wouldn't let him skip a grade and he was so frustrated and angry, like, violent, because he couldn't understand why they had to trace letters in school when he could already read, counting when he could already add and subtract, etc. i think it would be good to try it out if he's ready. going back if it doesn't work out shouldn't feel like failure if it's not presented that way, just different.

I started school really early and skipped part of a grade due when switching schools. As a result I was always the youngest in my class but I don't really think it posed much of a problem for me. I think Harbl's suggestion is a good one.

i skipped 2nd grade, and it was kind of a rough transition for me, since i had to fit in with a whole new peer group (at my elementary school, you stayed with the same class for 1st/2nd grade) and kind of felt like an outsider. i was going to get picked on no matter what, given that i was nerdy and fat, but it probably didn't help that i remember some kids having a chip on their shoulder about why i got to skip a grade and they didn't. it also kind of sucked being the last person to get my license, turn 21, etc.

however, i think it won't be so bad if your son is starting off in a different grade, rather than skipping a grade once he has already established relationships with a particular group of kids. me, i wish i had just stayed in my correct grade level, but i'm sure there were/are pro's that i haven't considered.

Yes, I think the fact that he'd be skipping a grade while switching schools like I did is a big plus here.

yeah, i think that's a good thing too. when we moved he had to leave his friends and a school he liked on the vineyard and start fresh at the public school here with 3 months of the school year left. i was worried about how he would adjust. i think he did remarkably well. he didn't miss a beat. and he's really excited about this new school. he's insane for the whole learning thing.

There are kids who do this and it works out great, kids who do it and regret it, kids who don't do it and it works out great (that was me), kids who don't do it and regret it. You can't really predict how it'll work out, so given that Rufus already has a strong opinion in favor I think you should do it.

"And I turned out fine. Right?"

rufus loves to collect and catalog things. i definitely see library science in his future :)

my advice skip the whole school thing and put him straight into a gang

I think some of the issues w/boys, besides physical maturity is emotional maturity, but I'd guess it would be more an issue of kids acting out/being disruptive. My dad was skipped a grade (went straight into first, skipping kindergarten), and I don't think he had many problems. He was quiet and small for his grade, but didn't get picked on, probably because he got along with other kids and was good at sports.

get ivy league schools to start a bidding war over him

i skipped a grade in similar situation my parents put me in a "progressive" school and they skipped me out of second grade ~~~ i think it can cause problems physically and socially but if your kid is starting a new school it probably wont be a big deal unless maybe hes really small for his age? cuz no1 likes to be on some picked last for dodgeball thing

the worst/most difficult thing about skipping a grade is that i started college pretty young and might have got more out of it was a little older

what ned said mostly applies to my experience as well, though i did get some teasing/bullying for being the youngest kid in the grade. nothing particularly extreme though

here's the school, by the way. "ethical education"! i dig that. i dunno, i just try and hide my fear and loathing of school from my kids. (don't ask. i've blocked most of it out by now anyway. and the kids seem to take after maria more, thank god. they have natural exuberance and curiousity. not like me as a kid. morbid. aloof. possible sociopath.)

http://www.centerschool.net/index.html

Didn't skip a grade as such, but started education in England (where you start school aged 4) and later moved to Scotland (where you start school age 5) and was given the choice to repeat my primary 4 year, which I/my parents declined. No real educational problems, though I was a bit smaller than all the other boys for a while and, when it came to pubs/girls/uni, I was at first a little, uh, retarded. Minor issues, these, though.

Moving school at the same time is probably a good way to do this. I was put up a year in primary school due to spoddy brainiac qualities by the school's new headmaster who was all about the individual, and decided to make me the poster child for his brilliant reforms. I was in primary six in the morning, then we went out for lunch, and in the afternoon I was in primary seven. Way to make me feel fucking weirded out by an already weird thing, dude.

This resulted in my starting my secondary education at ten (had already started primary school aged four so was pretty young for my year anyway), with no-one telling the secondary school about this revolutionary idea, hence at least three occasions of being picked on BY TEACHERS for supposedly thinking I was cleverer than anyone else just because I was younger than everyone else and still top of my class (note: NONE of this was my idea). Basically this came out in a French class where I had to ask what the word for "ten" was when we were doing the "bonjour, je m'appelle ailsa, je suis dix ans" thing. Teacher "you can't be ten, what are you doing here if you're ten? think you're too smart for primary school, do you?" Presumably went back to staffroom for a "fuck's sake, you'll never guess what I've got in my class" moan, and that was my secondary schooling effectively over.

Obviously I rebelled by doing fuck all work and making myself stupid to be popular, which had the double-whammy of making me a still-not-popular underachiever, rather than a still-not-popular hardworking kid with a fighting chance of doing well once education was over.

None of this is going to happen to Rufus, obviously, because the school sounds prepared to anticipate and deal with any possible consequences rather than just going "hey, I've got a plan!"

yeah I've never heard of it happening in Scotland, even though I too was a lol spoddy brainiac, to the extent that my Primary 6 teacher started giving me extra secondary school homework just for fun. In fact I think being aware of it existing (thanx American TV) made me a little ashamed that I was stuck with all these people roughly my age. But hey I started school aged four and a half and so was always the youngest anyway, so I got over it eventually.

Generally bringing this up in conversation makes me think I was the only person in Scotland this ever happened to. Perhaps I blazed a trail that was too revolutionary (or crap) for anyone to follow.

What did hilariously happen at the end of all this was that I left school with some not-especially-good Highers, and my teacher refused to sign my UCCA form for university entry unless I applied for deferred entry because he thought I was too immature to go straight into further education. So basically it screwed over my entire teenage years, and then I just ended up back with my own age group anyway. Yo, Scottish education system = brilliant.

I was bumped up a year when I started school because I could already read and was already friends with some kids in the year above, but when I changed school after the fourth year the new school refused to let me straight into the fifth year and I joined the fourth year there too - glad I did, as even in fourth year the new school was way ahead of any maths or English we'd been taught in my first school, and was expecting kids to start joined-up writing, whereas in the old school it was pretty much a bonus if you could write in an approximately straight line and use some punctuation occasionally.

I think I'm glad I was ahead a year, but I'm also glad that fate provided a way to get back into my year group without it being a failure on my part, and without redoing any material that felt too babyish for me.

(Definitely glad I was back to my age group by secondary school. The work was never a problem, but I remember a few incidents at that first school which in retrospect could be chalked up to me being a little more childish than my peers. All minor, though, and of course I'm sure these things happen when you're a kid no matter what.)

Don't do it. It's hard enough being the smartest kid in a class, without also being the youngest (and the smallest and least emotionally/physically developped.)

If a kid is bright, they're going to be bored in school anyway, so it doesn't matter if you go up a grade or even two. Being completely lost and out of your depth socially is way worse than being bored in class.

I did it - oh, with the added complication of changing not just schools, but moving continents. Really really wish that I hadn't.

Oh - strangely I was never bullied at the first school even though a) I was a fuckin' weird-looking kid, ginger and small even for my age, plus added tininess from being a year younger, BUT I was a girl, and already knew some of the boys in the class, who stuck up for me when other kids were mean. Without that it might not have been such a good idea.

(How small I was: we had a separate little playground for years 1+2, and when I was in year 4 and wandering round the big playground for years 3-6, a visiting schools inspector told me that it was wrong that I was there and escorted me to the little kids' playground)

It wasn't even really the physical stuff - I was always big for my age.

But the social stuff was just so totally and completely isolating. I think this would be worse for a boy, as they tend to develop slower, especially emotionally.

I skipped 8th grade. High school was still high school. Still graduated 1st in class. If the option is there, and you hold your kid back, you hold him back a year for the rest of his life, and he'll still get picked on by someone. Teach your kid how to handle the drawbacks (if there are any), not how to avoid complications.