Hi All! ‘Just thought I’d quickly share our first radical acceleration success, since I’ll soon have a college junior. 😍
My 17yo (summer birthday) was double grade accelerated in his elementary years, after we had the same debates that many families are now trying to figure out. After giving public and GATE magnets a try, we homeschooled him with a public charter until the midst of 10th grade when he suddenly wanted to give traditional high school a try. It ended up surprisingly being socially as well as academically successful. He took mostly AP classes for the academics, connecting with a huge team of great teens. He was as tall as most of his age peers by then (at 13) and very witty. It didn’t hurt that he was an attractive kid, so got invited to all the parties the girls hosted. Lol
While academics were easy, he had to work extra hard to play sports with the older teens, but did make his high school baseball team and fit in seamlessly.
He graduated at 15 with a year of AP credit. We had decided long ago that he would go to local community college for his first two years so he could continue to live at home- far more for me than for him. Since he graduated during the 2020 COVID chaos, this ended up working out perfectly. We gave him nearly complete independence during these two years, and he not only kept his 4.0 while working 25 hours a week, but also completely applied to university on his own. His “dream school” has been UC Santa Barbara, and he is transferring in as a Junior this fall. He’ll be living in an apartment a block from the beach with three of his high school friends (from those AP classes), moving in the day after his 18th birthday. While he was ready at 15/16 as well, he himself says he feels much more ready to live in his own now, so that part of the timing also worked out. Fwiw, He’s a political science-economics double major, applying to law school next year. 🙂
I am also a gifted consultant, so often see acceleration success experiences. My colleague’s children were also radically accelerated. One just graduated with her Marine Science degree, and the other is at an elite performing school. The best advice I can give is to take one year at a time. There are so many pathways to success, and finding their ideal social-emotional fit now will enable the other building blocks to fall into place. All of us veteran patents have been off when we tried to predict what future years works look like, but all the accelerated learners have graduated at the time best for them. 💜. HTH!