Depends on variables not specified in the poll. What does the kid emself think of it? What’s es social life like, both inside and outside the classroom? Does e have a plan for the future, beyond “learn a bunch of smart stuff”? When e’s in environments where e can interact with adults, how does e fare? How responsible is e, with things like spending money, doing homework on time, and staying out of various sorts of trouble? Has e hit puberty yet? Because if not, the answers to any of the previous questions may well change when e does.
I’d allow the kid to skip a grade. Perhaps take additional college classes while in high school. (I’ve read about gifted kids doing that.)
I’d try to help the kid socialize. Go camping and fishing with the family. Play sports if he wants. Life is more than academics.
Like PhDs? The really great thing about gifted programs is that kids get to interact with kids just like them for a while. That means the kid doesn’t get laughed at for some insight the dumb kids in the class. Because that is what working at the top of ones field is like. Grad school is all about making and defending argument, and I at least got some of that from my high school classes. New York when I was in school believed in sorting by ability, and I had a pretty good time in high school and junior high.
It is a shame that so many people believe that segregation by athletic ability is great, but segregation by intellectual ability is elitist.
Community colleges in California let high school kids in, with I guess recommendation from teachers. My daughter was also in a program where she went to Berkeley half time her senior year of high school - and decided she hated the place, which was good to find out early.
I was offered the chance to skip second grade and my parents didn’t allow me to do it. I was later allowed the chance to skip 11th grade and went ahead and did it. I turned 17 right before my freshman year in college. It was kind of fun being 2-4 years younger than everyone else.
YOU should be as maladjusted as Mary lou Retton.
Assuming the child is emotionally and mentally ready, I can’t imagine holding them back. There are opportunities for socialization outside of the education system, whether the child is in middle school, high school, or college.
I don’t have experience with the extreme presented in the OP, but one of my kids at age 14 mapped out a plan to have her Master’s by age 22. She graduated high school a year early and is on track to complete her undergrad at 20 years old. That leaves 2 years to achieve her goal. While working 20-30 hours per week the entire time. She has a wide group of friends. If the child can handle it, I will support them all the way.
To what end though? I knew a few of these types when I was in college- they started when they had just turned 19, and I was 18, about to be 19), and they burned through school in 3 years, went to grad school or medical school, and ended up… a doctor in a small town, or working in academia doing nothing particularly interesting, and without any of the fun in college that the rest of us had.
College for most people is one of the best times of their lives- what’s the point of having a master’s by 22 if it means that you just work like a demon to graduate early… so you can work in the outside world.
Seems rather pointless to me, and like the ultimate case of missing the forest for the trees.
I’d do some creative homeschooling and keep them doing roughly age-appropriate things while still keeping them challenged mentally. Enroll them in lots of classes and activities with kids their own age, keep them involved in their peer group in middle school, get them out of the house and the classroom to learn and do all sorts of things in the real world, let them take online classes or even attend some local college classes in specialized areas of interest. Encourage them to use their intelligence to create as much agency and independence (with my full support of course) in their own life as is possible. Start working for their spending money with real people of average intelligence ASAP (16 years old). Find their passion (s) in life, and go to college to pursue that passion when they are mature enough to know what they want.
I’d like to do this with any child I may have, regardless of their intelligence level.
IMO college is only a good choice for adults who are a]prepared for the social ‘college experience’ and b]have some idea of what adult work they will be using their degree for. I realize this does not apply to a majority of 18-year-old incoming college Freshman; I consider this a problem.
I’ve met my fair share of ‘geniuses’ who were skipped through school and ended up attending or finished with college by the time normal people start; never do they seem to be happy or well-adjusted individuals. Although often their achievements are impressive. But I could care less what any child of mine achieves on a larger scale, all I want is for them to feel fulfilled by their own life, however they choose to spend it, and to form healthy and lasting relationships with other human beings. That’s what life is really about.
As somebody who wasn’t allowed to skip a grade at around that age (grade 4), and thus had the absolute worst year of my academic life, resulting in bad habits that I’m still trying to break decades later.
Hell, yes, I’d let my kid skip ahead. Probably not to high school senior or university, but definitely jump a year or two.
My parents wouldn’t let me go to UT-Austin when I was 15. The fact that we lived in Pakistan, and I had never so much as been to the mall by myself at the time might have had some bearing on their decision. I went to a local university. A couple years later I was trapped in a classroom while our department was besieged by one group of armed students, while another armed group was hunkered down among us. Bullets flying everywhere.
Later I went to grad school in the States. At Virginia Tech. Missed the shooting by a few years though.
I’m a little baffled when people think socialization is unimportant. Have you READ threads on this board?
Academics are great, but people are who you have to spend time with, day after day. You’ll probably be more successful, and happier, learning people than learning anything else in this world.
I’d encourage a kid to play more, to hang out, to express herself creatively, to take up sports and music and dancing and friendships. Write a book. Learn languages. Work at the animal shelter. Get Grandma to teach you how to make pie crust as good as hers. School is important, but not the most important thing in the world.
And she could take some advanced courses at the same time, if that suits her. But she gets to be a smart kid, not a smart person who just looks like a kid.
I knew someone back in school who skipped one grade. then one more. And when the school wanted him to skip a third time, the parents put their foot down and said no, that was enough. That meant he ended up with classmates just a couple years older than he was, and that seemed to work out okay.
If my kid were like that when she turned twelve, I’d have already sent her to Epsilon Camp. (Note that if you were eligible for the camp at age 8 as it says, you’d totally be doing calculus by age 12.) I’d be figuring out whatever I could to get her in the company of other people like herself. This would probably not involve going to college at age 12, unless she were also a genius at socializing (which a child of mine and my husband’s, uh, well… she’d be working against a lot of heredity, let’s put it that way). 18-year-old college freshmen would not, in fact, fill the requirement of “other people like herself.”
I think it’s very important that kids get to socialize, at least a little, with peers who are like themselves. It meant everything in the world to me when I was that age.
Yeah, the thing is, I did a bunch of these when I was a kid, and so did my husband. Our parents made us do sports and music (and dancing in my case but not his), and both our sets of parents tried a lot of things to get us to socialize more. We did community work. My husband learned how to bake.
But all the socialization they tried was completely useless to me at the time, because I just didn’t understand how to be friends with people who were different from me. It took years of being around people who were (somewhat) similar to me, learning how to be friends with them first, and then moving out into a world where people were very different, to understand how to relate to the rest of the world.
(It’s very possible that if my mom had been better at emotional pedagogy than she was, she might have been able to teach me more about emotional intelligence and I might have learned more from my childhood. But she was so good at socialization and friendships herself that she had no idea how to teach it to a kid who wasn’t naturally good at it.)
I would keep him at home but enroll him in a local college. Socially I would try to make sure he had plenty of contact with kids his own age, much like home schoolers do. But I see no point in having him sit through basic algebra and watered down US history board out of his gourd when there are more challenging courses available that match his ability level. Depending on the degree of specialization of his gift, he might take some classes at his regular school and others at the local college.
I agree completely. I’m not, however, convinced that (traditional) school is the best delivery system for social skills.
I read something recently that postulated that work experience is a much better socialization environment – maybe I will make my genius 12 year old go out and get a job. 
To what end? That’s funny! She knows exactly what she wants to do as a career. She has a plan to make it happen. School is a necessary tool for the implementation of the plan. Putting her plan into action in the “outside world” is what drives her. She wants to make a difference in the lives of others, and to begin doing so as soon as possible. Yes, she can (and does) do that to some extent now, but in her chosen field (or did the field choose her?) a master’s will open up many more options.
Perhaps you misssed the part of my post about “She has a wide circle of friends”. She spends a lot of time with them. Doing fun things, even. On top of maintaining a 3.8 GPA and a job. She is always moving at full speed, putting her all into everything she does, and always has.
Though she is not blindly careening toward “nothing particularly interesting”, as you so eloquently put it, have you ever stopped to consider that at least some young, small town doctors really love what they do? More than partying with a small set of friends for an additional year or two? That they may consider their current years the best of their life? That what brings them more joy than anything is being the doctor, not becoming a doctor?
I would be the last to begrudge you a full 8-10+ years of high school and college. Savor those years if that is what you are meant to do. There are, however, people out there with a different world view than you, bump. Why would you begrudge them that? After all, only time will tell in each individual case if it is better, worse or just different.
Well, I’ve seen plenty of kids who had an opportunity to skip grades. Some did just fine, some suffered. I skipped one grade and did fine socially, but then I wasn’t six years younger than everyone else in the class.
Is there an option to skip one grade, or one grade at a time, and see how that goes, while perhaps taking college classes at the local university? I don’t think the workload would necessarily be a problem for a smart kid, but being so very different from everyone else can be very isolating, especially if the student appears very young. If the child is more physically developed and can “pass” for the typical age, he may find the adjustment easier.
Although my final answer is “depends on the kid”, I lean toward “what’s the rush?”
Not a parent, but if I was I would allow a kid to jump ahead in grades, at least for a trial period, if the kid was in favor of the idea. If he didn’t want to jump ahead, leave his friends, whatever, I wouldn’t force him.
I wouldn’t allow a 12 year old to go away to college, but would be okay with him going to a local college if he was capable of doing so and wanted to go. Honestly, it would probably be a better situation than if he was jumped ahead to highschool.