Not So Fast
Submitted by mamamia
My kid is pretty smart, if I do say so myself. I'm proud of her and, of course, I do (almost) everything I can to help her to grow intellectually. I read to her daily. I take her to museums. We practice numbers. I sing songs with her.
There's one thing that I refuse to do, though: enroll her in school early. I don't care if she's pouring through college-level textbooks and doing differential equations when she's 4. I absolutely refuse to enroll her in kindergarten before she's 5 or in first grade before she's 6. You won't find me at the school pushing her teacher to give her more difficult assignments or talking to the counselor about the "woes" of raising a gifted child. I won't push for her to skip the third grade. Or the fourth grade. I just won't do it.
I don't understand why parents think that intelligence (or early reading skills) equates to social maturity or a readiness to skip grades. My daughter may enter first grade as the top reader in her class. (Or maybe not. Who knows or cares?) She may be leaps and bounds ahead of the other kids, but I don't see how that means she should skip a grade or two.
To me, there's so much more to school than reading, writing and arithmetic. What about social development? What about learning to cooperate and help others? What about learning to work with all sorts of people? What about humility? What about being a kid?
Honestly, I'd rather my daughter read too-easy books in school than not have the opportunity to learn to socialize, interact and cooperate with her peers. I can always challenge her with difficult reading or math at home, but the skills she'll learn in school are priceless and I'm not willing to sacrifice that for anything.
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