<p>Gee I never pondered any of these issues. Son just made the birthday cutoff so off to school he went. I think everything worked out for the best, though.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the child. My DD, who was the youngest at the time, was held back with a late November birthday because they were slowly moving our cut off back from Jan. 31 to Oct. 31 and then Sept. 1. At the time, she was very petite as well as the youngest. Now she is a senior in HS and it has all worked out well, however, I see this year, where she is ahead of her peers socially and is really ready to go to college now. She has friends in her grade and in the year ahead of her. </p>
<p>Fast forward to her brother, 7 years younger than her with a Jan. birthday. In his daycare, they kept moving him up to be with older kids because of his advanced verbal skills. Eventually, we “held him back” there to get him in with his grade peers, although he was the oldest with them. He went to the same elementary school as DD (7 years later). It was a disaster. He was so advanced, except for his fine motor skills that he was bored literally to tears every night. In the interim since DD left elementary school and DS got there, No Child Left Behind kicked in and the instruction DS got was much more rote, less tailored to different kids’s needs and more focused on standardized tests. He suffered through 1st and 2nd grade (although he was going to 3rd grade math in 2nd grade). After much testing and soul searching, we had him skip 3rd grade and go directly to 4th. Other than his writing skills, he is doing better. Socially things were hard that 4th grade year - mostly because unbeknownst to us, the kids in that grade were just not as nice a bunch as the grade he left. He was isolated in the younger grade too. This year, he started middle school, which is 6th grade in our district. He was placed in a 7th grade math class (Pre-Algebra) with about 15 other 6th graders and a bunch of 7th graders. He has not missed a beat. He does not seem less mature than many of the other gifted 6th graders (they all have some maturing to do!). He is finally enjoying school because he is learning more at his own level and pace and is around more kids who are gifted, where in his old grade, at least in elementary school he was the only one. Yes, he will be the youngest to drive, but we did not think making him wait 8 years for the driving thing to happen to keep him from having a good academic experience. Many people told us to send him to private school, however, we are in a good school district and that was not in our budget. He loves sports, although this is not a natural strength for him. He plays travel soccer with his age peers and he still is not at the top so we feel the disadvantage of being younger is not horrible as some migh think. Better for him to not be bored in school given how many hours are spent there. Anyway, this is just a real life example that you can’t make these types of decisions in a general way - you need to know your child and figure out what is most important and what is best. I’ve read a lot about academically gifted kids and many do poorly in school because they are so bored they do the minimum to get by. Some event suffer in college because they have never had to work to learn anything and have no study skills.</p>
<p>I have virtually no study skills having never had any need to work. It’s going to cause me trouble at BS. I’m beyond bored ever day at school, I could literally take the final exams now and get the highest scores in my grade. I wish I was in the year ahead a lot, I mean I read at university level but I have to suffer through 8th grade english class. Sorry for ranting but it’s very very annoying. Hopefully next year this will change and my maturity will give me te edge in coping with the realities ofliving away from home.</p>
<p>That sounds really arrogant and I hate sounding like that,I was just trying to point out how ridiculous it is for me to be in the grade I am and how it has been damaging for me academically.</p>
<p>Its ok Blue, I know how u feel. I HATE No Child Left Behind, and I wish public schools could just give placement tests to see what level kids are in. I mean I am in French 4 now which is a senior level class because of a placement test, and me and my friend are the only sophmores. Even there I’m bored. Its funny when the teacher is like “Well all of you are 17 and 18, you should know how to…” and me and my friend smile cuz she forgets were young. If all classes were like that, I wouldn’t want to go to BS.</p>
<p>“I’ve read a lot about academically gifted kids and many do poorly in school because they are so bored they do the minimum to get by. Some even suffer in college because they have never had to work to learn anything and have no study skills”</p>
<p>This is so true! I would make much better grades and like school so much more if it was challenging. Now I just do what I need for the A and not my best because I don’t need to do my best. Becaue of this I’m not as passionate and it’s not as rewarding. I also have no study skills. I know I’m going to do terrible the first semester of BS or college, but once I adjust and realise that I actually have to work to get good grades, I should be fine.</p>
<p>I hope it of some solace to you to know that you are not alone in your frustration. But even a grade acceleration is not a cure-all. The pace would still be too slow, the material too shallow. Trust me. When a student is over three grade levels ahead of their agemates, a single grade or two isn’t really going to make a difference. </p>
<p>I will also guess (because I have children like you and I see my younger self in you) that the damage is felt more profoundly in the heart than the brain. It’s rough when people refuse to teach you, but I think you’re smart enough to appreciate that if you wait around for someone to teach you something, you could be stupid forever. It’s up to you, no matter where you are. I do so hope you, and all those like you, get to be taken seriously and have your self respect respected next year.</p>
<p>I really, really do understand what you guys are going through. But please hang in there! Don’t let them get you down. And try not to hold it against your teachers or your schools. It’s not so much that they don’t care as they may very well simply can’t see how it is possible.</p>
<p>There isn’t an official cutoff in my country, it’s almost an unwritten law that the birthday cutoff is Dec 31st, so basically everyone in the same grade was born in the same year.
This has never been a big deal to me, because getting good grades at my school isn’t about being intelligent. It’s about how good you are at memorizing things. Teachers give you several hundred pages of SOLE text and you have to learn them by heart in order to ace the final exams. I’m usually not very keen on learning by heart, I’m no superstar grade-wise and therefore teachers at my school don’t see the potential in me. Teachers think I’m just another random student. I know I’m sounding like I’m trying hard to show off.
Learning at my school doesn’t require critical thinking or analyzing skills, so age cut-offs mean nothing. I hate sounding arrogant, but if given 2 weeks and a review sheet, I could easily pass the ninth-grade final exams (I’m in eighth grade now). BlueRaven1’s situation is much worse since she’s a year older than her classmates, but my situation is similar.
Socially, I think I may be more mature than the majority of the ninth graders at my school. Part of this maturity is because of the boarding school admission process which has given me amazing opportunities to reflect upon myself.
EDIT: I just clicked “Submit” and saw neato’s post. Great post, neato, it makes me feel much better.</p>
<p>NCLB-big joke. End of comment on that.</p>
<p>My daughter has a late b-day, August 25, in our state the cut off is Sept 1. I made the decision to send her to school as the youngest and the physically smallest. </p>
<p>Upon entering kindergarten it was clear she really belonged in 1st grade bu the social component was way to much. Not a week after turning 5, 3 kids turned 6 years old. She was academically number 2 in the class, number one was almost exactly 12 months older than her. BUT the problems came up in other areas. She had to have a female bus driver “carry” her off the bus because her legs were just too short, (she is now 5"5). She and the other august and july babies had issues with organization. The could do all the homework, just couldnt remember to bring home all the proper books. (that school was outstanding, it gave the kids a adult who used 10 minutes at the end of the day to help the kids get organized, and because my d traveled 2 hours each way, they gave us a 2nd set of book).</p>
<p>I considered long and hard about going forward and holding back.</p>
<p>I didn’t know it when we began the bs process, but given the chance I would let her repeat 9th grade. Give her a chance to not be the youngest. Of course she said no until I told her she wouldn’t repeat the same courses and given an extra year would allow her to have 4 years at a great school and take even more great classes…she is beginning to see it my way.</p>
<p>We are even hoping for maybe a gap year in an Asian country, we really arent in a rush to go to college—lol.</p>
<p>You will find a much larger range of ages in a boarding school class than at a typical high school. There of plenty of repeaters that are a year, or even two, older than normal. But I also found many younger than our local school as states like NY, where many BS kids come from, use a 12/31 age cutoff for public schools.</p>
<p>
BlueRaven1 - are you my son? Oh wait, he’s already AT a school… But I’m glad you recognize you will have to work hard. Take advantage of any help the school has - learning center are there for a reason. Also be upfront with your advisor that you need help developing study skills, and don’t get discouraged when things don’t come as easy as they do now.</p>
<p>I’d hope I’m not your son because that’d mean I’d have some gender issues 
I kind of avoided letting the BSs know about my organization/study skills issues( I didn’t lie about it or anything but I wasn’t going to advertise it) but I know it would’ve croped up in my teavher recs. If I get in I will tell my advior although it’d beome apparent pretty quickly anyway. Thanks neato for the encouragement-it does make me feel better. My cousin told me that school is pointless and boring till college anyway although if I get into BS hopefully it won’t be for me. Rather off topic,an amusing thing I realised today was that at the start and end of school they make us take a reading test. My reading ability consitently soars over the summer but stays pretty stable over the school year-what does that say about school? Sorry to the OP for wandering off topic.</p>
<p>blue, exactly the same happens with our kid too, even though i suspect you’re far, far brighter! bottom line - sub-genius kids can suffer through regular school too, even if they’re in what are called an “accelerated” level of classes. :o</p>
<p>I’m not that smart :o
Definitely not a genius. I’m just really good at humanities, I suffer through Algebra like everyone else.
Get this we have Gifted English BUT all kids in 8th grade are in it unless they’re in ESL. I have a question, why can someone gifted at math be in calculus by 8th grade but school systems don’t let those gifted in English go ahead. Is it because Humanities isn’t as sequential?</p>
<p>Success in humanities requires a very broad horizon from which to draw and the flexibility of mind to think of good questions. Math is fairly specific. Son is also a humanities kid but is also good at math (but not nearly so). He likes math only because there is no “angst” in it, as he says. There are objective tests that make it easier to place students in math, but not as much in history. Essays are subjective.</p>
<p>Life beckons. Must go.</p>
<p>neatoburrito makes a terrific point about skipping a grade not being the “magic bullet” if a student is very advanced academically. </p>
<p>Only one of my children has been of average age for his class. One was the youngest in his class, and two of my children skipped grades (respectively, third and fifth). Both of the children who skipped grades in turn were among the youngest two or three children in their classes as day students at an excellent boarding school. </p>
<p>I am surprised no one has mentioned another aspect of skipping grades: at least for my children, it made them magnets for severe physical and emotional abuse from a very competitive cohort of older classmates. Some of those classmates, in so many words, told my children that by joining their new classes they were “stealing” their supposedly likely eventual places as day students at the fairly coveted boarding school. This rolled right off my elder child, but the bullying of my other child (also physically slight) was relentless and rapidly escalated to the physical–so much so that litigation against the school was necessary to get my other child into an acceptable school district. So while they were the happiest students in the world once they arrived in high school, there were some brutal years before then. </p>
<p>Not a one of my children would have made a different decision about whether to skip or not to skip, but I likely would have kept a sharper eye on what was happening at school if I had any idea that a student would be treated that way simply for moving up a class. No one seems to deem it anyone else’s business when a child stays back, but I was astounded how other people seemed to think it their business when children moved ahead.</p>
<p>Wow, I never really put much thought into this issue. My ODD was born May 25 and started school when she was 5. She was ready at 4 for a full-day Pre-K program at a catholic school. While she wasn’t an early reader, she was very verbal and bright.</p>
<p>My YDD is 3 1/2 now and her birthday is June 17. I never thought about holding her back another year from K, but I don’t think she in any way, shape or form could handle a full-day Pre-K program this Fall. She is also verbal and very bright, but she is very hyper, can’t sit still, etc. I think she will be fine in a half-day K program in Fall 2011 though.</p>
<p>Honestly, I wasn’t but am a little worried now that I know there are so many repeaters and older kids in boarding school. My son, almost always the youngest in his class, is a “uniter”. He has had many friends wherever he goes but the ones he has had problem getting along with are usually some older/bigger kids who like to dominate others by making rude remarks, calling names and even getting physical - the older but really juvenile ones. I hope the kids who have been held back or are repeating are really the mature ones. I tend to think I don’t need to worry about my son’s social life. Well maybe I should knowing what I know now.</p>
<p>Momalot, I was referring to it not solving academic problems rather than the bullying you described (which is AWFUL). Thank goodness my kids haven’t had those issues.</p>
<p>Benley, I wouldn’t worry. My son is also one of those peacemakers. But he’s been lucky thus far in avoiding the mean ones. Maybe it’s because he’s got his big jock friends who they know would come to the rescue :)</p>
<p>At least at exeter it doesn’t really seem like there are that many repeaters. I’m one of them but I really don’t know very many you usually can’t tell the difference unless they telll you. The only one’s you really know are like the huge football PGs. In our grade we have a few younger ones though. I think our youngest was twelve but he’s thirteen now and we have a few other just turned fourteen year olds. They don’t get picked on because of their age or anything.</p>
<p>almost there, do you feel you have any advantages by being older or a repeater? Does it make you socially more confident or more in control? Do you feel the younger ones in general (not the “extremely” young ones) less mature in any way?</p>