i am not a fan in general. you mention being undersized and also not athletic (which i am using as a proxy for motor gifted). ask about the gifted program; augment at home (which) you would have to do anyway. gives your child the best chance IMO of being well adjusted to peers and not having stuff related to physical size or dexterity become an issue.
I skipped kindergarten and there were pros and cons. I did Montessori for a couple years and then went straight to first grade. Kinda sucked always being the youngest in my grade. I have a January birthday so I was right near the cutoff anyway. Academically I didn’t have any difficulty and I was always a shy kid. Not sure if that was due to skipping ahead or not. It was weird starting college at 17 but not a big deal really.
Our middle daughter also skipped kindergarten. She is November and had already done “pre-K”. Was super bored and started acting out when she got into kindergarten because it was basically the same stuff over again (I think her pre-K class was a pretty advanced group of kids). So we had to jump through some hoops for a month or so but finally got her bumped up to first grade. She was much happier with that.
For your situation I’d say if she’s happy probably just let her stay on track. She’ll be fine academically either way but being small and young for your class might be a drawback imo.
School sux, fast track her out of there.
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Avoid middle school as long as possible
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Without knowing specifics about the child, I would recommend against skipping kindergarten or other grades:
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I think it is more style of teaching rather than more advanced material that makes school interesting at that age. So it’s not clear to me that kid is less bored. And I don’t understand the advantage of learning these things one year earlier.
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So much can go wrong socially. This applies all the way through middle school, where one year in maturity can be the difference between a child and an adolescent. And high school, where again one year can make a big difference.
I’m sure there are cases where skipping is the right choice though.
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My sister was born in January and missed the cutoff for kindergarten by 6 days. My mother was appalled by this and she HAD to go to through school with the kids born a week before her. Back then there was a private kindergarten you could enroll your kid in to get them into first grade in the public school when they were kindergarten aged. My mother did that for my sister. My sister liked being the youngest in the class and it didn’t harm her in any way. She was still in the gifted program in school for the year ahead.
For some other kids who were dumb, that private kindergarten to get them into school early was a stupid move, but worked for my sister because she was at that level already.
But with my sister, she only missed the cutoff for the year before by 6 days, so she wasn’t that much younger than her classmates even though she was the youngest in the class. Might be different for a kid born later in the year.
I think my sister would have been fine either way though. My mother was adamant that she HAD to start school early.
I hate school
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Hmm, my wife is surprisingly keen on this, so we’ll probably do it despite the widespread consensus of you internet people.
It does align, broadly, with my parenting philosophy. Which is, when given 2 alternatives, give her something that is at least a bit challenging or new.
But I hear what you guys are saying, there’s barely any benefit in the short run, and in the long run it’s 11 years of being short, and then off to be an actudonk. Oh well. This whole thread is pretty depressing. Why have school at all if learning isn’t the goal? I could just prop her front of the TV all day, and it would be the same, more or less.
(Stay tuned for my: “Should I Home-School my Kid???” thread, coming next year!)
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Also, I don’t really know about her “happiness”. For one thing, she just started school, and for another, she is sanguine, which makes for a misleading signal.
She is going to be happy no matter what, until she hits a certain age, and then she’ll be unhappy no matter what.
Really, you are supporting your wife over listening to a group of virtual strangers with anecdotal evidence and no knowledge of your child?
That’s sick
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OP: perhaps consult a professional who deals with learning development…
even if she skips a grade, i’m guessing she still will rather sit home and read books.
Many of us here skipped a grade. But most here are guys. In the long run, I think it is easier for a girl to skip a grade than a boy. It also depends on how much younger she will be than her classmates due to where her birthday falls.
I am another vote not to do it, because she will immediately kick ass in 1st grade anyway. Why not skip 2 grades or 3?
Is she also ready socially and emotionally? These differences may not show up for years.
I think you have an overall education decision to make that is separate from the “skipping a grade” conversation. Warning: education decisions never end when dealing with bright kids.
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Another solution is to just keep your kid in their grade but let them take more advanced classes for the things that they are good at. That way, they still graduate at 18 but would probably enter college with a large number of credits.
In elementary school, I would go to the reading and math groups of the grade ahead of me. Kept me with my peers, but got the more ‘advanced’ reading and math. In middle school it was honors classes.
i’m also kinda with smoothie on this. PUBLIC SCHOOL IS TORTURE. GET HER OUT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!
college isn’t so bad though.
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Yeah, I was not skipped ahead but my mom heroically engineered higher level math classes for me and a few peers, starting with 6th grade algebra.
That said, maybe waiting 5 years means wasting her edge, so to speak.
Thanks for these thoughts, I have been wondering the same thing.