I consider that there is often a dogmatic belief that it is in the gifted child’s best interest to stay in a class with same-aged children and to not let it skip a grade. I want to invite you all to question your beliefs on social-emotional intelligence and how it factors into the decision of accelerating a gifted child in school. I want to illustrate why I think that letting a child skip a grade is warranted more often than is presently the case, both based on my own experiences both as a gifted child in school and as a mother to a gifted child.
On many an occasion, I have talked with fellow parents, school officials, and teachers about whether or not you should let a kid skip a grade. Acceleration is the official term. I will just call it skipping a grade for the sake of legibility.
What’s the one term that always, always, always, comes up in talks like that?
It’s “social-emotional development”, and almost never in a good way.
When the term pops up it’s often used to argue against skipping a grade. (Truly I see why we would want to call it acceleration, as skipping could imply that we simply skip the learning that is to be done in that grade. To all intents and purposes, however, the result is that the child has skipped being in a physical classroom with same-age children in order to move up a grade.)
It feels like some kind of consensus seems to have been reached that it is best for children to be in a class with their “peers” (note the quotation marks) and to rely on enrichment to satiate their cognitive thirst. Peers, to the general public, of course, means children of the same age.
This is necessary to make sure they develop the social-emotional skills that they apparently lack or will not sufficiently develop otherwise.
This sentiment is often echoed by the parents of the child themselves (Allow me to generalize a bit for the sake of argument okay? I know not all of this applies to 100% of cases and situations):
I’ll hear the parents say: “We’re talking to the school about how to move forward but the school is reluctant to let him/her skip a grade because of his/her social-emotional development, and I guess we agree. It’s probably better he/she stay in kindergarten for another year”
I can tell you that I have a physical reaction to hearing this.
I feel anger bubbling up in my belly, my muscles tense, my lips tighten and my mouth feels like I want to puke.
I always wish that at that moment I could say something convincing to bring across my point of view. Generally, I just end up with “I disagree”. And most people that know me, know that I do.
I skipped three grades in elementary school and ended up going to college at age 15 where 18 is the norm here in Holland. I cannot imagine having been kept back because of someone playing the social-emotional card.
Wait, what? Why? Well, let me explain.
I feel like it has some kind of dogmatic belief that it is best for the social-emotional development of gifted children to provide them with lots of enrichment while letting them stay within their age-appropriate grade. This thought has been uttered so often and been repeated by so many that its validity is no longer questioned. It’s like a piece of blanket wisdom that covers all of “how to deal with gifted kids in a school setting”.
It reminds me of the dominance theory in wolves and dogs.
That theory has long been debunked, yet how many people do you know, that still perpetuate the belief that you must be the alpha to your dog, the pack leader? For, if you have not asserted your dominance, the dog will certainly become a four-legged piece of viciousness and turn on you.
Again, it’s something we’ve heard repeated over and over again, on tv, by friends and neighbors, so we accept it to be true, almost without questioning it.
(If you’re reading this and going: “Wait, isn’t it true I should go through doorways first and only let my dog go out after?” or “I thought I wasn’t allowed to let my dog put his head on my foot because it’s a sign of him being dominant.” or “I should always be allowed to take my dog’s dinner bowl away from him because I’m the alpha” then please check out the links below for some information on that, but we’re sidetracking here.)
In the case of that magical unicorn we call social-emotional development, do parents or the school even stop to think about what the term means?
Now, I am no psychologist, I just have personal experience with skipping grades, but I can Google with the best of them (knowing full well that just because it is on the internet it doesn’t mean it’s true).
When I type in social-emotional development, the first hit leads me to the website of the Californa department of education. Here’s what the first two paragraphs say:
Social-emotional development includes the child’s experience, expression, and management of emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others (Cohen and others 2005). It encompasses both intra- and interpersonal processes.
The core features of emotional development include the ability to identify and understand one’s own feelings, to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others, to manage strong emotions and their expression in a constructive manner, to regulate one’s own behavior, to develop empathy for others, and to establish and maintain relationships. (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child 2004, 2)
Sounds pretty ok right? To establish positive and rewarding relationships with others? In my opinion, it just means equipping your kid with the tools it will need to simply “have a life”. It means we want our kids to grow up being in touch with themselves and others and to not turn into psycho ax murderers.
Now back to me. The Dutch system roughly has two kindergarten years and 6 years of elementary school, which basically everyone follows. After that, there are different paths kids can follow school-wise. But for now, let’s focus on elementary school, the two kindergarten years are where kids learn to recognize their first letters, develop lots of fine motor skills (drawing, coloring), and whatnot. These years usually correspond to ages 4 and 5. The first year of elementary school involves your basic learn how to read, etc.
I skipped that first year, as well as year 4, and the last year, year 6.
I never felt my social-emotional development to have been hindered by that, but shudder to think how I would have felt had I not been allowed to skip those years and had my parents and mainly my mom, not advocated for me so well (thank you, mom!).
Why do I say that? Well, as we’ve read above there are two sides to the social-emotional coin, the inter-and the intra-personal one.
Contrary to common belief, gifted kids usually do pretty good at the part of “to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others”. Many gifted kids are very emphatic and pick up on a lot of emotions of those around them. It’s the development of the intra-personal part that I feel is often best served by skipping grades rather than holding kids back. I would even go as far that not accelerating them can be detrimental to their social-emotional development.
Regardless of what side of the personality spectrum a child is on, arguments will be found and given to demonstrate that the child is lacking interpersonal skills and that skipping a year is inappropriate.
When a child is shy, it will be said interpersonal skills are lacking.
It may lack resilience and confidence and surely it would be good for them to, say, stay in kindergarten for another year and work on that.
When a child is demonstrating more defiant or angry behavior, it will be also said interpersonal skills are lacking. It surely first needs to understand that beating up on the other kids is unacceptable behavior before we can talk about anything else.
I say, these arguments largely don’t apply, because we can only truly show what we’re capable of when the right set of boundary conditions is met.
I am always reminded of the colored car example sometimes given to illustrate and explain a gifted kid’s behavior.
Say you already know your colors, or your car brands (I know my son could name all the car brands based on their logo and could tell a Lamborghini Murciélago apart from a Gallardo before the age of 2) and you go to a toddler playgroup. You know you’re not supposed to just grab stuff, because that’s what your parents taught you, so you ask your fellow toddler to please pass you the blue car. Except you get the red one. You kindly ask again, to no avail: “It’s the red one… the Volkswagen minibus… could I have that, please?”. You get handed the yellow SUV.
At this point, of course, it dawns on you, that asking nicely is not going to work. So, you look around and try to figure out how others solve this kind of problem. It seems to be quite simple: you either just grab it without asking, or you scream or get into a fight over it. Alright, seems doable…
Except that this part of the interaction is observed by one of the adult supervisors, and you are labeled as socially and emotionally not up to par. You cannot seem to play nice, you display some quite aggressive behaviors, like screaming and hitting your fellow playmates. You definitely need some work in the social-emotional department.
Or how about the opposite? You figure, it’s not worth it and go and do something else or play on your own. Now you are labeled shy. It’s probably a good idea, to let you stay in kindergarten for a bit, so you can build that self-esteem and you know, come out of your shell a bit more.
Thinking back to when my kid was young I can think of even more examples.
Like when we “had to” take my son to the standard eye test. You have to indicate whether the opening in the circles or C’s on the chart is at the top or bottom or on the left or right.
My son just wanted to call out, left, right, etc., but the lady administering the test insisted on him holding up a stick with the Landolt C mounted at its end in alignment with the sign to demonstrate where the opening was.
My kid just sat there looking at the stick and then at me and couldn’t understand why. If he could just tell her left or right, then why all the brouhaha with the stick.
The lady’s interpretation however was: “Oh, doesn’t he understand what to do? That’s okay” and then proceeded to explain in oversimplified wording what the idea was.
Again, my kid, now really starting to question the lady’s sanity, just looked at me, not understanding what the fuss was, since he had already heard me tell the administrator that he knew left from right.
I realized how easily behavior can be misinterpreted.
Try this on: “Hmm, this kid seems to be a bit slow on the uptake, doesn’t understand simple instructions, lacks self-confidence, keeps looking at mom for confirmation….”
Whereas my interpretation of my son’s reaction was: “I can understand why he’s confused about having to use the stick when he’s heard me tell the lady he knows left from right, and just can’t figure out why we are wasting our time with the stick. He is just looking at me with the question of “Really mom, really? Do I really have to use this little kid stick?”.
Two completely different interpretations of the same situation.
When you experience situations like the above with the cars and the eye test on a regular basis, what do you think that does to your inner self? As a child?
Do you think it builds self-confidence or instills self-doubt? What does that mean for the identification and understanding of one’s own feelings? What will be internalized by the child?
I want to argue that often the gifted child is best helped by providing the right set of circumstances first. Set them up with their true peers before assessing their social-emotional development. You wouldn’t ask an adult to demonstrate he knows how to swim in a bathtub, would you?
Now, I am not saying we should sway the pendulum the other way and always accelerate children, but I am asking you to question your thinking, your assumptions, and your beliefs thoroughly, before deciding and blindly agreeing with “what school is saying”.
I loved the experience of skipping three grades, except when I was in PE. I will tell you honestly that being in PE with kids 3 to 4 years older was not good for my self-confidence when it came to sports ?.
It seems by the way, that I am not the only one and there is plenty of research out there, supporting this line of thinking:
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/
https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-education-practices/acceleration
http://img2.timg.co.il/forums/1_139885255.pdf
https://drsophiayin.com/philosophy/dominance/
https://apdt.com/resource-center/dominance-and-dog-training/
https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/behavior/debunking-the-alpha-dog-theory/
