<p>That’s true. But I don’t just mean the people who didn’t finish high school – I think a large number of people went off to kindergarten early. (Including my H, who talked me into dating him against my “don’t date younger guys” rule by swearing he was “only a few months” younger than I am. He is 16 months younger, which is, in my opinion, more than a few!)</p>
<p>It’s definitely valuable. I think there is significant value in being the tallest or fastest or strongest for males in their developmental years. If only for building confidence internally.</p>
<p>Sigh- “readiness” for school. How many parents of “normal” aged college freshmen thought their child would never be ready by fall during senior year of HS? And the child does just fine. Same thing happens to kids entering kindergarten. My son went early entry to kindergarten, then skipped a grade (muti-grade classes)- he’s done well as a math major in college. He wasn’t as mature as the most mature HS students in his grade (top academic students), but certainly more mature than the average ones. His first grade teacher was concerned about his ability to do the math at the beginning, he compressed 3 years of math into two; she also told me then how she let the 3rd graders in the class figure out how he belonged in their reading group (ability, not age). Son was always selfconfident and independent.</p>
<p>My feeling is that there are parents who encourage their children to be the most that they can be and those that do not. I had figured that if early kindergarten didn’t work my son could always restart the next fall with a new peer group that wouldn’t hold it against him. I remember a second grade teacher due in August who aleady planned on holding her child back before born. And a parent of a 5th grader with a June birthday who wished she hadn’t. I’m sure elementary teachers like having students who are older for their grade, there’s the bonus of extra maturity at that age. My 16 year old son was not the youngest in his honors freshman college physics- a 14 year old HS girl had that honor. College professors don’t care about your age, if they even know it.</p>
<p>We value academics over athletics- could not have predicted that son would be a varsity runner on a large team, we were lucky he did well so didn’t miss out on being older.</p>
<p>I’m the proponent of not holding gifted kids back- they will always be somewhat of a misfit because of their thought processing for age or grade. Many of the average boys who turn 18 and still have a whole year of HS left probably wish their parents had decided to send them to kindergarten when they were 5.</p>
<p>An outsider really can’t judge whether or not a child is being held back for legitimate reasons, and your perception of a child’s being “perfectly able or gifted” could be completely off the mark. Our school system has a December 31 cut-off. My son, a late November baby, was very bright academically, and during our year-end meeting with his nursery school’s staff members they assured us that he was quite prepared to enter kindergarten in the fall. Ready to leave the building, we then asked where our son might be, and they casually said “Oh, he’s in the 3-year-old room. He likes to play there.” Duh! We knew he was somewhat immature, and he was quite small for his age, so with that additional piece of information, we decided to send him to a different, more structured nursery school the next year as a transition before kindergarten. We never regretted it. (And he was something of a celebrity among his friends when he was the first to get a driver’s license.) Every child is different, and the calendar is a crude indicator of school readiness.</p>
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<p>I actually had someone accuse me of doing that years ago and I agree with the person above who wrote that you can’t really judge as an outsider. My husband and I were given the choice of our daughter going to kindergarden or jumping directly into first grade. Her school had a pretty academic kindergarden but they determined that she was ready for the jump. Taking into account that both of us were very late to mature physically and concerned as to how that might affect our daughter’s self esteem down the road we chose to enroll her in kindergarden. </p>
<p>My husband and I were thinking about high school and our daughter possibly being the only one who had not reached puberty. It had nothing to do with giving her an “edge”. I don’t regret for a minute that she was “held back” and, as many of her kindergarden peers were already reading ready, the only edge it gave her was - possibly - the ability to sit still for a few extra seconds during circle time. Like her Mom and Dad she didn’t hit puberty until well into high school so in my opinion we made the right choice. </p>
<p>I am sure that there are parents who think having their child be one of the older students in the grade will give them an athletic or academic advantage but there are other reasons for choosing to hold back your child.</p>
<p>In our case I think we are still dealing with the repercussions of not having held back S1. He was 4 3/4 when he started Kindergarten. We had been living in California and moved back east about 2 weeks before he was to have started K. I had no idea that I could have held him back (He has my first born). We dropped him into K and he did fine. He could read. He knew his numbers and could do basic addition and subtraction. He loved science and spent hours watching nature programs. He was also the smallest by a long shot in the classroom. He was also on the immature side. The teacher said he was ready for 1st grade, so off he went. He did alright, had a hard time sitting and paying attention. Then, we were redistricted to a new elementary school in 4th grade. This school was much more academically based. The switch and the academics were very hard for him to adjust to. Just sitting in the 1 and 1/2 hour reading class was awful. There was real homework. So after having spent nearly 7 hours in school, he had to come home and do 1 1/2 hours of homework. He was still the smallest in the classroom by a lot. </p>
<p>The switch to middle school was very painful. He was not mature enough to sit through all the classes. He was not organized enough to make it easy. He had a tough time making friends in his classes because he was immature. Playing club soccer helped some. He was still very very small. Think 2% in height and 1% in weight. He cried when he left middle school because he knew he was not ready for high school.
High school was not easy and things were much worse. The only saving grace in the first two years was that he made the soccer team. So, he made some friends…mostly the immature kids. He tried out for the wrestling team, but wasn’t allowed to be on it…because he didn’t weight enough.</p>
<p>Puberty hit mid way through 11th grade. He is now at 20 only 5’ 4" and 120. He played soccer in college for two years, but came back in the middle of his sophmore year. He didn’t like being away, hates organized schooling, hates sitting in a classroom and really hates busy work. He is going to CC but feels like it is the same stuff that he learned in high school. Nothing new or interesting.</p>
<p>Would I hold him back if I had a time machine? Absolutely! Would it have given him an advantage academically? Yes! But he was so immature that that year would have helped him. Would it have helped him as an athlete? Well, probably, he would at least have been able to wrestle as a freshman. The big question…would he have continued to like school and learning? I don’t know the answer although I think a lot of his struggles came from his social immaturity. Academically he is very bright when he applies himself.</p>
<p>I wish almost every day that I had a time machine.</p>
<p>There is also an issue with motor skill development (in boys especially). Some private schools start handwriting young and want the more advanced motor skills so almost insist on the boys being older when they start K.</p>
<p>This is very interesting. S was not young when he started kindergarten but he was so far advanced in math and science that he was with students much older than he from 8th grade on (think high school juniors and seniors) for part of the time. He made friends among those juniors and seniors and was invited to join the high school science team (though competition rules did not allow him to compete as an 8th grader). As a result of this membership, his transition to high school was very smooth. He did not do any sports, so his youth and small size were not factors.
S1 did karate from middle school onward. Size and maturity did not matter either, and classes were mixed.</p>
<p>MuppetMom, you did the best you could with what you knew. Your son has likely grown in ways that you don’t even see, you’re so used to them, that he might not have had he been held back. If he’s 5’4" now at 20, it seems that, at least physically, holding him back a year wouldn’t have helped a whole lot, and academically, he may have been really bored.</p>
<p>I think all parents have things we’d do over if we could, but we all have tried our best with what we knew at the time.</p>
<p>Its so commonplace with the boys here that kids finish high school at 19, sometimes 20, in the private schools as well. Hard for me to get used to since I went to college at 17 like many of my peers.</p>
<p>We were fortunate that, like where Marite’s son attended, our daughter’s school allowed some students to jump a level or two in subject areas where they showed above grade level ability. </p>
<p>I had a smart and hard working kid and the school’s system worked for her but her one truly gifted peer did their most advanced study outside of school. I think that she worked with someone at Penn. My daughter’s school could only take it so far.</p>
<p>I understand all of legitimate and good reasons to delay a year, in fact did so for one child. BUT–the reason I posted this topic is that in my community there are parents who do this for no reason other than to give their physically well-developed, socially well-adjusted, very academically able kids an extra competitive edge, so they can be at the very top in everything, as opposed to near the top. The parents openly admit their reasons, and aim for HPY while baby is in utero. And it has worked well for the kids, who are the standouts in their class at everything all the way through, whereas they might not have been without the age advantage. This is what I wondered about–the greying of kindergarten for this kind of a reason, rather than issues of readiness and maturity.</p>
<p>Ugh. My kid has nearly always been the youngest kid in his class and was still bored out of his mind. I just cannot imagine delaying him a year and having him even more bored! As it is, he’s dropping out of high school to go to college instead.</p>
<p>I cannot imagine being able to hold my child back, either. He was chomping at the bit. For some kids, there is a danger of being too mature for their grade. I do not mean feeling odd because of being older than the rest of the class ( a reason given for social promotion). I mean being bored because one already knows the stuff, or if not, one can grasp new material more easily than the less mature students and spending the rest of class being bored. That’s how underachievers are made.</p>
<p>Has anyone else read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, which talks extensively about the advantages that hockey players and students (for example) have in being one of the older ones in their peer group, versus one of the younger ones?</p>
<p>Our S and D both have summer birthdays, and we waited to send both of them to kindergarten. We haven’t regretted it. A big issue was that the school district had all day every-day kindergarten, which is a lot of time and structure for a kid just turning 5 years old. Both of our kids were rather shy at that point in their lives, and our S also had a significant speech impairment (for which he received speech therapy services even before he started school). At the time, our feeling was that our kids were going to have lots of years to go to school and then to work, but only a few years to be a kid at home.</p>
<p>Both kids have been good students, good athletes (although not “world-class” by any means), and comfortable socially, and neither minded being one of the older ones in their grade.</p>
<p>I also laughed upon learning that several of S’s friends at Harvard took a “gap year” after graduating from high school. I guess our kids just took their “gap year” early.</p>
<p>Our kids were in day care from 8am to 6pm from 2.5 months old. In some suburbs, many families were caught by surprise when they found out that kindergarten in their district ended at 11 or 12.</p>
<p>If any parent makes decisions such as these with a future Ivy acceptance in mind - good luck to them. My concerns for my daughter were for her feeling inadequate during high school because she was still physically a child when everyone else was mature. If being on track with her peers physically helped her academics because she felt less insecure about herself so be it. </p>
<p>I had never thought about it before but in Crazy Parent Land the mind set might be different with potential athletes, especially those whose parents dream about their child participating in the sports that require a big, strong body. I would think it is the rare coach that is going to recruit a scrawny youth and take a chance on them bulking up (even if they are talented). I know so many young kids that train like professional athletes that I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if there are a few parents thinking far ahead when it turns out that Junior can throw a ball at four years old. Good luck to those parents too.</p>
<p>It is interesting how perceptions change. My mother-in-law was a product of the NYC schools during a time when bright children jumped grades. In her world you were not considered an achiever unless you skipped. You aspired to be the youngest in the class. She had a master’s degree when she was 19.</p>
<p>(By the way, my reference to crazy parent land - from now on to be known as CPL - does not just apply to the behavior and/or mental state of some athlete parents. I have been to one or two piano competitions and a number of state science fairs. CPL behavior is often visible there as well.)</p>
<p>“A friend of mine held her December 31st girl back since she would have been the way youngest in the class. The girl turned out to be so bright that she was just way out of sync socially with her class, and she ended up having to be accelerated up to her “normal” class.”</p>
<p>We’re having this experience with my November-born niece. My sister wanted to start her with the older kids, but the school insisted on holding her back. She is very bright and very tall for her age, and now she’s the oldest child in the class on top of it. She towers over everyone else, and she’s showed a few bullying tendencies. I think she would be better off in the class with older children, who wouldn’t let her push them around. But since it’s a language-immersion school, she can’t move up even if the school allowed it.</p>
<p>I have never heard of holding back to get an edge, but I know, as a former teacher of learning disabled kids, that if they’re not ready, they should be held back. Many, if not most, boys can benefit from waiting. Even if they are ready academically, many suffer if not ready emotionally and socially. My D started at a private school where you had to move heaven and earth to get your kid into 1st grade if they weren’t 6 by September. They just didn’t believe in it and I thought it was a great idea. My D’s birthday is early December so when I moved her to public school, she was one of the older kids in her grade. </p>
<p>When I taught, I saw so many problems created by pushing children to do things for which they were not ready. I’m convinced that the special education classes were filled with kids, particularly boys, whose problems were maturational. Rather than give them time to develop, they were shuttled into special needs classes.</p>
<p>I haven’t read Outliers, but the last article I read about the book said that the advantages were much greater for hockey players than for students. Of course the plural of anecdote isn’t data, but I was the youngest in my class and was always a top student, had plenty of friends etc. My older son was always bored out of his mind in elementary school and I wish they would have let him skip a grade. We got him skipped ahead in math one year when two teachers agreed to cooperate in elementary school, and with much foot stamping succeeded in a permanent math acceleration in middle school, but it was like pulling teeth. I see no reason why this sort of thing can’t be decided on a case by case basis. I think regimenting kids in 12 month age groups is about as stupid as it gets. I was in a one room school house for a couple of years - and I had no problems being friends with kids who were both older and younger than me. (Kind of like family you know.)</p>