"When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?" (New York Times)

Parent Cafe
41

<p>This is really interesting! My parents used to talk about this all the time (and they still do even though I’m 17 now…) because they started me early. I’m actually behind the cutoff for my state, but I went to a private school so I avoided it. I don’t think my parents ever intended for me to start early, but they put in the pre-school for the private school a little early since they both worked, and then decided to keep me with my classmates. I was also able to read after a year of pre-school, so it would have been ridiculous to go for another year. </p>

<p>I really never had any problems with starting early. Unfortunately, I think it can be difficult to tell which children should start early and which shouldn’t be “red-shirted”. Even growth patterns could be considered (tall parents shouldn’t worry so much). I ended up growing really early, even compared to my older classmates. I was the tallest PERSON (and I’m a girl) in my 5th and 6th grade classes. I would have been a monster if I’d been held back. As many other people have said, academics don’t seem to be a problem for some children either. In fact, relatively younger people are overrepresented in the top of my class now. I have a theory about this though. We may have been a little socially awkward in elementary and middle school, so we applied ourselves to academics more. Really my only problem now is that I’ll be spending most of my first year of college as a 17 year old and all of the disadvantages that come with that :)</p>

42

<p>My mom was a kdg. teacher for decades and helped do developmental evaluations for all prekindergarteners in her district each spring. Those who were less ready went to the “developmental kdg.” and then on to regular kdg. This way there was some help for parents to see which placement was most appropriate for their own child as an individual.</p>

<p>My D has a late Aug. birthday in a district with a Sept. 1 cutoff. She went to kdg. at age 5 and has always done well academically, but I feel her young age hurt her socially with other girls (not with boys though!). It was the right decision for her though, as I can’t imagine her staying at home till age 19!</p>

43

<p>I am a parent who pushed my child forward even though she missed the age cutoff for Kindergarten by 2 weeks. She was tested extensively before we did this so we could be sure she was ready. She is about to graduate h.s. and will start college at age 17. She is no different from any of her classmates; she graduates with honors in the top 10%.</p>

<p>I am not in favor of automatically ‘redshirting’ a kid just to give them an advantage in life. I think in some cases it can hurt their self-esteem. However, I do agree that SOME KIDS do need to be held back for various reasons and I do know several in my child’s graduating class who are already 19 and in some cases closer to 20. These are kids who for various reasons have had developmental delays and holding them back was the right thing to do. I think it behooves the parents to have their child tested by professionals before making a decision to do so.</p>

<p>I also have a niece who is mildly autistic, but with early intervention is now close to being on target for her age group. When she was 5 (just about to turn 6) my sister held her back for an extra year of therapy in a self-contained classroom and now at age 7 she is doing wonderfully in a regular Kindergarten class with no extra help whatsoever. For this type of child, redshirting is the obvious choice but I do not advise doing it automatically just because the child is a little younger than average.</p>

44

<p>I think parents need to decide what’s best for each individual child, and that children learn best when the environment is developmentally appropriate. That said, it did irritate me when my kids were in elementary school that some parents would hold kids back, and then complain that the classroom wasn’t challenging enough or that they were “gifted.” In many cases, the kids were just in the wrong grade!</p>

<p>Our older son has a mid-summer birthday, and was a couple of weeks premature (not enough to require special care.) If he had been born late, as so many first babies are, he would have had a late summer birthday, and maybe we would have handled things differently. As it was, he entered kindergarten shortly after turning five, and seemed just fine. When we moved back to the states, we found that MANY parents held boys back for a year, if their birthdays fell after April or something. So for most of elementary school, there were a number of kids a grade younger who were older than my son. I think his quiet nature made more of a social difference than his age, but it didn’t help that he was usually the youngest in his class. Academically, he was right where he should be, and graduated from HS at seventeen. With his AP classes, he COULD graduate from college at 20, but he’ll take the full four years. I think it would be hard to enter the work force at 20, although it probably won’t matter for grad school.</p>

<p>It seems that kids will turn out fine in any number of situations, but the parents sometimes seem to make an issue where there doesn’t need to be one. Our younger son has a winter birthday, so it was never an issue, and his personality is a little more outgoing. So, social issues seemed easier in the elementary years for the child who had the winter birthday, but both kids evened out in HS, as far as social interactions go.</p>

45

<p>sjmom, I think you make an excellent point in the first sentence of your final paragraph. From what I’ve seen over the years, there is no perfect situation for kids. In addition to that, regardless of how one determines class groupings, there will always be a range of abilities and a range of levels of maturity within that class.</p>

<p>Two, possibly three, of my Ds were two or three grade levels ahead in many aspects of their educational abilities for much of their elementary school years. We actually had to decline school administrators urging us to allow them to skip. In my opinion at the time, both as a parent, and as a psychologist, it was not a good idea for a few reasons. It may indeed be a good idea for other kids but it wasn’t for ours.</p>

<p>motheroftwo, it varies by area and by school, but generally speaking, yes, most kids do go to junior kindergarten here.</p>

46

<p>Both my kids are near our cutoff of Sep 30. My older daughter was due on Sep 25 but was born one week late on Oct 4. There was no leeway in K so she went to private K, but we went through the process to put her into 1st early. They told us she was shy (which she still is) and they were against it, I think most of the reason is that the schools were getting crowded and they didn’t want more kids in the classes. We told them she was the exact same kid that had she been born on her due date would have made the cutoff. Finally we were able to persevere and get her into 1st. She was academically ready, and her K teacher, who is mostly in the “hold them back for sports” group, recommended going ahead. We did and she has always been fine academically. </p>

<p>She is 14 and finishing 9th grade now. The situation we have now is that several of her friends (mostly small boys) with summer birthdays were held back and several are 16. They are taking driver’s ed in the fall. She will be behind most of her friends in situations like this. She will be younger than many in college and when many turn 21 she will still be younger. This is the biggest concern for us. I think it would be ideal to be in the middle age wise, but you can’t always have that. Being oldest can have the same issues, first with the license and first legally able to buy, etc. What I don’t know that being youngest is automatically worse than being oldest. Neither of my kids are very athletic, but being young hasn’t been an obvious difference in sports.</p>

<p>My younger daughter is Aug 29, which is still near the end for the Sep 30 cutoff. She hasn’t had a big growth spurt yet, and is still small, but we think that will come and I don’t think being near the end of the age range is having an effect on her either. If she had been slightly after the cutoff, it is not as obvious that we would have tried to move her ahead. </p>

<p>We have friends with a boy born Oct 1 at I think 1am who was 2.5 weeks late. They had the hardest time trying to get him into school early, everyone wanted to automatically discount it because he was a boy and not look at him individually.</p>

47

<p>Our school district has a cut off date of March 31 and minimum age of 4, which may be young by most standards. It also has a two-year kindergarten, so I suspect that many of the young k’ers do the two years, and those who start later only do the one year.
As for age and size differences, our school had combined grades after kindergarten, so there was a spread of ages, sizes and levels of maturity. For subjects that were not sequential, students were often divided into mixed groups. By and large, it worked out well.</p>

48

<p>“Neither of my kids are very athletic, but being young hasn’t been an obvious difference in sports.”</p>

<p>Actually, I don’t know that it makes much difference with girls because they mature earlier than boys anyway, and they are mostly at their adult height, by the time they enter high school (14). If you look at the standards for Presidential Fitness- for girls they actually go DOWN in some activities as the girls get older.</p>

<p>I remember my son in junior high doing track- he ran the 100 and long/triple jumps- all things that depend on size, strength, muscle. He was 13 and competing against kids who were 15 going on 16. Big difference. Same thing going into highschool- played football and baseball. He was 14 and playing with big guys who were 18/19. If participation in certain size-related sports during high school is important to parents, they’d best consider making sure their boys do not enter school to early.</p>

<p>As far as academics are concerned, I never saw a big difference related to age, ESPECIALLY in high school. My son took AP Calc in his senior year with a kid who was in 9th grade!</p>

49

<p>As a mother of two, neither of whom has this issue, I can’t address it from a parent’s perspective. I can, however, address it from a child’s/student’s perspective. I graduated HS when I was 17, one of the youngest girls in my class with an August birthday. From the day I entered first grade I was skinny and shy and not very physically coordinated. But our SD started all kids who met the cutoff date (Aug 31, I think), so I started school. Academically, I did okay. Socially, not so much and I was a disaster athletically. I managed okay in elementary school, but the years of being the skinny shy girl with awkward social skills caught up with me at Junior High. It wasn’t until high school when I finally “leveled” off as one of the previous posters called it.</p>

<p>I do believe that I would have been better in the class behind me… in fact, I had more friends in that class than in my own!</p>

<p>So, I am all in favor of holding a child if that is what seems right for the child. There is so much more to school than just high academics… and a child with the potential to do well academically can only do so if he/she is happy and confident.</p>

<p>I grew out of my shyness and learned social skills. I still suck athletically :-). I would have very much appreciated the “gift” of more time had it been available. My 80 year old mother, btw, agrees with my assessment that I would have done better being held back a year.</p>

50

<p>My oldest daughter’s birthday is right before the cut-off. She is a bright girl who struggled a lot when she was younger and didn’t catch up and speed ahead until high school. HOwever, she has never, ever felt confident in her abilities and I don’t think she ever will. She isn’t just young chronologically, but was very young for her age when she started school and is a gentle, passive personality who would have been much better served by starting later. Particularly in the middle school years when the other girls hit puberty almost a year ahead of her. That was not fun. She graduated from high school on Saturday, and when they called her name “Zoosergirl with honors” I was overwhelmed for her. Only about 10% of her class earned that distinction and I knew how hard she had worked and how nothing had ever come easy for her. She hadn’t told me ahead of time and she looked at me and grinned at my surprise. I’m a proponent of waiting if there’s any doubt.</p>

51

<p>As I said earlier, I think it is a very individual thing and must be considered that way when it comes time for the appropriate placement. But I think the considerations need to go beyond just academic ones. A child who is academically advanced only, can have their needs met various ways in the classroom. But I think having a child enter K early, or skip a grade, or enter college early, needs to be for compelling reasons that go beyond academic readiness or advancement but where the child also developmentally would be more appropriately placed ahead socially and emotionally. For us, it was the whole child in considering these placements, not just being academically advanced. If it was just academics, we could keep skipping and skipping and skipping. So their needs had to be addressed no matter what grade we put them in. But the social and emotional maturity piece figured in considerably in the early entrance decision. For the child we did this with, it was compelling in all developmental areas, as educators who worked with her agreed, and not purely academic alone. For some kids, when they are simply academically advanced, that needs to be addressed no matter the grade placement anyway, and if they are not socially or emotionally “ahead” then an early entrance is not the way to go in my view. Same with early high school graduation (I’ve had a child do both early K entrance and early high school graduation). </p>

<p>Even WITH the early entrance, it was still a major challenge to educate our child because she was still advanced compared to her older grade anyway. In elem school, it helped a great deal as they individualized a lot and had multi age classes and she was always in classes with older grades, except in sixth grade. But had she not done an early K entrance, her grade placement further along in MS and HS would have been very very far off. Even in the grade she was placed in, there were still issues in meeting her learning needs which went beyond that grade. One thing I do recall my child’s elementary school principal as saying was that one thing that was a bit more unusual in her case was that she was not ONLY accelerated academically but also was socially and a leader amongst the classmates who were much older than her (sometimes a few years older than her as we had multi age classrooms AND she had the early entrance). This continued in high school where she would lead groups with kids three years older than her. I’ve seen it a bit in college too. So, for some kids, the need to find an appropriate placement is beyond just meeting intellectual learning needs. </p>

<p>As AlwaysAMom mentions, no matter the cut off dates and so on, any classroom will have a range of abilities and developmental levels. It behooves teachers to differentiate the curriculum and address individual learning needs. The chronological grouping doesn’t correlate with their developmental levels no matter what cut off dates they use. Having been a teacher of young children, and in multi age settings, I never gave all the kids in the class the same work to do. They were given things to do at their own levels. The only thing that everyone got the same were open ended assignments. </p>

<p>I think the maturity issue is one to weigh into these decisions. As I said, I have a nephew with a summer birthday who did wait and he was immature, even though capable of the academics. For him, now that he is almost 17, I think this was very appropriate. For others to wait just to gain some academic “advantage”, I am not into. Likewise, kids entering early just because they can read or do the work, is not compelling enough of a reason. I think they need to be socially and emotionally developmentally beyond their chronological age, not just intellectually. I also think that teachers need to differentiate the curriculum to meet the spectrum of learning needs in their classrooms.</p>

52

<p>

I hate to break it to you, Jackie, but most college kids don’t actually refrain from alcohol until they are 21! :slight_smile: In fact, this is sheer supposition on my part, but based on a book about the “Terman” kids I read a while back, I suspect that many “gifted” kids are young for their grade. So, in a selective college environment, you’d probably find quite a few kids who start college at 17 or graduate at 20 or younger. By college, these age differences don’t seem to matter very much.</p>

53

<p>Soozievt, I tried to PM you, but your box is full!</p>

54

<p>My response to the 3rd grade teacher who told me my son wouldn’t get his license when all his friends did was, “Our family will decide when DS is ready to get his driver’s license, not the state.” Even now, most of his friends don’t have their licenses because they don’t drive to school (it’s not a local school). The kids who go to our local HS get their licenses at 16, but not many of the ones who attend specialized programs away from their communities. The traffic is just too aggressive.</p>

<p>DS is not looking forward to learning to drive, but it’s one of those life skills we insist he acquire before heading off to college.</p>

55

<p>Boy, I wish I would have had this forum 2 years ago when we were desperately trying to decide whether or not to send our son to Kindergarten or do a young 5’s program. Lots of good anecdotal evidence in here.</p>

56

<p>I liked mixed age classes.
I started kindergarten when I was 4, and it was hard for me until the time I dropped out at 17. I was small for my age, I wasn’t socially or physically gifted, two things that mean much more to grade school kids than how smart you were.
( and to the teachers too, if the lack of challenge in the classroom was any indication.)</p>

<p>My oldest was even smaller for her age at 5. She had been a very early premie ( 30 weeksSGA, 2lbs7oz), and had gross motor delay, wasn’t even on the growth chart for height or weight. She taught herself to read early, which apparently gave the local K teacher reason to suggest we find another school.
( but since I thought she was going to be attending the local school, I didn’t have much time to find another school- she was 5, but she would have been a young 5)</p>

<p>She started at a Montessori school when she was 5, however, I had wanted her in the 5’s classroom, but because it was all boys, they put her in the 3-6 yearold class.( against my wishes)
Even though that was mixed ages, it just wasn’t appropriate, and I managed to find another school, that had a 5’s program, co-op style, one morning and one afternoon.
She was in the afternoon class, and it was great. The teacher was renowned in the area, had started several schools which are still going. Lots of science, lots of challenging stuff. It was a co-op so it was affordable, and the extra adults made it possible to have stations and for kids to work at their own pace unlike the public school.
It also gave me some time to find someplace for when it was over. It was only for 5s, and the kids were either young fives, or just not ready- heavy on the ADHD boys, a strength of the experienced teacher.</p>

<p>I think the style of the classroom, could have been appropriate for many kids,of course not all teachers work well with lots of other adults in the room. I had no idea if she should then go into K- or 1st grade. Her academics were advanced, but she was so quiet and “good”, that I felt she would be overlooked in a large classroom where some kids demanded more attention.</p>

<p>Some of the kids in the 5s class, even the girls, and even though they were much older and much taller than D, went into K, after the class. Im not sure why, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was more important for * some parents*, to have a child that was obviously one of the most capable in the class.</p>

<p>I just wanted to find somewhere that she liked. We toured public schools, we toured Waldorf, “new-age”, Catholic schools, we toured private schools. Ultimately, I just asked her, where she wanted to go. She told me, and that was the only place we submitted her information ( except for the public alternative school, which she didn’t get into).</p>

<p>She was accepted ( something which is probably much more competitive now that the Gates kids go there), and placed into a mixed age class- K-2.
I assumed that she would be considered to be in the K, but the teacher said she considered her in 1st grade.</p>

<p>As she stayed there till middle school, being young wasn’t an issue. However it was challenging in middle school and stayed a small but persistent problem, until she took a year off after high school before beginning college.
What we suspected but didn’t really address until the middle of high school is that her ADD and LDs, contribute to seeming younger, despite her academic strengths</p>

57

<p>I graduated from high school at 16 with a September birthday. I had a dandy time in school (though was frequently bored academically). I occasionally had friends in younger grades. A few of my friends in high school drove, most didn’t. I didn’t get around to getting my license until I was almost 22. I gave myself the gift of time by taking a year off before heading to college. :slight_smile: I spent the year with a family in France. I actually ended up with a 17 yo roommate. She never seemed any younger than me. My school system is anti-skipping - the only way it can be done is to get a private school to do it and then return to the system, but I did eventually get Mathson accelerated in both math and science.</p>

58

<p>My younger daughter was term- but her birthday is also at the end of the school year and as my girls are 8 years apart I * thought* I was much more experienced.
Life however, likes to mix things up a bit.
I also found a mixed age school for younger D. Which was more difficult, the elementary school her sister attended wasn’t a good fit, the 5’s program had moved and changed teachers, and also didn’t seem a good fit, however the original teacher had started a new school k-3 in the same building which looked great.</p>

<p>I was quite upset when D didn’t get in ( it was lottery), as there weren’t a lot of choices out there. However we did find a school, which was roughly 4yr olds to 8 year olds. Very small, 20 kids with two main teachers who had begun the school just a year or so before,and two mostly part time teachers who became fulltime when about 5 more kids started.</p>

<p>It wasn’t perfect, but she stayed there for 3 years, and left to go to the public alternative ( although frankly in retrospect, although I am pretty happy with her current high school, I wish that she had been able to stay in a private school, as the public schools have been quite difficult to work with)
She is also planning on taking a year off after high school before college, which I am encouraging.</p>

<p>I think that she would have benefited a great deal from taking another year off before K- ( she didn’t read till 3rd grade), but the way that the area is so focused on K=5, 1st =6, it was difficult.</p>

59

<p>It is definitely an individual based decision. I teach preschool. </p>

<p>The cutoff date in our public system is Oct. 16. There has been much talk lately of the state changing the date to Sept. 1 so there would be fewer 4 year olds in kindergarten. </p>

<p>In our state, there is no morning/afternoon half day kindergarten. K. here is an all day affair just like the rest of the elementary school. There is no nap time(like in the old days). They ride the bus with the first thru fifth graders at their school, they take their lunch money to school and go thru the line, carrying the tray themselves just like the big kids. There are no bathrooms in the K rooms. They are expected to handle there own needs in the hall bathrooms just like the big kids. Then of course there’s the academic part, much more involved than it used to be.</p>

<p>We’ve had some kids with winter birthdays that we wish the parents would hold back and others who are barely old enough but more than ready.</p>

<p>I guess my biggest peeve is that those who truly need to redshirt are often not given the gift of that extra year due to what appears to us to be competiveness among parents.<br>
When we suggest redshirting parents are often offended as if they think we are implying that their child will never be successful in school or is not as smart as their neighbor’s little Johnny. </p>

<p>Of course this is not our implication at all but it is obvious that they feel that holding a child back will be like admitting there is some sort of weakness there, that they are somehow not as smart as the rest and the parents are very reluctant to do it. </p>

<p>We see this most often in families where this will be their first child to enter the school system.
Many of the redshirts I’ve seen were 2nd or 3rd kids whose parents already had an older one in school and knew what was going to be required/expected
and had a more realistic outlook on their child’s readiness.</p>

60

<p>I really like the mixed grade classroom for most kids. K vs 1st vs 2nd is really an artificial delineation, imo. Kids don’t develop evenly – they may be more advanced in certain learning areas or emotional/behavior areas than others, and I think they are better off when the learning needs are aligned, rather than just chronological age.</p>