@Marian Exactly. So make the decision based on what they’re like right now.
I disagree. You do know that they will be 17 when they graduate. I was 17 when I went to college and thought I knew everything (I still think I do). Experiencing it from the parent’s side was a lot different and made me reflect on my own experience, how I rushed things, made decisions I now wish I could do over. My parents didn’t help me at all, so I was making all kinds of financial decisions on my own and I had no money. I wish I would have done a semester abroad. I wish I would have slowed down and enjoyed school more.
I try to help my daughter more, she did live in the dorms for 2 years while her friends didn’t, and that helped (me) feel a little more secure. I think they get caught up and just start rolling along with their friends and peers. Gap year? Okay, but that’s not what she wanted and since she was 17 would have had the same issues - couldn’t travel on her own, couldn’t work at a job that required her to be 18, would have given up a year of eligibility for her sport (she has 5 years post high school to play 4, so if she had delayed a year and then been hurt or wanted a rest year, she would have lost a year of playing). She would have had no one to travel with since all her friends went to college and her younger friends were in high school.
She could have repeated a year, but when? She was at a small school, and all her friends would have played on the basketball team she used to be on, in the girl scout troop she used to be in. My other daughter was also a very immature college freshman, but at least she was 18 and could get medical care without my permission, get a driver’s license in another state without my signing, buy a lottery ticket if she wanted one.
I know a lot of parents who regret putting their kids ahead a year or starting them as a very young 5 year old in K. I don’t know any who regret holding a child back a year or even having them in the correct grade if they just missed the cut off.
I regret holding my one back in some ways, because he did not develop a good work ethic. To me, part of that was because he was ahead as a young child - already reading and started writing on his own. Would he have if he was running to catch up with his peers? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. But being a year older did not help him at all.
Many, if not most, colleges out of staters want to attend attract other kids from out of state, including kids from NYC which has a 12/31 cut off. There are lots of other kids who have skipped a grade and others who finished high school in 3 years. It really isn’t an issue. I can’t imagine a scenario when someone is the ONLY kid in a freshman college class who didn’t turn 18 by September 1.
My kid went to a top college. In frosh suite, one had turned 18 in late June the summer before starting college, my kid and another had fall birthdays, and the 4th had a birthday in January of their first year in college. Guess which one had trouble being away from home? The one born in June. None of the others did.
Maturity doesn’t track chronological age that perfectly and the older one gets, the less it does. Physical and maturity differences between 5 and 6 year olds in the aggregate are greater than physical and maturity differences between 17 and 18 year olds in the aggregate. Of course, there are also great individual variations.
I know plenty of people on both ends of the spectrum (accelerated to redshirted), and most are happy with their decision. A few wish they hadn’t accelerated/redshirted. My own S was accelerated at a young age, then later after getting out-of-sequence at an international school he was returned to his age-mates when we moved back to the US. He did fine in both situations. Plenty of colleges have students under 18; some like USC even have early-entrance programs for juniors. Both acceleration and redshirting are excellent tools when used appropriately and thoughtfully.
My sister and I were both accelerated. I skipped third grade. She did four years of high school in three. We both went to college at 17.
She was a social, sophisticated, seemingly mature young lady. I was an introverted, immature nerd. Yet I was perfectly fine at college at 17 and she was miserable.
YMMV – and it may vary unpredictably. Anyone who knew the two of us would have predicted the opposite outcome.
Indeed. Some of the most immature undergrads I knew during my undergrad years were older classmates who weren’t only 18, but also those who were 19 or even 21+.
One odd experience I had as a 17 year old college first year was consoling a 19-20 year old first-year who was breaking down and crying uncontrollably because he was homesick and had issues coping living without parental supervision for the first time in his life within the first 3 weeks of the semester.
On the flipside, I had an undergrad classmate a few classes ahead of me who had no problems fitting in among the 20-22+ year old juniors/seniors despite him actually being so young that he was still barely 17 when he GRADUATED from our college with high honors.
Granted, a large part of that was due to his unusual maturity, level of independence, and academic/intellectual ability so far advanced(genuine genius type here) that even the local public school officials in his home area felt forcing him to attend middle/HS with his same-aged peers would be HARMFUL to his social/intellectual development as they’d felt it’d be the equivalent of forcing an advanced college undergrad who’s ready to do graduate level work and as mature as a 25-30 year old to attend kindergarten classes and be bound by greater academic/social restrictions required for 4-5 year old students. .
One ironic result of this was when his older sister started her first year at our college at 18, it was her younger 17 year old college senior brother who was guiding her on her introduction to college life and tips on how to live on her own away from parents.
This is why it is a very individual decision, based on the child.
I disagree with @cobrat that a 14 year old can fit in socially in college. At 14, you can’t legally date your 19 year old classmate in any state I’m aware of .
^^ And many colleges do not allow kids to live in the dorms under 16 years old.
My daughter was also reading and writing well and independently long before she started kindergarten. We did consider acceleration during her primary years, but decided against it – my daughter at age 7 had a role in making that decision. My daughter also has a very strong work ethic – she’s a perfectionist who has always been proactive and puts in effort well above what is needed to get by.
My son, on the other hand, is dyslexic and had great difficult learning to read… but as a student his work ethic was poor. His high school teachers characterized him as "brilliant"and “lazy”. He did not do well in college initially, because of his tendency to procrastinate and to get by with minimal effort in courses that did not interest him. He needed a 3-year gap midway through college, with time spent in the work force, to develop the discipline needed to do well in college.
Both my kids have April birthdays and were at 5 at the start of kindergarten, age 18 at the start of college.
Their age in school had nothing to do with their work ethic – that was a product of personality and a type of maturity that has nothing to do with chronological age.
Dating is only one aspect of college life that some parents and the larger public assume far greater importance than it actually does for many undergrads.
And incidentally. I also knew a few 14-16 year old undergrads at my LAC…including a 16 year old junior who had no issues fitting in among the 20-22+ year olds…or balancing part-time work with carrying a maxed out credit load.
I’d hate to think there are parents who would hold students like those younger undergrad classmates who were very advanced academically back solely for the sake of forcing their conformity to attending schooling with same-aged peers.
From knowing those undergrads, they’d be abjectly miserable as an advanced undergrad ready to tackle graduate level work being forced by dunderheaded notions of “appropriate development” to be placed in early-mid K-12 with all of its constraints and associated boredom from being forced to learn material they’ve mastered years or even a decade before.
If you think dating and what the kids call Netflix … these days is unimportant to most college age guys, you must have gone to a college on a different planet than I did.
@roethlisburger I guess your screen name tells us what segment of the college population you belonged to. I rarely agree with cobrat, but not everyone on campus is having sex. Here’s a survey from Harvard. 45% response rate. 60% of students who answered had had sex in the previous 12 months. That means 40% had not. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/12/12/uhs-health-survey-data/
Now, obviously, not all dating involves sex. Still, while I think a 14 year old would have a hard time fitting in on campus, I don’t think it would be because (s)he was not interested in older classmates romantically.
@roethlisburger, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t mean to be sexist and out of touch by including only males in your comment. Of course plenty of college age PEOPLE are interested in sex. If you think it’s only the guys you are greatly mistaken. However, the idea that a brilliant student who WANTS to attend college early should be held back just because he/she might not be able to find enough sexual partners is completely ridiculous.
Whoa, getting a little steamy here…
I think I’m going to take this back to the OP’s comment about excelling with ease though HS and then hitting the wall in college. “His classes finally became challenging, but because he was so used to breezing through his work with no bumps, he had never learned how to properly tackle challenging problems.”
I think on the redshirting issue, it’s really a YMMV thing. You can’t do a controlled experiment where you put one copy of a kid in the higher grade and another copy of the same kid in the lower grade.
But, you can do things to make sure any kid experiences appropriate levels of challenge prior to college so that they have experience not breezing through.
Of course, there are personality issues, and what worked for DS17 wouldn’t have worked for DS21, who doesn’t (yet?) seem as tenacious personality-wise.
Our experiences are specific to us, but DS17 missed the early December cutoff by less than a month and we didn’t really have an option to put him forward, even though he was reading and doing math prior to kindergarten. Redshirting is uncommon here, so he was one of the older kids in his class. So, I suppose he could have breezed through. But, he (and we) found ways for him to be challenged.
So far he has some excellent options as far as colleges to choose, including a couple where anyone would worry about their kid finding it too challenging. I still worry about it, because I’m the mom. But, some of the experiences he’s had that gave him familiarity with struggle include:
– He would say that he learned to deal with challenge early by playing video games where beating “the boss” of each level got progressively harder and sometimes took days to master.
– Learning to play piano well despite fine motor issues. (And piano helped him with dysgraphia, which probably would have been more of a problem if we’d been able to put him ahead a grade.)
– Learning computer programming and debugging complex problems early on. He recalls me helping him learn to debug in 6th grade and that it was somehow a breakthrough for him as far as critical thinking. It’s something he’s tried to teach others when tutoring.
– Having some elementary teachers who were willing to challenge him and expect more in math and composition. We just got lucky there. Other than my being able to volunteer to help a special math group that included him, that was luck at having good teachers.
– Other than one science teacher, junior high was kind of a wasteland as far as the ability to get challenging classes. He did take some online programming classes that were challenging and was able to take the AP Comp Sci test in 8th grade.
– His high school allows kids to take AP classes early, without the previous non-AP class as a prerequisite. So, we were lucky again there. AP Physics B in 9th was an early challenge that he had to learn to handle. He was able to skip ahead in math to get into AP Calc in 10th, which seemed about the right level. Multivariable was “the wall” I hit in college, so I was happy that he was able to take that in a challenging environment while still at home.
– Dual enrollment classes at a 4-year college have allowed him to take more advanced math and CS courses, including some where he communicated with the professor to test out of a prerequisite class.
– He was fortunate to be accepted to a couple of summer programs where the work was quite challenging. I think that gave him the self-knowledge about what learning environments work best for him. I hope that because of those experiences, he’ll be better able to decide which college environment is best for him.
Anyway, just trying to bring this back on topic a bit…
As mentioned previously uptgread, our state went by calendar year as to when kids were SUPPOSED to start K. Nonetheless, we were able to request and get our kids to remain I. Preschool with the other kids born in the last quarter of the year.
We kept our kids intellectually challenged by frequent use of the library and computers. By middle school, it was painfully obvious S was having a very tough time finding adequate intellectual challenge in public school, so we opted to let him and D apply for private HS. They both found the private HS much more challenging and found their respective “tribes.”
As far as I know, neither kid “hit a wall,” and both kids were fine with having that extra year of preschool, even tho S was reading 2nd grade and above books in K and playing chess against college kids by 2nd grade.
60% is still a majority and you can find a lot of different surveys with numbers all over the map. You’re a lawyer. I’m sure you’re aware a lot of behaviors which may not raise to the level of sex, would still be prohibited under state laws.
@bookreader I’m sorry. I know this is sort of off topic, but what steps did your daughter take in high school to enter college with 2nd-semester sophomore status? I have a 13-year-old son and it would be great if college could only 2.5 years for him as well.
@additionvector Could it be a reflection of his high school? They should be offering classes similar to college so it isn’t a big jump. Asa junior DS2 is taking college credit classes in addition to AP. Did he not have many AP classes offered or an IB program.
We redshirted DS3. End of summer Bday. DS1 was an atypical learner for reading. DS3 exhibited similar characteristics. Also he is not very tall for his age. Has helped him blend better.