This thread I started over 2 years ago has been closed.
Therefore, I though I’d start this new thread to give an update on my son. He got his master’s degree this past spring from a top university and now has a 150k job. However, he says he’s still haunted by the memory of watching his peers graduate before him. He would’ve much rather graduated with his peers and ended up with a 50k job. We know we can’t change the past, but I’m hoping that parents of fall-born children who haven’t started school yet will consider the consequences of being one of the youngest.
Congratulations to your son! I was one who posted a number of times on your other thread (our son was a a fall birthday and we did hold him out of K for a year). So our son was one of the oldest in his class.
As I said in my other posts…a good life skill for your son is to acknowledge his accomplishments and not compare himself to anyone else. As he grows and matures even more, and grows into his adult status, hopefully he will see that what he has accomplished is more important than how long it took him to get there.
It sounds like he has much to celebrate…and I hope he will get there soon enough.
The thing is, there’s a certain mindset involved in fixating on how a different path in life would have been better, and it’s a mindset better challenged and deconstructed than indulged. How can you (or he) know that if he’d finished high school a year earlier, he wouldn’t have been equally bitter about the downsides of that choice?
Respectfully, I hope he’s getting some help with gaining perspective. Achieving the level of success that he has and still dwelling on this water-under-the-bridge issue seems like either 1) he’s deeply “stuck” on something that is the very definition of a first-world problem, or 2) he’s getting something out of continuing to guilt-trip the caring parents who tried in good faith to make the best choice for him, with the information they had at the time.
If you’re continuing to apologize for this (either overtly or implicitly), I would suggest that you let him know that you are letting yourselves off the hook and won’t continue to engage or self-flagellate on this issue. He has a great life, in no small part because his parents helped to prepare him for it. Refocusing on gratitude could go a long way.
ETA: Sorry, I misread - the choice was not to redshirt him. Either way, though… he’s long overdue to stop wishing for a different past. It’s one thing to dispassionately believe that the other choice would have been better, and even to help communicate that perspective to parents who face the same choice today. It’s another thing to let his present and future be clouded by being “haunted” by what might have been. I hope he can put this behind him and move on. BTW, I got grade-skipped from 1st to second and started college way too young, so I definitely know what he’s saying. But I also know that the road not taken would have had downsides too.
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One of my kids was the youngest and started school aged four. One was the oldest, after repeating K. Both are successful. I can honestly say that neither of them ever brings up the issue and are fully independent adults.
Some younger students are very mature, some older ones are very immature. I can definitely say my kid who was the oldest in class did some stupid things as a teen, but my kid who was youngest was ready for school and was reading before the age of five.
There isn’t a one size fits all approach, but I do think countries such as Finland have it right with children starting formal education aged seven.
There is research on brain development which indicates that a certain level of brain development is necessary to tackle more abstract concepts, especially in math. It has nothing to do with level of intelligence. Force feeding kids through the system to the point where they are introduced to subjects before they are ready for them can be detrimental.
While I am truly sorry your son hit some academic bumps, you can never know what bumps would have occurred on the other path - and you can bet there would have been some! Yes, there are absolutely some abstract concepts that are easier as the brain matures - I state this a lot when a middle school kid thinks they’re bad at math because they’re not ready for the level of abstraction they’re seeing. Give them another year or two and they will be ready - it has no bearing on whether they’re good at math or not.
BUT one cannot ignore a whole other set of facts, which is older students are much more likely to drop out and have an extremely hard time when they are the OLDEST and struggle. We’re seeing a whole bunch of kids who unfortunately hit Covid as their bump. Some gapped, some struggled with online formats, some just floundered. They’re now 24 and still haven’t finished undergrad. Redshirting has its own issues. I really think continuing to discuss being haunted by this shows some underlying issues that have nothing to do with the decision you made 20 years ago.
Similar to my kids. Both have fall birthdays. S23 started school at age 4, then they changed the age cutoff in our district and D26 was literally one day too young for the cutoff… so she was the oldest in her class most of the time.
However, S23 is my kid who has always been more mature than his classmates and ready for the next step… while D26 is the kid that sometimes wishes she’d had another year of just being a kid
It’s a shame that your son is continuing to ruminate on the past, despite his very successful present and likely even more successful future. I agree with the others who have expressed their concern that he get some help sorting through those feelings and learning to let go of things he cannot change. I think you, OP, might also benefit from talking things through with a therapist.
I have a fall birthday and I found it frustrating to be the youngest throughout school. I also had undiagnosed ADHD and didn’t really live up to my potential in high school and a chunk of college. It took me an extra year to graduate, too. But I wouldn’t change it and I certainly don’t blame my parents for making that decision. I was a 4 year old who taught myself to read and my birthday was just before the cut off—hence, I went to kindergarten at 4. I have gone on to have a successful career and have raised 2 lovely kids.
Both of my kids have spring birthdays and I was rather relieved they would be on the older side. But then the cut off date changed to September 1, redshirting became very popular and my March/April babies ended up being on the young side. Oh well. They are fine. And your son is fine, too. The sooner you both realize it, the sooner you can move on and start enjoying his successes!
PS, Tell your son that having a fall birthday only gets better with age. All my friends turned 50 last year and I was still 49 for several more months!
I am confused. The son went to school at 4 but is haunted by watching peers graduate a year before him? I would have thought his graduation would be earlier than many of the same age.
My son is considered “gifted” but I sent him to kindergarten at age 5, August birthday. He is almost 40 now. The subject has never come up.
The son took an extra year to finish undergrad. I think the OP is talking about his undergrad friends graduating a year before he did.
But the past is the…past. If this young man continues to be concerned about decisions made 20 years ago, I suggest he seek some counseling to learn how to value what one has, and let go of things over which he has no control (and really didn’t negatively affect him).
Rumination like this can lead to depression and can be a sign of anxiety and OCD. And I say that as a parent of kids with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders. Do not hang onto this and do not feed it. You can’t go back in time and he can’t either. Tons of kids are super successful and happy and content not being red-shirted or even skipping grades or graduating on a different schedule from their peers.
If you want to help your son, suggest therapy and look into it for yourself.
My kid had two medical leaves of a semester each, then accommodations for 3 classes/semester due to illness. They watched their class graduate, the next class graduate and then finally graduated two years late. I have never heard them complain. They made friends at each level. They are grateful to be alive which may account for their attitude. Not trying to criticize the son but it is all in the perspective and therapy can indeed “reframe” things.
OP- hugs and congrats for your son successfully launching into adulthood!
As you know, one of the pleasures of being a grownup in the workforce is having friends who are younger, the same age, and much older than you are. Early in my career I served on a non-profit board and became friends with a VERY cool 85 year old; was mentored at work by a fantastic 60 year old who became an actual friend once he retired, and had friends across different social networks, demographics, etc.
Time for you all to burn some sage and let the demons go! Your son has become a successful adult with a well paying job- for most people that’s a cause for a victory lap, not for rehashing whatever decisions were made decades ago. Hooray for you!
I’m sorry but if your kid who has graduated with a master’s degree and has a $150k job is “haunted by the memory of watching his peers graduate before him” such that “He would’ve much rather graduated with his peers and ended up with a 50k job” there’s more going on here beyond starting school at age 4. If he is as he says “traumatized”, and would have equally fixated on his peers getting their driver’s licences before him, it appears that there’s a bigger issue here and that he could benefit from counselling to help with his tendency towards distorted thought patterns.
One of my kids son has a late November birthday. Where we are the cut off date for school is December 31 so he was 3 when he started Jr. Kindergarten. He graduated university this year. Being a boy with a late birthday, he did struggle a bit emotionally initially, especially as he ended up being identified as having a minor learning disability which was quite frustrating to him when he was younger and which coloured his view of school. Eventually he grew out of the emotional volatility and while he’s still very sensitive, he’s learned how to cope and manage his emotions.
As to the driver’s licence, he turned 16 during Covid which delayed him getting his licence until he was 19.
If I could go back and do it again would I have held him back? Maybe, but who knows if it would have made any difference. In any case he managed to graduate from a very challenging program and is now employed and earning a good salary and is very happy and well adjusted.
Ultimately you can’t live your life with “what if’s” and looking over your shoulder to the past and with the fear of missing out. As parents we do the best we can for our children and we will make mistakes along the way. Part of our role is to help our children develop resiliency and the skills to deal with challenges. Not holding your kid back a year from starting school is hardly something that you should have recriminations over. If your kid is still struggling with dealing with the consequences and you’re so fixated on it having ruined their lives, I think that you both could use some professional mental health counselling.
My nephews (twins) have a Sept 19 birthday and the cut off was Sept 15, but they went to K at 4 anyway. One is happily in college. The other decided against college and his first year out of hs he was the asst hockey coach for the hs - with several of the seniors being older than him. Now he just completed the EMT certification and some jurisdictions won’t hire him because he isn’t 21 yet (and won’t be till next Sept, after two more hiring and training classes. Will the world end? No but it is a limitation.
I think it won’t matter in a few years to OP’s son but right now he’s still unhappy about HIS decision as a freshman in college to not study harder. Was that because of immaturity? Probably, but maybe he would have screwed up in hs because he was bored at not being challenged if he had started K a year later. It’s not possible to know where the road not taken would have ended.
OP, this is at the heart of it, and to the extent you can encourage your DS to move forward with what seems to be a successful life, you should.
However, it seems that there is something to be resolved in that life. Was there some kind of trauma/hurt in the path he took? Whether it was related to being held back --i.e., bullying about being older, bigger, etc. – or whether he is assuming it would not have happened had he been in the other year, it seems to have left a mark.
To the extent that you as a parent were involved in this decision, it could be affecting your relationship as well, and that too could benefit from exploring and attending to. Does he feel you were/are too controlling? That you prioritized his “doing well” over his friendships and happiness? That you minimized his successes because he had been set up for them? Or simply expected those success because he was older? That to the extent he protested, you didn’t listen? That you owe him an apology?
We DO make decisions for our kids when they are younger, and we make them in their best interest and out of love. If he is complaining to you about these, it may be a signal to you that there is something in your relationship you should talk about and address. Sometimes complaints about old issues are actually expressions of current ones.
