Some parental advice from all the lovely parentals? Non parentals also welcome :D

[Thumpalumpacus]

I can't comment from a parental standpoint, but I can comment from a kid's standpoint, although I'm afraid my answer might just muddy the waters.

When I was in Kindergarten, the school contacted my parents and basically told them "he needs to move up, now."  I was explaining how rocket propulsion and insect metamorphosis worked to my teacher, I was skimming through biology textbooks at home, and excelling at mathematics.  Three weeks into the year, they slid me up to first grade, put me in the enrichment program, which was one whole day a week, and the next year they added another day a week in the enrichment program of the grade above me.  The next part I didn't find out until I was in college: when I got to fourth grade, the school strongly recommended to my parents that I be moved up another grade, and after much discussion they said no.  Eventually, I ended up in a lot of classes where I was a high school freshman, there were 3 juniors, and 16 seniors. Had I been moved up again, I would have graduated high school at 16.

Looking back... I don't know what I wish my parents would have done.  I just don't know.  I was always really bored with school for not being advanced enough and really awkward with my peers for not being emotionally mature (a problem certainly not unique to younger students, but probably exacerbated by my comparative youth).  I'm really well adjusted these days, but I don't think that happened until 19 or 20.  Had I not been moved up at all, I would've probably rebelled even more because I'd be so fed up with learning stuff I'd figured out years before, and had I been moved up again I would've basically had an even harder time making friends and dating and such, but I would've been more academically fulfilled.  And it's impossible to look back and say which positive and negative aspects of my life had something to do with that.  Robert Frost and all that.  I can't make a recommendation, other than to suggest that, if you think your kid should move up a grade, do it as young as possible.

When I lived in Iran, I went to a private school that had academic standards far above what American public schools had, so that when we returned in 1978 -- when I was in 6th grade -- I had already studied stuff like geometry and comparative history. I still had a lot to learn, but couldn't do so in the American system, which is metered to the lowest common denominator; I had to wait for college to receive intellectual challenge again.

That period of drift was unpleasant, and only partially offset by private studies in areas like history and music, which kept my brain active. Only when I started college, and had the fortune of some good professors who really lived up to that title, did my intellectual life resume.