We held all three of our children back due to late summer birthdays and having children on the smaller physical size of the spectrum. Being both the youngest and the smallest didn’t seem like a great way to start school. All of our children have done very well academically, and while they are still usually the shortest in their grade, having that extra year of maturity has helped lessen the impact of being physically small.
OP, I can’t help but think that there was some other reason why your son struggled in college. Or maybe it’s just that kids are different.
Our D missed the January 1st cutoff by a couple of weeks. I chose to wait until she was 5 to start Kindergarten.
She did very well in elementary, middle and high school and is doing equally well in college where she is now a junior. All along the way she has stayed focused and risen to the challenges. (I realize we are very fortunate.)
Going back to when my brother and I were in school, I missed the cutoff by a few weeks, and he made it by a few weeks. So I was typically the youngest in my class and he was the oldest. Both of us graduated at the top of our h.s. class and did really well in college.
I really think it depends on the kid, the family and the school. I don’t think you can generalize.
I’m confused. April 4th is a pretty perfect birthday for a boy being 5 plus by the start of school in Aug. or Sept. Not getting it?
I had a July 28 boy so held him back so that he was 6 when he started K. He has always done fabulously his whole life so of course I have no way to know if he would have been as successful as a very young 5.
My husband’s BD is Aug. 27th and he ended up repeating 2nd grade. He said he’s never had such a sense of relief as he did that day when he went back to the younger kids. He was all for giving our son the gift of time.
Definitely depends. I have two kids who were the youngest in their classes. One of them was fine, but one was the much youngest child in the family and the youngest (by happenstance) in the class by more than six months. He also had some health problems. He was reading and writing well, but wasn’t mature enough. Not holding him back for those 9 days is my biggest regret as a parent. He is in college and doing well, but his life would have been very different if such a basic aspect of his education had been decided with his specific circumstances in mind, rather than an arbitrary cut-off date.
I don’t consider what you did red-shirting. The minimum age to start kindergarten is 5 in some states. Red-shirting to me would be waiting until age 6 to enter kindergarten. While I’m sorry you’ve had trouble with your son, I think you’re making a whole lot of leaps of faith in assuming early entrance to kindergarten when he was 4 would definitely have prevented problems with he was in college at 18.
Not your son, specifically, but lots of college boys overdo drugs/alcohol/partying their first year, which their parents might not be aware of. Others did well in high school with the helicopter parents providing structure, but lack the maturity to manage their time independently. If someone’s not emotionally ready for college, skipping grades could have made the problems worse. It’s really hard to know what would have happened with the road not taken.
I agree with others - it’s complicated. I’d be much more inclined to consider redshirting now that the average kindergarten curriculum is more appropriate for 1st graders. But back in 1994 when my oldest was a kindergartner, I really wondered. He had taught himself to read at 3 and could add and subtract well enough to be the banker in Monopoly when he was four. He actually ended up loving in K teacher and complained everyday that he was learning nothing new in first grade. His first grade teacher managed to organize a two person reading group for him and after a huge fight with the principal finally got him put in a third grade class for math. He was never very happy in school though the high school was a breath of fresh air when they finally let him take courses at an appropriate level without arguments. He did fine in college, though he was not on the Dean’s List after freshman year, he did get to his dream job and that’s really what it’s all about isn’t it? He’s a typical computer nerd - not on the spectrum as far as we know - but certainly close to being on it. He was a March birthday in a state with a December cut off BTW. I think he’d probably have done fine and been slightly happier starting earlier.
Younger son with a July birthday, was always six months behind the program in elementary school. He didn’t learn to read until he was 7, but then went from struggling to Harry Potter overnight.
Neither of my kids were partiers, mostly because they disliked the taste of alcohol, but both skirted with the danger of getting sucked into computer gaming.
And FWIW, I skipped first grade and never ever regretted being the youngest person in my grade. I did take a gap year before college and lived with a French family and learned to speak French fluently that year. A good decision for many reasons, but it didn’t change my high school experience at all which I loved.
I am sorry that your son had that experience – but your son was not “red shirted” with an April birthday. If you had held him back until he was 6, that would have been red-shirting. Or perhaps if he had an early fall birthday, turning age 6 within one or two months of kindergarten entrance – that would fit the definition.
In your case you simply chose not to accelerate your son. With an April birthday he was exactly the right age to start kindergarten - my two kids and my grandson all have April birthdays, and I have always been very grateful that their birthdays meshed so well with the school year, and I never had to face the difficult choice my mom made when she put me in first grade at age 5, consigning me to years of schooling where I was always the youngest and smallest in my class. (Academically I did well and remained well ahead of most of my peers, but socially it was a mess).
I also understand the choice you made because my daughter was so far ahead of her age peers academically that we seriously considered a grade skip when she was age 7. (We contemplated a skip from 1st to 3rd, but in the end we left the decision to my daughter, and she decided she was more comfortable with her same-age peers --although we were able to arrange for partial acceleration, allowing her to attend classes for language arts with 3rd and 4th graders the year she was in 2nd grade).
I understand your concern about a child for whom academics come so easily that there is never a need to develop perseverance and good study habits - but I encouraged my daughter to take on challenges in other ways – and in hindsight I am very glad that when I sent her off to college she was a mature, confident and worldly 18-year-old (as compared with the 16 year old me the day I started college).
Again, I understand your disappointment - but your description of your son’s problems really suggest a lack of self-discipline and maturity. My son also ran into similar problems in college- he dropped out after his second year and worked for three years before returning to school – but if anything his lack of maturity would be an argument for delayed entrance to college, not for an accelerated pace through elementary school.
These are decisions that each family needs to make on their own, but as an accelerated child myself it is definitely a path I wanted to avoid with my own kids.
I think we all do the best we can with the kids we have and the resources available to us. Some kids benefit from accelerating, some from having a bit more time, some from more challenging HS or college. There is no ONE right and easy answer for ALL kids and fitting the solution to the kid you have is the key.
Only hindsight tells us if perhaps we might have done better with a different path. I think the goal for each of us is to celebrate the kids we have and continue to help them develop their potential.
as a doctor once told me…you can not say the sky is blue because my shirt is brown.if you want me to say it I will but I am just making that up to make you hear what you want. (something along those lines) cause and effect like that are a stretch.many factors can come into play in a persons life. I am not sure you correctly determined that staying an extra year in k-12 is the cause.
^^ @HImom - I strongly agree with what you just wrote. There simply is no one right answer for all children.
My two youngest children are both born in late fall. My daughter seemed academically ready, so I did not hold her back. She began at university at age 17 (she started classes at our local college at age 16 while still in high school). Academically, she was ahead of her peers and her most pressing problem was to keep her age a secret. She began taking upper level classes (due to all the college credits earned during high school) so her class mates were all 2 or more years older than her. She finished at uni in 2 1/2 years and finished up with her MBA at the same time her peers were finishing the bachelors degrees. At 23, she is a CPA. Accelerating her from the begining was the right decision for her.
My son on the other hand had absolutely no interest in school as a youngster, so I held him back a year. Turned out to be the right decision for him. He needed that extra year to mature. He ended up at a Service Academy after high school and the extra year was definitely a plus. It is the younger cadets who overall struggle a bit more than the older cadets.
So two kids, two different decisions and two excellent outcomes.
I have July birth boys and I was heavily pressured by preschool teachers and others to delay starting kindergarten. I ignored them and started them anyway…They were fine even tho they were always the youngest boys in their classes.
My older son was redshirted at the request of the preschool he was attending. (November birthday, December cutoff). He started reading at 2, but the school felt he needed to mature more socially. He was introduced to math and Hebrew in K, but didn’t learn anything else. Came home and started playing Zoombinis, which was lots of advanced math. At the end of K, the school recommended moving him directly to 2nd (back to his original age cohort). The advantage to the redshirting was that we were able to unstring some of the spaghetti and conclude that there were some OT and ADD-inattentive issues going on. Was harder to see that when he was always the youngest.
As he got further into elem school, he got into a HG program and they did radical subject acceleration in math – but with a group of his age peers. Was also teaching himself compsci at home. He got into in similar programs for MS and HS, which he feels saved his life. He started college at 17, had no problem avoiding alcohol (then or now), and he’s now 26 and still doesn’t drive. Never really “hit the wall.”
I would not have wanted to do additional grade skip for this S, but the subject acceleration was absolutely what the doctor ordered. When he found his place academically, he found his people socially.
OTOH, my Feb. birthday, extremely social, tallest-in-the-class son hit the wall in a massive way in college. He had been compensating for LDs all through school and did well academically, but with lots of scaffolding and logistical support. Got to college and could not juggle all the pieces. He managed to graduate, but it wasn’t pretty. We are still dealing with the fallout.
The tricky thing is to know your kids, work with folks who care about them and make the best choices you can.
We knew holding our S back academically would mean we would have to provide extra intellectual stimulation for him, so we did. Our pediatrician said academically S could have started K at age 3 but he’d be ever so lonely and we really wanted to give him time to grow socially and emotionally.
Computers make it much easier but a large reason we had him and D transfer to private HS was to ramp up their competition and give them a solid background for college. It worked well for us.
Choosing when to start a child in school, whether to accelerate or decelerate are all things parents do to the best of their ability. Mostly it turns out pretty well.
The magnet program here used to require students to be chronologically right aged students (younger was fine, just not older). That is something that should be a consideration.
Yes, areas fortunate enough to have special programs with age restrictions should definitely consider that as one of many factors. Sadly, our state and many areas have pretty much nothing for gifted kids in the public schools–many of our kids worst experiences (bar none) were in “gifted” classes with poor teachers.
S is August bday with a Sept 1 cut-off. Many, many people opinionated to us that boys with summer birthdays should be held back in order to mature. I knew my kid was ready and needed the challenge. Never regretted not holding him back. D has a late September birthday, and finished pre-K the summer before she turned 5. She moved into K at her daycare center as a not-quite 5 year old. It was a small class with a great teacher, and she excelled. At the end of that year we couldn’t imagine having her repeat K, so we had her tested into first grade at the public school. It worked out great for her, but it was the last year that our district allowed testing into first grade for not-yet 6 year olds. She is eternally grateful that we had that option, as she loved the class she joined (very small school district, so the classes are tight-knit for all 13 years.) The only time my kids didn’t like being the youngest is when their friends started getting their drivers licenses months or even a year before them. Oh and waiting to hit the legal drinking age is a drag, too. But academically and socially - no issues whatsoever. But every kid is different, and I have always told other parents that they know their kids best - rely on their intuition to make that decision.
I think it matters what the rest of the area is doing, what the cut off is. My siblings and I started school in a state where the cut off was Dec 31, so we three older kids (July, Sept, Dec birthdates) started first grade (no K) at 6, not quite 6, and 5. When we moved to a ‘first day of school’ cut off, we all became the youngest in our classes. My next two brothers made the new cut off for K, and my mother sent them because, gee, it was just K and no one needed that anyway. Next brother too with a July birthday. One August brother did repeat 10th grade after a move. He was small and had always been just a step behind.
For my own kids, one was 5.5 and that was perfect (although she was a preemie and was more like 5) and the other was 4.5. Big mistake. She’s adopted and we thought she was older, but now it is clear she is not. There were 6 boys redshirted in her class (small group of kids) so they were 18 months older than her. Academically fine, emotionally and socially she was young. In mixed groups, she always seemed to find friends who were a grade lower - the grade she should have been in.
It all came back when she started college at 17. She’s just a very young kid to be living in a dorm, dealing with money, dealing with all her academic choices. Now all of her friends and teammates are turning 21 and she cannot join them for trips to Orlando for concerts, bars, celebrations. Her boyfriend is 23 and they won tickets to a concert she couldn’t go to.
It is not so easy to say “Just take a gap year” when all their friends and teammates are going to college and they are swept up in the high school focus on college.
I have a May birthday and skipped 5th grade. My parents refused to let me graduate HS a year early and senior year was pretty much a waste of time and money (literally, because if I had graduated, I would have one year of free tuition at CUNY). Then, although I had enough AP and CLEP credits to graduate in 3 years, I became ill and missed a year so I graduated on time. I loved being one of the younger students after I skipped and actually enrolled in night classes in both college and law school so I could continue to be one of (if not) the youngest in my classes. I graduated second in my law school class so my age was not an issue.
When my 2 oldest kids started school, we lived in NYC, which has a calendar year cutoff. Oldest boy has a late July birthday. I can’t tell you how many other moms tried to convince me to leave him back. I refused, partly because I don’t believe in leaving kids back and partly because that would have put him in the same grade with his younger sister. He was already reading when he went into K and although he had social issues due to being ADD and Aspie-lite, I think holding him back would have been more damaging. He didn’t finish college but at 26 is working and thinking about going back. My D has a late October birthday. She was the third youngest student in the gifted K class that she was in. When we moved, before she entered 1st grade, we went to a district with a December 1 cutoff so she was really one of the younger ones. It was never a problem.
The other boys have September, June and March birthdays. When my June son was going into pre-K, I was told by the district that I could get him into public pre-k for free. Two days before school began, they called and told me that a poor family moved into town and a kid took his spot. I could not get him back into the private pre-k he had originally been enrolled in but they were willing to take him into the K program. He was 4 years and 3 months. Although he grasped the concepts and was one of the brighter students (and definitely the most socially advanced), it became obvious during that year that my son is dyslexic. We opted to have him repeat K with his cohort but only after we were able to secure special ed services that ordinarily wouldn’t be offered to students until they are in second or third grade. I am grateful that we had the chance to put him into K a year early because it allowed us to diagnose him early.
My September son had profound speech issues. At his first parent teacher conference in K, the teacher suggested we think about holding him back. There were about 4 boys in his class who were either held back or started late. We had intensive speech therapy instituted (3 times a week at school, plus I worked with him at home) and by the time the spring conference came around, the teacher said that instead we should think about accelerating him a grade. I chose not to but did put him into more honors and AP’s than his siblings took, which was the right approach for him.
My district has so many kids who are held back for an advantage. My June son had one friend who was a month younger than him and two others who were about 4 months younger and all were in the same class age group. However, my son was the only one who graduated the correct year. The others were all held back by their parents.
S1’s preschool divided kids into cohorts within each year, so his preschool classes were all fall birthdays. Everyone wound up redshirting, and then we undid the redshirting a year later.
HIMom, we know how lucky we were to have public schools with such good programs. We never could have done private for K-12 and college. The public programs required a heavy commute and big family commitment, but it worked out for us.