Proud Dad But With A Dilemma

[N.Mango]

Seems the best is a split one between social and intellectual challenges. Staying in the same grade is too little of an intellectual challenge but also a social challenge with time. A bored kid might create some unnecessary trouble.

Moving up a bit will obviously create new social challenges and intellectual ones. Sure the social challenges are tricky. In a higher class the other kids might feel intimidated by such a clever small kid and might be a bit nasty. But that's not a given and needs empathy, ability and willingness from teachers. We all know there are good and bad teachers. Empathy and beeing able to kindly enforce is one major dividing line between them. Means that's an external factor that you can't really influence.

The trick here is to get your son to help the older kids with schoolwork. Now and also when skipping. That's where social challenges are smoothed out. Big one here is to guide the kid into beeing humble. Humbleness is a very helpful ticket to move up a class and succeeding. Explaining why and showing how everybody is different.

But at that age - too early to skip. Just creates other frustrations. Let a kid be a kid. And give him lots to read.

Both his 1st-grade teacher and this year's teacher have told us that they use him to help other students and not just because he's smart but because when he helps, he doesn't make the student that he's helping feel bad for needing help.
Being humble has been something we are making sure is part of who he is.

 

[RC-Dude]

Both his 1st-grade teacher and this year's teacher have told us that they use him to help other students and not just because he's smart but because when he helps, he doesn't make the student that he's helping feel bad for needing help.
Being humble has been something we are making sure is part of who he is.

I guess what I wrote is only what you knew anyway / confirming it. He seems to have a good parents!

 

[N.Mango]

I guess what I wrote is only what you knew anyway / confirming it. He seems to have a good daddy!

I appreciate that, thank you.
You also brought up points that I hadn't thought of, so thank you for that, too!
I'm glad I decided to bring up this subject here on the forum.

 

[rotauq]

The lower the grade, the bigger the difference. I get the no no for skipping a grade at that age. (3rd graders are 14-27% socially experienced depending on birth month)

From personal experience; my best friend back in elementary school skipped 5th grade. Brilliant guy who ended up getting his master degree of medical science at the age of 17. His parents(smart ppl too) taught him extra curriculair after hours. The problem with skipping grades is that when you are really smart you most of all learn much quicker. So you catch up quick and surpass them as well. So still no peers and still no challenge...
All his private extra curriculair hours snooped away a lot of social experience too. Unless with little luck the the higher grade has some nerds (like me) who can keep up on certain fields. I was able to challenge him in chess for example. Us few almost -smart kids carried him socially though (as far as i can remember)

Life is hard, people are stupid, disappointment everywhere. Learning to cope with that might be more important than everything else. And being a kid these days... Other than fundamental curriculum, any content is going to be obsolete so quick. And with the quick learning trait proven to be excellent, it remains to be stimulated, but as a parent i'd focus mostly on social development.

 

[N.Mango]

3yo just learned his alphabets and for whatever reason, decided backward was more fun.????