Gap Year before high school

Parents Forum
61

I considered a ‘grade adjustment’ for my daughter. She started K at 4 and that was a mistake. I thought she’d just repeat K but they wouldn’t let her because academically she was fine and at the time she was socially and physically on par with the others (who were all small and immature at age 4-5). And then suddenly she wasn’t. Academically she was always fine, but I think she would have been a superstar if she’d been with the class behind her, with kids her age. Also many of the other kids weren’t just 6 months older than her but had been redshirted for K and were 16-20 months older than her. And bigger.

We also moved to California when she was 13 and starting high school. I would have loved to have had her repeat 8th grade but that would have meant starting at a different school and then changing to a high school a year later.

Her friends were always the other ‘youngest’ kids or the kids in the year behind her (who were often older than her). Socially, that’s where she needed to be. She sometimes was kept out of things because she wasn’t old enough - girl scout camp required her to be 7 and she wasn’t. R rated movies required her to be 17, and she wasn’t. It was easier to hang with the other kids who also weren’t 17.

She was a recruited athlete to a Div 2 school that was a perfect fit for her academically, athletically, and (for me) financially. She was still growing when she went to college. Those D1 girls are bigger. Most athletes aren’t just D1 or D3 and could play on teams at any level; my daughter was recruited by all levels, not the top D1 teams but at lower ranked team because she had good stick skills. My daughter’s D2 team could (and did) beat a lot of D1 teams, but there were D3 teams that could (and did) easily beat her D2 team. There can be a D3 track star who can beat a D1 runner, but the D3 team as a whole is not competitive against the D1 team.

I don’t think it is a stupid idea to repeat a year. Make sure you understand the rules. If you homeschool and it is considered 9th grade, he may use up a year of eligibility for high school athletics. Many states only allow 4 years of playing after 8th grade and count from the first time a student completes 8th grade. You don’t want him ineligible his senior year.

The issue with doing a post grad year at a prep school is that his entire high school ‘show’ years he’s playing as a little guy. My daughter was a good high school player, but she was small. Size does matter. If she’d had another year of playing, another year of growing, she might have been recruited to a stronger D1 team. Her teammates who were bigger were.

However, it all worked out.

62

I moved numerous times as a child; we have moved our children several times. By far, the easiest moves were in the middle of the school year. You have an instant peer group and instant structure.There is no way I’d let my kids take a year off from school to work on a sport.

The only alternative I can see is to send your child to a year-round sports academy that also provides an academic education. I know one family who did this for their champion skier. The education bit was rather sketchy, but he did continue to excel at skiing.

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OP - if you are talking about your S potentially playing D1 hockey (where repeating/reclassifying is relatively common), you might post anew in the athletic recruiting thread.

64

@MWolf The implication that all gifted kids that age “require structure and predictability” is just not true. It may be true of some kids, and it may be true of your daughter, but it was not true of me, it was not true of my son, and it has not been true of many of the highly gifted kids I’ve known. Quite the opposite in fact — most of them have thrived on having the freedom to pursue their own passions and interests rather than be stuck in a classroom with no choice in terms of what, when, where, and how they learn.

We unschooled middle school, and were almost totally interest-led in HS as well. I required math every year and one year of US History (with a lot of flexibility in how that was accomplished), but other than that my son pursued his own interests. He took online classes in Greek & Latin, self-taught other languages like Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon, read widely, watched 100s of hours of recorded college lectures, audited online courses like Harvard’s Ancient Greek Hero and University of Leiden’s Norse lit course, and took other courses, like ASU’s human evolution course (taught by Donald Johanson, discoverer of “Lucy”) for credit. He spent 6 weeks on paleontology digs with grad students and post docs from Berkeley and Columbia, toured archaeological sites in Greece, Italy, and Turkey, had some hilarious conversations in Old Norse in Iceland, and ended up with an impressive transcript full of unusual and interesting courses, top test scores (no APs), great recommendations, and a top rank in his sport, which resulted in amazing college choices. He just finished his freshman year with a 3.97 GPA, after jumping straight into 300 & 400 level courses in his major. And he even has friends! :wink:

I’m really shocked by how many people seem to think that letting a gifted 13 yr old pursue his interests for a year, including possibly living abroad learning another language through immersion, would be an unmitigated disaster that would set him back academically and leave him bored and friendless. US public schools are not exactly Hogwarts; it’s perfectly possibly to have amazing experiences, get a great education, and even make friends, outside of “school.”

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Hogwarts? That’s really pushing it.

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Some of the assumptions on this board about homeschooling and unschooling just aren’t accurate in our experience either. I’ve homeschooled since my current senior was a 2nd grader. I’ve counseled many a middle school parent through an unschooly year or 2 with academic kids that were struggling in B&M school that needed a change or reset for one reason or another with positive results. My kids had very unschooly educational approaches until high school. My oldest is graduating with 32 DE credits with a 4.0 with a 99% ACT score. He’s out engaging with peers pretty much every day in one way or another.

With a library card, a couple museum memberships, a math curriculum, and community engagement via sports, volunteering, music, extracurriulars a young teen could potentially have a really enriching and empowering year.

Some kids would flounder with a gap year after high school and not every family can afford pay to play gap year programs with significant enrichment with college to follow. I just think it’s ok to trust that a parent knows their own child and has their best interest at heart. Kids that travel for a short time or homeschool/unschool for a period of time generally do great afterwards in my experience. The kids that might struggle are those that may have been pulled for depression or anxiety, etc and would be struggling in any setting.

67

I’m failing to see where the OP stated they were considering home schooling?

My friends who successfully home schooled did a ton of work to make sure they knew what they were doing and how to shore up their kids properly. I also know some friends who home schooled in such a disorganized way that there was really no school. None of their kids made it through college before dropping out, and most not even got there at all.

IMO home schooling is a huge commitment on the part of the parents and isn’t a decision to be rushed into because of a move. It’s already May. The school year in CA starts in mid to late August. That’s not that much time to get organized and develop a plan.

Playing sports and traveling is not an appropriate substitute for school without a lot more structure and academics.

68

Why Not? The academics will still be there.

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Homeschooling for one year is not a huge commitment. A math textbook and/or online class + lots of reading is fine for what would essentially be a “bonus year” — the student has completed 8th grade and will return to school for 9th. Spending a year abroad is educational in itself, doubly so if it includes immersion in a foreign language. And academics do not need to be highly “structured” in order to be effective.

70

By the way, the kids who I know who took off a year in middle school were the children of tenured professors. They cared about academics, too, but thought it worked just fine with travel and other activities.

71

being a brilliant student, I think that repeating 8th grade would make him feel unsuccessful

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@Corraleno I have not only raised a PG kid, but have engaged in advocacy and in pushing policies for support of gifted kids at the K-8 level. It is your kid who is not typical. PG kids will often follow their own interests, but will generally ignore stuff which does not interest them, even when it is required for graduation.

Your narrative actually demonstrates that your kid thrives in a structured environment as well, just not in the one provided by the middle school (but middle schools are just to keep the kids off the streets and from killing each other, since nothing else can be accomplished in those years).

Our HS has an amazing array of courses, which are not available at many high schools, and my kid was taking a heavy load of art classes, and there was no way that we could afford the type of studios that were available at the HS. Being a dancer also meant that a structured environment is required to juggle the fairly time-heavy requirements of that, as well as having a dance troupe where my D could go onstage, as well as choreograph. My D was also engaged in social activism, which also required a school environment - no LGBTQ organization would involve a 14 year old in the type of activity in which my kid involved herself at HS. I don’t know whether her creative writing would have blossomed without her amazing sophomore teacher.

We may have been able to provide any single one of those, but having fully equipped art studios (drawing, painting, silk printing, etc), an active dance troupe with practice space, an LGBTQ advocacy and support group for teenagers, and teenagers who needed support, as well as high level math, writing, etc. While she only has 6 APs, she has independent research (not the AP version), teaching assistance, and world and studio dance.

At the same time, during the summers, aside from dance intensive programs, she attended CTD’s three week animation, coding, neuroscience and creative writing courses with other gifted kids, and she has taken online courses provided by the Davidson institute. Our D has also done crazy stuff like participate in Kenya’s first Great Grevy’s Rally, sharing a vehicle with the US ambassador one day and spending the next day with a local high school group, and a summer internship at a Neurobiology lab at UIUC, the only HS kid among graduate students and post-docs. That is not including the trips she has made to Israel (she was born a dual citizen), Russia (where she has extensive family), and other places in the world.

She will be attending an excellent college with a full-tuition scholarship (+ other benefits) for which she was nominated by her public HS. So yes, the list of benefits that a public HS has provided for my PG daughter is very long, and most would not have been available to her had she been home-schooled or gone to a private HS. At the same time, the fact that she was attending a public HS as a full time student did not limit her abilities to explore the world in many ways

BTW, it is a public HS, in a suburb with a median family income of about $80,000. Not poor, but not Winnetka or Barrington. We are well off, but not super wealthy, and the cost of most of those was not our of pocket.

So while it is great that your S had all those opportunities and accomplished all those things, attending a public high school does not preclude any of those.

PS. By “not Hogwarts” you mean “not sending kids into a forest filled with man-eating spiders with an irresponsible adult as a chaperone”, “not allowing freshman to play with the equivalent of high explosives and nerve gas during class”, “not allowing teenagers to walk around school with deadly weapons”, or “not using high school kids as an army against the most powerful wizard and his minions”?

73

Let’s keep our eye on the ball here: the OP is not proposing home schooling. She suggested either a sports academy or sending the 13 year old (not with the family) to another country to work on language skills. There is no indication about the kids preferences. Everything else is our interpretation of the situation. Hopefully, some of the pros and cons are helpful to her…

…but note that she has not responded since yesterday afternoon, so we are effectively arguing with ourselves…

74

also, on the idea that “repeating” 8th grade would be devastating…I mean, I don’t think so…he’s going to be halfway across the country with a completely new school and classmates…he’ll just be an 8th grader…not a kid “repeating” 8th grade.

75

Losing all your friends in a move and then not having a ready community in your new area seems a bit isolating. It can also be difficult to go back into a structured learning environment when you’ve not had any academic responsibilities.

FWIW, our first two California kids were 13 in high school. It was right for them. If it’s not right for your son, that’s fine but I’d opt for repeating 8th in a different type of environment like a project based school or a 50/50 class-homeschool program that can offer him academic flexibility, a good homeschooling community if you’d rather him not be in a school at all, something like that.

76

I think the three posts by the OP makes it reasonable to assume the issue is about redshirting, not about academics or a “gap” year. Educators don’t support redshirting middle school students for good reason.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wcpo.com/news/insider/sports-first-school-second-why-local-parents-are-holding-their-kids-back-in-6th-7th-8th-grade%3f_amp=true

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The other issue is that homeschooling for a year is still school. That would not meet the goal of having the student graduate early, unless it was allowed to be counted as repeating a grade.

Hoping the OP will come back and let us know his/her thoughts.

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That article is about parents holding back kids so they will be a year older than other kids in the same grade. The OP’s son started K early, so he would be getting a year to catch up with the other kids in his grade, instead of being the youngest as he is now. That article also says that “if a parent thinks that another year of maturity, social adjustment and personal growth will help their child adjust to the world around them, go for it.” Lots of parents who start their kids in school a year early later decide that wasn’t the best choice and want to “undo” it. That’s very different from holding a child back just so he’ll be bigger and stronger and older than everyone else in the same grade.

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@csfmap I get what you are saying but it’s not the best article… not that I have a better one. Retention is not as overall successful as society likes to believe and acceleration is a great deal more successful than social commentary suggests. This particular situation is a little wonky in that it seems to be largely about improving sports opportunities and helping a hid transition during a move. Not the route I’d take but I’m not sure we can look at it as a typical retention.

80

The thing is a year of free learning for a gifted kid CAN be acceleration. If he does a standardized test toward end of that year, he may be in a good position to place into higher class levels in high school. High schoolers in most academic situations are on a variety of paths. Maybe dual enrollment can be a good fit later on. In no way do I think this is a choice to hold this kid back academically which I think is the default view by those who’ve used very lockstep academic choices for their kids.

Unorthodox educational choices have worked very well for my mostly homeschooled GT kids. My oldest first hit algebra 1 in 5th grade. He is launching to college at age 18 in the fall after dual enrolling for 2 years. I tend to trust gut instincts that parents have about right path for their kids in this regard. We live quite near a large university and I know a number of families that took their kids for a year on a professor’s sabbatical and their kids all have done great. Smart families, smart successful kids. I don’t get the feeling the OP was going to lock her kid in the basement with video games.