OP, first of all, I’d like to say that I think it’s great that you’re thinking about this outside your friend group. When you’re hanging with a group who all have kids the same age and when you often exchange helpful tips, it’s sometimes not as easy to see that your longer-term parenting goals and styles may be dramatically different. Your post resonated with me because few topics were such a cause for long-term self-doubt as the decision about whether to hold back or not. My kid is now in college, and we really waffled on this one. Here are a pile of stories from friends who went through this when we did and shared their stories as well as what we gleaned along the way…
There are some communities in which holding back is so much the norm (NYC private schools, for example), that K is actually more developmentally appropriate for a “normal” first grader. So before you think about it as holding back, find out what the age distribution is in their normal K class.
Schools that are very small – perhaps only one class of each grade – may need to start kids who are pretty tightly grouped around certain developmental points because they lack the bandwidth to deal with a wider range. So again, it’s about their normal distribution around a developmental mean.
As noted, sports are often a reason people cite for holding back. And while it’s true that many sports are played by age group, when kids are applying to private high schools and later college, they will be compared to the cohort at their new school, and another year to perfect skills and get bigger, stronger, and faster is almost always an advantage. (Just think about red-shirting in college or the prevalence of PG years for students in certain sports.) With that said, it’s hard for me to see how one could choose this route for a 4 year old…
A friend’s daughter who started “on time” was asked by their school to repeat a year because she was always falling asleep and seemed to lack the energy of her peers. She really benefited from the extra year and her parents feel it was the best decision they ever made. Another friend’s D also seemed to have some energy issues as the youngest in her class, and her mother lamented that this made it hard for her to engage in a lot of activities outside of school. But she was doing great in her school, so they didn’t want to hold her back. With that said, this was still a bit of an issue in late elementary school, so it seems to have been more just part of her physical constitution. She is now doing great at one of NYC’s most selective test-in high schools. Some part of this is a matter of teasing out who your kid is (and is going to remain) and what is simply developmental.
DS had a classmate whose family held him back for sports. He had some learning issues and was asked to repeat K. The interventions were helpful, but it made him a full two years older than the younger contingent in the class. And while he was a good athlete, I don’t either he or his classmates felt like it that was as much of an accomplishment as it was because he was so much older.
Another friend started her kids at the “normal” age and decided between middle and high school that her S was a bit on the immature side. The family decided to do a travel/home school year. She remarked that she would not have felt comfortable doing that if her S was already on the older end. So she did her “hold back” not pre K, but pre-9. If you look at the prep school forum, you’ll see that a lot of kids are advised to repeat a year when making that transition. While many aren’t, this becomes a difficult choice if you’re at the older end of the grade already. Which is all to say that if you don’t hold back now, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it later.
Another friend did not hold her D back and noted that when her D’s friends were getting interested in boys and other things, her D was not and that it got them another year of “school-centric” behavior before they lost her to her hormones, and at that point, she was a bit more invested in doing well at school. Again, hard to say if it was the kid or the environment.
Our LPS, as noted, often asked kids to repeat if they felt it’d be helpful. But it was also a place where it was hard to escape an early label. So if a kid found certain things challenging because they were younger and not developmentally where some of the classmates were, it was also easy for that same kid – however bright and capable – to be thought of as not much of a student, even years later. The G&T program was filled with kids with early birthdays, and while at some level, this says so much more about the teachers and the school, if your kid was one of the younger ones, it was more than a little frustrating. The JHU/CTY programs were often used as a way of making the case to the school that a kid was in fact not who he or she was in K…
In high school, some kids will drive earlier than others. Some will grow beards! It’s hard to know who your child will be then. It’s hard to know who will be bullied, who will be an athlete, etc. I’d personally advocate for trying to see what the norm is in the elementary schools you are considering. I’d also recommend that you do some reading on different educational philosophies and how they relate to development to see what resonates with you. I’d also suggest that you think a bit now – without being in the thick of it – what your idea of success for your child is. (I can guess what your friend forcing her child to memorize letters is!)
