In third grade I was transferred to a gifted school, and it was a good thing because we lived in Flint, MI, and I had been attending a crappy inner-city public school and it was not going well for me socially. We were always moving around, so I only went there for about a year and then back to public school after we moved. One of my problems echoed here was that I was learning-disabled in math, and nobody really figured it out because I more than made up for it with my language and reading skills. My problems with math started with division in 3rd grade and extended all the way to my senior year and calculus. I never did well with math- barely kept from failing it, and it really brought down my grade point average and the high expectations that were set for me when my IQ was tested in second grade were, of course, never met, and things got ugly between my parents and I as I got older. Also, your little girl will only be a little girl for a short time- I wouldn’t be so quick to make her into a tiny grownup, but that’s just me.
They divide kids by grade, not by age, for most activities once they become school age. Or alternatively, by ability. My old for his grade forth grader gets to play baseball with third and forth graders. My third grader is in Brownies with other third graders. She is in gymnastics with other girls of her ability - if they are five or thirteen.
ETA: This also meant that for the most part I was LOUSY at sports - because I was not only younger than my basketball teammates, but I was short for my age on top of it!
This thread reminded me of my long lost true love hard core crush from my third grade year of gifted school in Flint. Todd Chaney, if you’re out there… call me!
Would it be possible for her to to attend a regular class, but sit in with the older kids for english and math? I’ve heard of kids that had similar arrangements, and it worked fairly well, as far as that went.
I wasn’t reading early, but I caught on fairly quick, and by third grade I was probbaly 3-4 years ahead. One of my teacher, the one who taught languages, allowed us all to pick up a book at the school library to keep in class; whenever we were done with that days work, we vould go read our own book. If you can talk to her teachers, this might work as a short term solution to prevent boredom and frustration.
Consider a gifted school for her at the least hint of trouble in regular school. My academic milestones were achieved very early like with your child, and it resulted in my skipping first grade, essentially becoming a pariah for the next 10 years (and my classes were still too easy). I was bullied mercilessly. The school district offered to bus me to the gifted school 50 miles away, but my parents refused. My life at the time most likely would’ve been so much better had they allowed it.
Our daughter is years ahead in her reading ability.
We have had a bad experience with a Montessori school which left our daughter behind academically. I’ll second the statement that not all Montessori schools are alike: at this particular school, the lack of structure and self-directed learning meant our daughter was able to cop out rather than get ahead.
We have since enrolled her in Kumon* English and Maths. She has no real aptitude for Maths but will be studying matric level English next year (she’s nine). At this point the program will finish. We do not plan to send her to college age eleven, the idea was to help her get ahead with her regular studies. What we do plan to do is find a secondary school which will recognise and foster her ability until she gets to tertiary education. In the meantime, she is in a school which has a gifted program and the school has put her into a class with a small number of other gifted students. (By the way, there are a few threads around here about books for young advanced readers; teenage themes appear a lot at that reading level).
*mention of the Kumon program will doubtless bring out the haters here who were forced to complete it. The point is, the kid has to want to do it for themself. We have a top-notch tutor who inspires the kids to achieve. The program itself helps the kids learn discipline and good study habits.
You’re putting the cart a bit before the horse. Reading at college level doesn’t mean she will require college level classes. I read at college level by the 5th or maybe 6th grade and it would have been laughable to put me in a college literature course since I obviously lacked the life experience and general knowledge to discuss the material on that level. Mostly I just read. a lot. And my parents gave me suggestions and free rein in the library.
Though it might be interesting to see what an 11 year old brings to “Lolita” it’s not exactly developmentally appropriate.
I read Anna Karinina in 7th grade. Didn’t understand it at all until I reread it again at 22. But I read it in 7th grade.
Its also possible she will level out quickly - I know a lot of kids who started reading very young (Harry Potter books in kindergarten) - and only one of them really has needed special services - the rest have done fine mainstreamed.
I was reading at 3 and went to a very small school which had two grades in one room. I did first and second grades both the first year. My teacher wanted me to skip to third grade but my parents decided that since I was not very socially adept (only child; somewhat shy) that I should not skip. I wish I had; I was totally bored with school for the rest of the time until I got to college. I guess a gifted class or school would have helped but there were none. In college I got into some advanced classes and that made me realize that I wasn’t a genius, which was a good thing to learn! But I think there are worse things than skipping a grade. If you are a lot further along than your classmates you are going to have social difficulties anyhow even if you stay in the same grade. And in many ways EVERYONE has social difficulties at some time, like middle school!
BTW, when I did get the chance to get grouped by age, they were all friends because they were in the same class - and I was the freak from the older class that no one knew who shouldn’t be there - particularly in elementary school. My own classmates also weren’t fond of the freakishly smart kid who was younger than they were. And so I ended up hanging with kids who were often three and four years older - who treated me as something of a pet.
Also, I was actually not at all (nor am I now) freakishly smart. I was a fairly smart child in a school that did not have a lot of high performing kids in it - so for my school I was unusual. In college I was pretty unexceptional.
(I actually had a series of elementary schools because my parents moved a lot, which contributed to a lot of the issues).
My point exactly. You could comprehend the text but not understand the emotional and sexual, not to mention historical and social, underpinnings of the story. Wouldn’t it have been both strange and useless to try and participate in a college-level discussion at that age?
It’s true that all Montessori schools are not created equal. The word “Montessori” is not copyrighted or trademarked, so anyone can use it to describe their program (or lack thereof). It behooves you to research the school you want.
Your child might be hyperlexic- my son was. Instead of ramping up his reading, we laid back and let him feel his way. It seemed to work much better for him when he wasn’t building a big brick wall using only one kind of brick, you know what I mean? We allowed his other skills to catch up without pushing the reading. Hyperlexic kids have trouble with comprehension and “play back”- ask them what was on a page they just finished and they cannot always tell you.
He is extremely gifted (he asked for a DNA model for his 7th birthday), but we felt better about not having him excel in one area but have “deficits” in others.
My advice would be to leave your kid alone.
I’m not convinced that ‘accelerated’ programs work for any other reason than to provide funding for the staffing of accelerated programs…it’s become an Industry unto itself, measuring kids abilities and scaring parents into making sure they capitalize on those talents. Sure, you’ll get a smart kid at the end, but even lacking the ‘program’ you’ll STILL get a smart kid with all the goodies of the wonderful socialisation that ensued from hanging out with other kids of all abilities.
Lots of kids seem especially talented in their early years who do NOT go on to display those talents in their later years. Just enjoy your kid, let them be themselves and read to them lots.
My strong recommendation to any parent is to raise the whole child, not just one part of the child. Frankly, when my kid is 25, it won’t matter a bit what age she started reading, but it will matter whether she has the interpersonal skills to work with her peers and supervisors, and to motivate whatever staff she may have.
Unless there is overwhelming opinion that a kid should be accelerated, they are better off, IMNSHO, staying with their age cohort and doing non-curriculum extension stuff so their brain stays engaged. Ultimately there are lots of really bright kids out there. One who is happy, with a good bunch of friends, will be better off in the long run. They have a long time to be smart, and not a great deal of time to mess about and be a kid.
And FWIW, my daughter is now 12 and classed in one of the higher gifted levels.
In the second grade I arrived in the US knowing one English word (bathroom) and by 6th grade I was a year ahead and in an “advanced” program. From there I went to a private middle school, and later on got accepted into a prestigious boarding school (I left after a year and a half). In the 8th (7th? can’t remember) grade I was offered the chance to study at the state university.
Of course my parents thought I was some freakish genius, and I did develop very early. I thought I could read most kids my age like a book, and considered myself very special indeed for seeing through their shallow psyches. As a result I missed out on much of the social interaction that contributes to growth, was always very “up in my head”, cynical, and otherwise very un-childlike, more like a sad lonely, frustrated little man. Anyway, long story short, I had a tough time growing up with all the social, personal, and sexual confusion, and the adverse effects of such a childhood are manifest in my personality today.
I can’t blame my parents, after all they’d had no practice, hell they hardly spoke English. They wanted what was best for me and they thought academic excellence at the cost of most other aspects of my growth was it. In retrospect there were many things that they and I could have done differently.
ed: I accidentally pressed submit…I’ll just quickly sum up by adding what is in my opinion the most important value for a gifted person: diligence. When you’re smarter than other people it’s easy to be lazy, and that’s a habit that will get ingrained in your bones.
I think few gifted kids benefit much from skipping more than one grade, for all the reasons mentioned already about fitting in & social development. One of my fondest memories from childhood was our weekly family trip to the public library. This started before I even went to school. (I remember being terribly disappointed in 2nd grade, my first day in public school, when we had library period and the library teacher asked “How many books can you check out each week?” and I enthusiastically answered “As many as you want!”. Of course, the answer was one. [And the other kids snickered at me.] One book a week. I never bothered, I just looked forward to the public library visits even more…) My parents also got me lots of math puzzle books and games and the like once it became clear that was my real strength.
(slightly off topic, but relevant to the OP’s concern as a parent: )
I’d like to ask the posters in this thread who were gifted/geniuses/skipped a year, etc:
In the long run, what difference does it make? Was your adult life improved by the special attention,special schools, etc?
Most of you seem to be saying “I skipped a grade/went to Montessori/etc,etc…and then I was still screwed up socially.”
So maybe the OP should just let her kid go to a regular(boring) school, provide plenty of intellectual stimulation at home, and concentrate on being happy?
Being able to function in life,(=have stable friendships when young, and have a good job and stable marriage when you reach adulthood) seems to be pretty disconnected from academic learning.*
- (Obviously, you need good grades to get into good universities—but we’re talking about gifted kids in this thread, so I’m assuming that good grades are automatic. Social skills are not. )
Good grades aren’t automatic for gifted kids - and one of the dangers is that they get bored and don’t perform. Or they just are sloppy - things are easy, so why check your work? Get it done fast. The vast majority of people I know from gifted programs in high school didn’t go on to “good” colleges - and a substantial number of them never graduated from high school.
Motivation and charisma are more important to long term success than raw smarts. No one hires you to sit around and think about whatever you like - you still need the discipline to research and write and the charisma to convince people your ideas have merit.
That said - what acceleration did for me (and I was technically not accelerated - I started kindergarten young - then functionally skipped fifth grade by not going to school for a year…but that is a different story). I was done with college (the first time, without a degree) at twenty and bought my first house at 21. I had a year up financially on having a full time job than other people in my age cohort - and will have an extra year to save for retirement. But honestly, once I hit 24 or 25 people really didn’t care that I wasn’t 26 or 27. And because I look young (even now at 42, I look young), it was really hard for me to get taken seriously at all anyway until I was in my 30s.
My grades were relentlessly mediocre until I went to grad school. Since at least at that time it was a sliding thingie with grades, test scores, and “other” (essays, extracurriculars, what have you) and I could count on the latter two to get me where I wanted to go, I let my grades just glide along. They were solid B range, nothing ruinous, but I didn’t work for grades at all. I was not bored most of the time (and if I were I surely would not admit it; my mother had an inexhaustible list of things for bored children to do) but I just did not care. I did well enough not to close any doors on myself against the day that I might decide what to do when I grew up and otherwise did not worry about it.
I still haven’t decided what to do when I grow up and have had more and more varied jobs than I ever imagined possible. I am over 40, you would think I might have figured it out by now. But alas, no. I just keep following my nose and it takes me to the most interesting places. In many ways I still do not care about the same things my age mates seem to – I did not work for grades except to the extent that I needed them to do something else; and I do not work for money except to the extent that I like to eat and so on. I have mostly been self employed because of this: I can down tools for a couple of weeks at a time to work on something else which does not earn money but which is interesting. Often those things end up making me money directly or indirectly but they do not have to. It just works out that way so far.
My adult life was improved by the fact that my parents went to some trouble to find a school community in which I was known and valued as a human being in training. The good Sisters of the Sacred Heart saw to it that I got a most thorough education but their vision of my potential was not limited to my intellect. And I never had any doubt that if I woke up stupid one day that my family would still love me and value me.
I think it is important to not ignore giftedness – as if you could. I just think it is healthier to not make it the lynchpin of a child’s identity. It rarely works out.
I will say that being one of six kids did mean that I never got the kind of spotlight treatment a lot of my acquantances in various programs got, of which I was then jealous and for which I am now grateful.
Have you considered enrolling her in a magnet program when she’s older? I’m not sure if your school district does that, but I could read when I was two as well, and I take a lot of magnet classes now. You should check it out. I’m not sure about your district, but in mine, magnet programs start at, I believe, fourth grade. It’d be the best, in my opinion, because it’s free, and she’s with kids her age and level.