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

[Losty]

Just so you know, I skipped a grade early (not bragging, it is more commonly offered than people realize, I think) and I never regretted it. No one even notices you are a year younger, for the most part.  I cannot think of any drawbacks I personally had...

She's going to be skipping a couple of grades but since her birthday is in August, she should only be about a year or so younger than the other kids.

[Losty]

There is no known or demonstrable academic advantage to skipping a grade.  There are, however, known and demonstrable disadvantages that range from social issues to the reduced likelihood of things like sports scholarships.  I'd say that you might want to approach the question under the assumption that there is no academic gain to be had, see what it looks like when the metrics are different.

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.

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

I suffered from this myself. In Teheran, I was in a private schol where, by sixth grade, I had studied French, geometry, and world as well as American history. When I returned to America in the middle of that school year was when I began hating school, because it wasn't just boring, it was stultifying. Even in my eleventh-grade US History class I never did any of the homework; the way the grade was assigned was 90% exams, 5% homework, and 5% attendance. Since I had already learnt the coursework in deeper detail than Mr Schiro was teaching, simply showing up and acing the exams gave me an A in that class for that year. Hell, I was stoned half the time, too. And because I had been put in remedial English due to having moved and my test scores not being available (pre-Internet age, y'all), and because Mr Zarit weighed his grades towards attendance and not performance, I flunked bonehead English the first semester (moved to Honors once test-scores arrived).

I left high school, though, with a 2.9 GPA, because other teachers weighted attendance or homework higher, and outside of English and the fine arts (both drawing and music) I was bored out of my skull, and saw no point in re-covering material I already knew. It was a bad decision I made, there; and that's why I say keeping your child challenged is a good thing, so long as you understand that the most important teacher a child has is an involved parent -- something you obviously grasp.

[Aroura]

There is no known or demonstrable academic advantage to skipping a grade.  There are, however, known and demonstrable disadvantages that range from social issues to the reduced likelihood of things like sports scholarships.  I'd say that you might want to approach the question under the assumption that there is no academic gain to be had, see what it looks like when the metrics are different.

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.

This is such an important deal.  You don't want your kids to hate school.  This is the #1 reason I home school, because I can go at her pace, so she isn't bored or pushed too far, either way.  If I could have pushed her ahead a grade and had that solve the problem, I probably would have chosen to do that, but the schools around here suck, and they refuse to even test for gifted kids, because the school board has decided it is divisive.  There were severely mentally challenged kids in her class that did not qualify for special needs, and I think it was because the school got money for each of those kids in a class.  They also seem to want to diagnose every child, weather particularly slow or especially quick, as autistic (because this also gets them money).
 
I would have to get her into a better school in another city that does have gifted programs, and we did try, but the waiting list was almost 2 years!

Anyway, it is ultimately up to you, but I agree, this isn't bout academics, !t is about keeping your child the happiest she can be in her learning environment.  As her mother, you will be the best judge of that particular metric, with her input. Good luck!

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

[Losty]

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?

She's going to be 1 year younger than her other classmates. I do buy her books and engage her mind in different activities outside of school, but when she's at school she has to do whatever her class is doing. I don't know why you think being a year younger would lock her out of sports? I was a year younger than most of my classmates and I played sports just fine. But no I don't plan to be rich, I also don't see her being much of an athlete, but you never know. I don't understand why you think being one year younger than other students is going to have such a huge impact. I also don't understand why you think I haven't considered this. Like I'm just making some rash decision. I have considered the possible social issues and I think she can handle it.

[Aroura]

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.

My parents kept my brother in his grade, even though he was so bored he hated it (through middle school and into early high school).  They got him into chess club, and even a couple of community college classes he was interested in.  Although he enjoyed these extra-curricular things, it did not stop him from dropping out of school at the beginning of his sophomore year because he just couldn't stand being so freaking bored for 6+ hours a day any longer (and being treated like he was the problem for sleeping through class, even if he could ace all the test). By then, he had learned to hate organized education.  He refused further college classes, got his GED and is not a truck driver.

The let me move up a grade, and I graduated with honors.  I rather enjoyed school, and continued on to college.  I also participated in high school sports (soccer and track) without any issues.  I am really not sure where this idea is coming from, that being a year younger is somehow socially stifling?

My husband is also in college, and he's met a few kids who are starting college at 16 because they were advanced or home schooled.  It does not seem to be doing them any harm. Quite the opposite.

[The Grand Nudger]

She's going to be 1 year younger than her other classmates. I do buy her books and engage her mind in different activities outside of school, but when she's at school she has to do whatever her class is doing.

An early life lesson..sometimes, hell..most of the time..you have to sit through boring meetings that don't interest or challenge you in the least.  

I don't know why you think being a year younger would lock her out of sports?  I was a year younger than most of my classmates and I played sports just fine. But no I don't plan to be rich, I also don't see her being much of an athlete, but you never know. I don't understand why you think being one year younger than other students is going to have such a huge impact. I also don't understand why you think I haven't considered this. Like I'm just making some rash decision. I have considered the possible social issues and I think she can handle it.

Because it does, that's why I think that.  You "played sports fine" isn't what I'm angling for.  The way we think of years and age (and how we place for school) means that someone who's "just a year older" than your child could be one year and 364 days older.   That's alot of potential inches, potential pounds, seconds off a 100m time, etc.  As far as academics go..it's best if your kid is the very top of their own class, rather than, say, the top 10th of the class ahead.  

You asked for input, I don't know what you've considered and haven't.  What I -do- know is that skipping is seen...for no reason at all, as an accomplishment, an achievement, or otherwise as something desirable.  Consider me the devils advocate on this one.  I doubt that your decision today will make or break your childs education either way, honestly, and also that you'll be able to eliminate frustration from your child's educational experience by something so trivial as skipping a grade.  If you have a bright kid..she'll get bored of her skipped up grade as well.  If you don't consider sports scholarships or relative performance placement to be useful metrics for making the decision.....then I'd say flipping a coin could decide this one with nary an effect either way.

I don't mean to offend you or heckle you in any way (you know I love you..I'm certain that whatever choice you make after all consideration will be the right one for -your- child )

That said, just voicing opposition.   In our system, there is no advantage to skipping a grade.... while there are disadvantages.  That what you want to achieve (an educational challenge) can be offered to your daughter (probably -is- being offered to your daughter) by other means without associated disadvantage..and that skipping a grade does not actually secure the aim in the first place.  In a perfect world there wouldn't be "grades" or skipping.  Just a pace that accelerated or decelerated based upon the ability of the child.  Our system is far from perfect and it simply doesn't reward that sort of fulfillment/challenge seeking in the least (a constant complaint of educators).  Ideologically, it's pleasing, it seems like a good idea and if it was well incorporated "somehow" I'd quickly change my mind about my own kids.  

My own personal experience with skipping is amusing.  There was some talk of holding me back a grade in 1st iirc (not even kidding)..prompting a battery of tests that surprised my school and my parents.  Turns out I wasn;t dumb, or at least not dumb in the way that they thought I was, lol.  Later, in middle school, there was an opportunity to skip a grade offered every single year, my mother declined.  Fast forward to the week before my 16th (the earliest a student could voluntarily drop out without consequence)......I'm sitting in front of my high school principal smiling like a cheshire cat at the irony of having Mr. Education Education.....Education actually advise me to drop out and pursue higher ed after a GED due to a gross lack of challenge or opportunity.  I was in Magnet, CAST, MEGSS, and of course I'd percolated up to all of that from Gifted.  None of these programs challenged me (this was my family's fault...I come from a family of teachers..I did more schoolwork at home and on vacation than I ever did in school).  It wouldn't have mattered if I were held back or skipped any more than being placed in every single program offered helped.  I spent my time at school reading whatever I wanted...and I'd done it for so long across so many schools that a some point nobody even questioned it anymore.  "That's Tyler, in the back he's fine".  Straight F's..always one class with straight A's (for comedic effect), crushed standardized testing like it was my job..which, I suppose I felt that it kind of was.  My mom had taught me the test...as in very literally the manner in which those tests and their answers were generated and placed in multiple choice parameters, helped me game their silly system with a legitimately effective "christmas tree strategy" to answers when I really didn't know.   Pretty sure it left me jaded, knowing that there were angry moms and dads who really wanted their kid in my spot, that their kids probably deserved it..but that for reasons arcane to me then (but now plainly transparent - I boosted their state score averages) - I just skated on through year after year where they'd flunk or drop (or both) plenty of others.  I was encouraged to perform - and that's how I interpreted the expectation.  You could be in for serious headaches with a smart kid, and sometimes we don;t think about how the ways we encourage our children to perform will be interpreted by them, or how well they'll handle them.  

You think your girl could handle skipping a grade..I have no reason to disagree with your assessment of your child, but I do think that the fact that we're discussing it in that manner should set off alarm bells, lol.  If you're considering whether or not to subject her to something she'll have to handle....to my mind, in your situation,  there has to be a  damned clear objective, and it had better be attainable.  Kinda hoping that mine are all average, so I don't ever have to wonder, lol.  Here's a Q.  Lets say you skip her..because why not.  Two months later she's bored, she's stolen textbooks a grade higher still and read them just for shits and giggles.  How will you feel about the skip in that, admittedly speculative, scenario?  She's "handling" her new situation, but the problem persists.  What's next?

(you've got arouras response up there for the more pleasant view, lol.  She skipped, didn't seem to impact her education or social aptitude.....don't know if skipping would have helped her brother though, that comes out of left field.  "My brother ate a peach...AND DIED!"   )

[vorlon13]

I was the youngest boy in my class (folks had a choice of sending me at 4 or 5, they picked 4).

Never know how I might have turned out if they waited, but it probably would have been easier if I had started at 5. I was in summer school between 2 and 3 and 3 and 4 grade. I did catch up, but it was hard.

[Edwardo Piet]

I joined at 5 and was the eldest, everyone else was 4.

I was also the shortest and smallest kid despite being the eldest... I got bullied a lot.

I'm average height now.