Earlier this week, I shared some information about how to get your preschooler ready for kindergarten. If you have a preschooler or toddler, make sure you read it.
Today, I’m wading into the debate on whether children with spring or summer birthdays should be kept back a year. This is sometimes called, “Red shirting,” and it is usually the parents of boys who consider starting them a year later than they could.
I will tell you upfront, that we did have Henry wait a year, but I didn’t share that information with either of the educators I spoke with for this post. I didn’t want to bias them in their answers, and also, I’ll be the first to say that I don’t think Henry’s situation was necessarily typical (more on that later).
Laurie Sjolund, the Early Learning Coordinator in Sumner, says the decision about whether to wait a year is always an individual decision that should be made based on the unique needs of the child and family. She points out that a boy with a summer birthday could have better skills than a girl with an autumn one. Rather than focusing on the child’s age or gender, she encourages parents to assess their child’s skills and also to think about the important issue of what the child would be doing with that extra year.
Cindy Johnson, an Early Learning Specialist in Franklin Pierce, worries that children who spend an extra year at home may be losing valuable learning time. She feels that if children are five they should go to kindergarten.
Why did we have Henry wait? Well, it was a combination of factors, and I think if you make this decision it should be. He was not where he needed to be academically, mainly because he had absolutely no interest in learning anything related to letters or numbers. Hole digging was his thing. The alphabet song? Not so much. Additionally, while he had a fabulous preschool, he had a very difficult time attending to activities like story time. He was typically doing head stands or rolling out of the circle before the ten minutes was up. It wasn’t just me who noticed either. His Sunday school teacher, his preschool teacher, and saintly Mr.Dave at the Fife Pool, all commented ever-so-tactfully on his activity level.
We had also taken Henry to our district’s Child Find when he was 3, and he’d had quite a bit of other testing. So, while he was receiving speech services, we were pretty confident that he didn’t have some bigger thing going on. I mention this, because if you have a gut instinct that your child has some kind of special need, then you really don’t want to wait a year. You want to get him evaluated as soon as you can and get him receiving special services (You can start these as young as 3 through your school system. This is a topic too big for this post, but if you want to know more, call your district).
So, we gave Henry what his preschool teacher called, “The gift of time.” His preschool had a Pre-K class, so he didn’t have to redo the same stuff. He continued speech therapy with the school district and with a private therapist, and of course, we did lots and lots of outings and work here at home. He started kindergarten this year, and he has fit right in. He’s on the tall side but not the tallest. He’s doing well with the work, but he isn’t bored either, and socially-well, he fits right in.
Now, this decision was right for Henry, but I would never suggest that it would be right for everyone. I have friends who kept back girls with June birthdays and friends who started boys with August ones. I know folks who decided to wait mostly because they didn’t want their kids to be the very youngest in the class, and I know folks who started their kids because their children are spaced closely together, and they didn’t want them to be in the same grade. I also have friends who had their very bright children wait in order to give them more time to develop socially. All these children have thrived, and whether they’re older or younger, their parents all feel good about the choice they made.
In the end, I don’t have a magic formula to share with you. If you’re on the fence, I think the best thing to do is to talk with the people who know your child best. If her preschool teacher thinks she’s ready, she probably is. If you’re still nervous when that first day rolls around, ask the kindergarten teacher if you can plan on meeting in a couple weeks to see how things are going.
What do you think? Do children who wait a year have an advantage when they start, or do kids do better if they start as soon as they can? I’d love to hear what you have to say, just as long as you keep your comments respectful (I know…I know….you learned that in kindergarten).
Don’t forget I have links to most district registration events in the menu bar. I am still working on updating a few. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments on this topic!
Biggest mistake I have ever made as a mother was putting my 4 year old in Kindergarten. He’s now 14 and a freshman in High School and while he’s VERY bright and able to keep up with the work – including honors classes, he has always been smaller than his classmates and less mature and it’s been a problem at times. I wouldn’t let him go out for wrestling this year because he hasn’t even started puberty and there was no way I was going to have him wrestle seniors with muscles. He will be the last to get his driver’s license and the last to get to date (16) in his class. I didn’t think about ANY of this 10 years ago.
His birthday is Sept 22 and for any birthday after August 31 but before October 1, you could have them “tested” in to Kindergarten. As a toddler, this child had an amazing vocabulary and related very well with his peers from what we could tell. He always has been a bit of a self-contained kid. He tested high on intelligence and average on social readiness, but we pushed ahead anyway. The school said they would revisit the decision 6 weeks into Kindergarten – they did and he was fine. However, I have since found out that the issues with social skills don’t show up until second grade -and they did! Suddenly he was completely unable to keep up with the demands. He acted much younger than his peers and often annoyed them – yet, oddly, he gravitated towards and was able to charm the pants off adults. We STRUGGLED through the rest of elementary school despite him being in the highly capable classes. He could do the work but could not keep up with the demands of being a self-starter and taking responsibility for his work habits. We continued to struggle through middle school and finally pulled him out of all Challenge classes but math because he was doing so badly in them. He was forgetting homework and stuffing his back pack with unfinished and un-turned in assignments. His grades in 6th and 7th were ridiculous for his level of intelligence. Finally, at the start of 8th grade, he was diagnosed as ADD. He was absent minded and had a hard time concentrating on anything for very long. The ADD meds changed his life and he had all A’s and B’s through his whole 8th grade year. It was amazing to see him buckle down with an hour of homework and not be wandering and avoiding for 3 hours.
He is still smaller than most of his classmates and sometimes less mature, but it’s getting better. I wish with all my heart I had waited the year I should have. It is NEVER a bad thing for them to be TOO mature but it can be a real struggle when they are the youngest in their class.
I fully agree that the decision needs to be based on the child, that said all 3 of my kids did 2 years of kindergarten and are now the older kids. All 3 for different reasons, My oldest, girl born in August, was academically at the top of her class and pre-school teachers even thought she would benefit from an all day kindergarten. By thanksgiving we could see that while the ABC’s were not a problem, emotionally she was struggling, we pulled out of the all day and switched to a half day and things improved. the next fall, having just turned 6 she started 1st grade and by mid Oct. it was apparent that she was not emotionally ready. We knew we were moving by Christmas and so after Christmas break she started over in Kindergarten and now is in high school and thriving. Looking back I wish we would have just waited rather then put her through so much change but we did what we thought was right at the time and were willing to change things when needed.
My 2nd born, boy born in August, started kindergarten a week after turning 5 because he was recieving services thru Child Find and was not allowed to stay in the pre-school having turned 5, we used that first year as a pre-k and the teacher worked well with us and agreed that he was not quite ready but should stay in school. So the following year he stayed in kindergarten and has done very well since. While academics are still a struggle for him socially he fits right in and is a happy kid who enjoys school.
Then there is my youngest boy with an April b-day. He was a premie and started with services at birth-to-3 and then 1 year of child find pre-school from age 3-4. We then went to a co-op and he was the kid always movin around, talking out of turn, but was easily corrected and brought back to task. We met with his teacher who felt that another year of pre-k, wouldn’t be best for him but that she was concerned about how he would do behaviorly in kindergarten. On her recommendation we decided to register him to start kindergarten and devoted our time to helping him have better self control. It was a mistake. He started kindergarten and was soon spending lots of time in the time-out corner. He was happy to be in school but spent so much time feeling like he was in trouble that he thought the teacher didn’t like him. I was torn with wether to pull him out or keep sending him but we stayed in and kept hoping things would get better. When we realized that he was quite behind in his academics we knew he was going to need a new start and that there was no way he was ready for the full day of first grade. We actually changed school districts so that he could re-do Kindergarten in a half-day program and am so glad we did. His 2nd kinder year was a positive year he loved going and loved his teacher. He is now in 3rd grade and will soon be 10 and is just a happy kid. He seems to be closer to kids who are a year or 2 younger then him in terms of his behavior and every year at his birthday his teachers are shocked when the realize he is one of the oldest, his chronological age and his maturity are not the same and he needs to be with the kids he fits in with not the ones his age. That first kindergarten year feels like a bad nightmare now and since his new start he has found a love of school, he is not an academic kid but does OK, he has lots of friends and tries his best.
I think when it comes to sending or not you have to look at your kid for who they are, not who the school says they should be based on what I call the box, every kid is different and they do not all fit in the box. If you are willing to adjust and make changes for your kid regardless of what some will think, wether its waiting or retaining, they will see you standing up for them.