RE: Some parental advice from all the lovely parentals? Non parentals also welcome :D
December 12, 2015 at 1:12 am
(December 11, 2015 at 8:49 am)Rhythm Wrote:(December 10, 2015 at 1:51 pm)Losty Wrote: I think the advantage would be that my daughter graduated to a 5th grade reading level yesterday and she is slowly growing to hate school because "it's sooo boring". The academic disadvantage to being in a grade well under your level is that you get frustrated and discouraged. I want her to be somewhere where she can actually learn new things.
You could buy her better books, or send her to the library. There are academic costs far greater and more tangible than frustration... to skipping (things you cant fix with a new book or a trip to the library). Skipping grades or starting early is basically locking your child out of high school and collegiate sports, and the advantages that flow from both. It's also socially alienating, as mentioned by others.
OTOH, keeping her in grade and supplementing at home to reduce her frustration puts her at the top of her class academically, and preserves her potential as an athlete. It makes her valuable to a college. How rich do you plan to be when she needs tuition? I know it probably seems like a weird way to look at the decision at hand....but you're not sending your daughter to school to be fulfilled..really, are you? You're sending her to school for the education that will afford her a better life. Why sacrifice that, or reduce that opportunity to satisfy a child's sense of fulfillment? Particularly when you can provide those challenges yourself...and so can she.
The odds of grabbing a sports scholarship are a lot smaller than the odds of a bored kid turning to drugs. University of Texas has 50,000 students ... and perhaps 400 athletes. This is not a very convincing line of reasoning.
