Looking for experiences with kids skipping a year in school

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

They decided to start considering having our son skip 2nd grade. He’s already been going to 2nd grade for math most of the year, and they started testing him in reading again and he passed the 4th grade reading just fine.

We’re mostly concerned about how he’ll fit in. He’s taller than everyone else in his grade so he’ll look normal, but will there be a stigma that follows him? Will teachers expect more from him? Will he think of himself differently?

This is an area I don’t know much about.

Anyone here skip a year in grade school, and how did it affect you?

Anyone have a kid that skipped a year? Was it a good thing, or bad?

We know why it’s being presented as on option (and agree), we just don’t know what kind of long-term results there could be.

2

Not grade school, but I skipped kindergarten. I don’t know if I’d do it with my kid or not. On the one hand, I’d have been incredibly bored at grade level (and was often bored anyway). On the other, I was pretty socially immature and always felt that way, all the way through high school.

Little stuff pops up in high school and college, not that it’s a HUGE deal, too - you can’t drive when all your friends can, you can’t get into bars and shows when your friends can, etc.

3

The most important thing is not his academic skills—it’s his social skills.
You’ve already measured his math and reading; Right now, he is above average.
But the most important thing to measure is his maturity: Right now, is he above average?
I’d ignore the academic praise based on test scores; he’ll always be able to get good grades.
But good grades are pretty useless in life if you don’t have good social skills and self-confidence.

Does he play well with kids older than himself? Do older kids treat him as an equal, and invite him to join them? Or do they reluctantly let him hang around , and barely tolerate him ?

Make your decision based on what is best for his social success, not his academic success.

4

My advice? Don’t.

My mother was a teacher, so I was very advanced academically, so I skipped kindergarten. From that point on:

  1. I was always smallest in my class.
  2. I was always less coordinated.
  3. All of my friends were usually of my age group, so they were an academic year behind me.
  4. Socially, I was always behind on the changes that my current school class were in- developmental changes make the things you talk about and discuss vary rapidly from one year to another. I always ended up with the younger folks.
  5. It always, basically, keeps you on the outs with your current class, and on the outs with your age group.

This didn’t level out until college years, when you’re all thrown together.

5

What’s his birthday and what’s the cutoff date in the school? If he’s close enough in age to the kids in the next grade then you have less to worry about. Does he have friends in his current grade that he won’t see any more? Is he socially and emotionally mature enough for older kids? Will he be able to handle the academic competition once he’s not the smartest kid in the class?

And of all the dumb things schools do, and there are a lot of them, the grade based system is probably at the top of the list.

6

I skipped my senior year, took senior English in Summer school and graduated a year early. I think it was a bad idea in the long run. I didn’t have all of the classes I really needed for college specifically chemistry and mathematics beyond Algebra I. I think that I would have been more successful if I had been A) older and 2) had a better foundation for college.
I actually started college when I was 16 years old (turned 17 right after) so being on my own was not a good experience although my parents and high school teachers all had said I was an unusually level headed teenager. I think I was just not mature enough to have no structure.
YMMV

7

I skipped, not kindergarten, but nursery school (I could tie my shoes and read primers and I was annoying my teachers by reading during nap time). Not a problem until puberty, when I was still a soprano while other boys were basses or tenors.

I didn’t have the slightest problem with learning even though most classmates were a year older, and I doubt if any knew the age difference. In fact, I found most classes boring and too easy except the honors ones.

I’m not sure I’d advise it if I had to live it over. I think TriPolar’s advice in post #5 is good.

8

I’d echo the “don’t”. I was skipped ahead in Kindergarten and like others, was always behind socially, even though academically I could have skipped ahead again. (They actually tried it and I pitched a fit, so it didn’t go through. It wasn’t that I knew this would be a bad idea, mind you, just that I missed my friends.). I will also add, like others, that the social issues did not even out until I was in college, and it took a few years there too.

Suggestions that make more sense, IMHO: see if there’s a gifted program your son can participate in. Investigate charter schools that may have more challenging curricula, but will leave him with his age group. Private schools often have scholarship programs, so that’s worth checking too.

Unless he’s seriously ahead socially I would NOT move him. He’ll miss out on a lot of kid stuff, and there are risks for feeling depressed, anxious and out of place for years.

9

I was advanced - we didn’t call it skipping a grade. I did three years of work over two years: grades 4-5-6 in two years. I got advanced twice: part-way through grade 4, I got moved to grade 5 with the kids a year older. The next year I started out in Grade 5 with the kids my own age, then got advanced again to grade 6, this time permanently with the kids a year older.

Apparently they were considering advancing me when I was in Grade 2 but my parents and teachers thought that I was too young.

Academically, it worked out fine for me. I liked school and I liked learning. I think I would have got bored if I’d not been advanced. I’ve got four university degrees and have taught at university, so it’s a consistent life trajectory.

Socially? I don’t think it made much difference. I’ve never been athletic, which was the big dividing line in my school and I don’t think being advanced made a bit of difference; I was an outlier on the playing fields before, during and after being advanced.

Long term? Wasn’t a big deal that I got my driver’s licence a year later, or couldn’t drink my first two years at university instead of just one.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

10

I think he gets along OK with older kids, two of his best friends are 2 & 4 years older.

His birthday is in May, he’d have just turned 8. I’m not sure what the cutoff is because it’s a year-round school. An advantage of that is the kids he sees in math are the kids he would be with; the track he’s on only has one class of each grade.

We had him tested for ASD before he started pre-school, it was his social abilities that prevented the diagnosis. I imagine he’s always going to be kind of socially odd (like me) but socially immature? Hmm . . .

Dang, parenting can be tough.

11

Have you asked the kid his opinion? Obviously it’s up to you, but if he’s strongly for or strongly opposed, that should certainly mean more towards your ultimate decision than what people on an internet message board think about the matter. If he doesn’t care, well, at least then you don’t have to worry about that.

Personally, I would have loved to have been skipped, and I certainly could have handled it academically, but they just didn’t do that sort of thing in the schools I went to. Socially, hell, I was screwed up socially in high school anyway, being skipped ahead years earlier wouldn’t have been able to make things any worse.

12

I skipped a year and continue to be at the top of the class. I think I would have become very bored and started acting out if I had not skipped. Being a year younger really never bothered me or my friends.

13

If there is a possibility of ASD, I would talk to his (or a) psychiatrist about it before you decide. ASD makes life hard enough socially, without adding this.

On the other hand, you can always reverse his advancement if it’s really not working. I don’t think it’s set in stone.

Toughest job you’ll ever love. :slight_smile:

14

My mother and father were both a year ahead in school. My mother started early, and my father skipped a grade. This was the typical way of dealing with bright kids back then, instead of G&T programs.

It was also typical to hold students back, instead of using resource and other things to keep them at age-grade level, so being held back was less stigmatizing.

By the time I was in school, there were G&T programs, but they weren’t very good. Mainly, they consisted of giving kids additional work over the regular curriculum, and I hated them. I would get put in them after every testing season, then dropped from them after about 8 weeks.

I didn’t know it until I was in my 30s, but my parents tried to have me advanced a grade several times. It’s probably good they didn’t succeed, because given was always my lack of maturity. That, and the availability of G&T programs. My scores on the standardized tests were extremely high, but I just have a knack for those kind of tests. I have taken tests on subjects I have never been taught and scored 85%. I once took a test the entire purpose of which was to measure one’s ability to take multiple choice tests and scores 49/50.

I think I would have done best if I had been left alone in “ordinary” school, even if it had been a little bit below my achievement level, because I just wasn’t interested in being a student in the early grades. As it was, I developed very bad habits with getting moved around a lot, and it didn’t serve me well in high school.

Anyway, what I learned that I would apply to my own son, who thankfully is a “check plus” student, is that if the school used double promotion as the typical way of dealing with exceptional students, so there would be anywhere from 4-6 other double-promoted students on the school, then I would do it. However, if it were a “rare as a hen’s tooth” sort of happening thing, I’d be more reluctant. I wouldn’t want people to think of him as “the kid who skipped a grade,” which, if no one has ever heard of such a thing before, may prove to be almost as stigmatizing as getting held back.

His age relative to the other students is important too. Ask the principal if he will be nearly a year younger than the next youngest kid, or only, say, four months younger, and if he will be close to two years younger than the oldest kid, or maybe only 18 months. Without telling you names, the principal should be able to give you birth dates of the oldest and youngest kids in the class he will join.

You say he is big for his age. That’s a point in his favor. There are actually places on the internet where you can compare his height and weight to that of a kid the average age of one in the class he will join. If he is at least at the 50th percentile for a child, say, nine month older than he is, than that definitely a point in the “DO IT” column. That will help him keep up on the playground and gym class, and not always be at the end of the line if they line up by height. In fact, if he is really big for his age, it might be a good thing. My son is above the 99th percentile for height and weight, and has an October birthday. He is by a head the tallest in his class. I have been asked a couple of times if he was held back. He’s nine, but he looks about 12. People ask us if we’re ready for puberty.

Have you asked his opinion? since you really seem to be at am impasse, and more concerned for his feelings than his academics, why don’t you ask his opinion? Maybe he would very much like to be the kid who skipped a grade. Or maybe he is particularly attached to one friend it would break his heart to leave.

Obviously, you don’t want to leave it entirely up to him, but I don’t see why he couldn’t be included in the discussion. If it turns out he has extremely strong feelings one way or another, that could answer the question.

Finally, have you looked into private schools? maybe he could move up a grade, but go some place where the classes are smaller. Having more individual attention could mitigate much of the concern about his maturity. And if he is really that bright, perhaps he would be offered a scholarship.

15

I’ll add one more data point, but first say that it’s really going to depend on the kid. It will work well for some and not for others.

Having said that, I skipped first grade and it worked out just fine. I always identified with the kids in my grade, who I hung out with, not those of exactly my age. It never really seemed to be an issue.

Then, I skipped my senior year of high school and went to college. I was 15 when I started college (I turned 16 a couple of days later, but it’s fun to say that). I’m sure I’m unusual: I went on to become a college professor. School was always my “thing.”

But I also have to mention that it was nearly 50 years ago when I skipped first grade. (Was it really that long ago? Wow.) As someone implied earlier, it wasn’t assumed that everyone in a grade was within a year in age; social promotion wasn’t the rule. This may have helped make things easier back then.

16

When I was your son’s age the nuns wanted to promote me a grade, but my mother wanted to hold me back because I was the youngest in my class and tiny, getting picked on. They compromised by leaving me in the grade I was in, but sending me to other grades for Reading, English and Science. By the 3rd grade I was in the highest 8th grade reading group, which didn’t endear me to either the kids in my age group or the 8th graders. But in the end, it was probably for the best. I had some classes with my chronological peers, plus recess and lunch.

BTW, holding me back wouldn’t have helped, because I was smaller than the kids in the grade behind mine. I wore the same child’s size 4 school uniform until 7th grade.

StG

17

If I’m understanding this right and you’re talking about him starting third grade at 8, that’s pretty solidly in the “normal” range, isn’t it? ‘Redshirting’ has shifted things a bit later over the last 10-15 years, but I wouldn’t think that would even make him the youngest student at most schools I’m familiar with. Apologies if I’m understanding this incorrectly!

The bigger issue is with the potential effects (both positive and negative) of the change, of course; it just doesn’t sound like the objective age is as drastic an outlier as the situations that lead to someone starting college at 16 or younger.

18

I was in my late teens when my Mom told me that when I was about 7, the school called and offered to skip me a grade forward. Apparently, I was academically way ahead of where I should have been for my grade level. Mom and Dad declined the offer, and I stayed in the grade where I was.

At the time, I myself might have jumped at the offer, but looking back, I think Mom and Dad made the right decision. I remained in the same year as my school friends, and we all grew together at the same rate. Maybe not academically–they were struggling through Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, while I was devouring “The Call of the Wild” and “Black Like Me”–but on the playground, we were all equals. I could strike out with the best of them at baseball, for example; and when we played football, I was with kids my same size (or so). I learned how to hit and catch a baseball; and I grew to love playing football; and neither might have happened if I had to deal with classmates who were physically bigger and stronger than I was.

In the end, even though I found that my school class was not as academically advanced as I might have liked, I had plenty of friends my own age and size to play with. And I always had the public library, from which I could borrow any book I wanted (even those that the school librarian said were not appropriate for our grade level), and so, I frequented the public library a lot. Anyway, even though I did not skip a grade, it all worked out pretty well for me.

19

I was the youngest kid in my class - started early - and just that sucked. I wasn’t socially adept. I didn’t get my license until most of my cohort had. I was dating guys in their twenties at 16. I started college at 16. I was the freak - didn’t help that I hit puberty late - and could pass for twelve as late as college. And I was a freak, school was STILL easy for me - so I had all the issues with boredom that I would have had with kids my own age and was known as the genius kid who skipped a grade (though I didn’t skip, I just started early).

See if you can’t find a different way - a more challenging school, working with the teachers to provide independent study, providing him with interesting extracurriculars. Explore other options first. Also find out - what happens if he skipped second grade and suddenly he’s in third grade doing forth grade math and reading - are they going to be sending an eight year old to middle school if he continues to excel at a pace that the school can’t keep up with?

20

My school did, and continues to do, this. I excelled at this, in spite of not generally being a good student. Elementary schoolers ready for more advanced math could take it at the intermediate school, and would get bussed there. Middle schoolers got bussed to high school, mainly for math, but occasionally for physics, English, or a foreign language. It was very common for high school students to get released for a period to take a college course. I took Hebrew, Creative Writing, a 300-level English class called “Children’s Literature,” a class of dramatic writing that was an English class, but was cross-listed with the theater department, and a couple of religious studies classes.

I got double credit for them, because I got a credit for a class when I was in high school, as though I were taking a high school class, and I still had the credits waiting for me when I went to college. I entered college with 17 credit hours already under my belt.

Nobody ever gave me a hard time. I looked older than I was, though (mostly because I had a C-cup and a low voice; I wasn’t particularly tall, but I wasn’t unusually short either). At 15, if I was sitting in a college class, I blended in. Since there were plenty of freshmen who really did look like high schoolers, much younger than I looked, no one said “Boo” to me.

It is something to consider, though. Can the OP’s son have his age-correct class as “home base” for his “specials” (aka, gym, music and art) and field trips but go where he needs to go for math, science, spelling, reading, etc.? even if he has to be bussed to the intermediate school? how close is the closest one?

It may means that when he gets to high school, he already has a year of high school classes, and can graduate in three, so the effect is the same as though he’d skipped a grade, but he doesn’t.

My experience in high is that you make friends in all grade levels. My very best friend was two years below me, and another good friend was three years ahead of me. The one who is younger than me is just about the only person from high school I have remained continuously friends with in the intervening 31 years.

I think the best thing this thread can do for you is to provide you with a list of questions you can ask the principal, from questions about alternate programs that have not yet been mentioned, to specifics about what your son can expect if he is advanced. I assume you have a pending meeting. I’d go through this thread with a pencil and pad, or laptop at your side (assuming the laptop is not your only computer), and comb this thread for questions.