I went to a bunch of small private schools as a child, interspersed with homeschooling, and I was “popped” grade-levels twice - once at the start of first grade popped into second, and again half-way through fifth grade I was popped into seventh. (I would have gone into sixth, but the school was so small that there were no sixth graders, and it was considered better for me to be socially completely out of my league rather than bored out of my mind.)
At the time I didn’t mind. I was a little nerd, and a loner, and I understood adults better than kids. I also liked being the “weird smart one” that the teachers fussed over.
Now, I look back on it, and I think that if they’d just left me the heck alone, I might have a few more people skills than I do, and my life would be a lot easier.
If she’s as bright as you say, she’s going to pick things up early regardless of where she’s placed in school. I think that the socialization of schoolmates is what you’re not going to be able to replace/substitute/augment as easily.
It doesn’t sound horrible to me. I sounds like you know your daughter as she is, not how you want her to be.
That said, irishgirl, as has been mentioned, there are plenty of things you can do with your daughter outside of school, to keep her occupied and learning. And interested. Maybe this is the time to look at things her school might not get to, like music or weird science or art, or anything else that’s a bit away from the ‘three Rs’. Also, at least here in the States, once you start with a class in school, there’s a real stigma to being held back, even if it’s just to let you catch up with your age group. So starting later might be better, if there’s a chance that she’ll need that extra growing time at some point. Maybe an extra year of preschool or the equivalent, if it’s available to you, before she starts official ‘school’? I don’t know how things work where you are.
Bear in mind this is all coming from a ‘youngest in the class’, whose three children were also all ‘youngest in the class’, the middle of them technically starting early. (Her due date was August 31, her birthdate is Sept. 5, and she’s taller than average. We had her given the same test the school used for their preschool-to-kindergarteners and she aced it, then did the same all the way through.) The other two did well in school, but have had some social and education (and life) issues that might or might not be related to their ages or readiness.
And now that I’ve written this novel, the best I can tell you is, do the best you can with what you know about her, and be flexible. Good luck with it all.
I don’t remember not being able to read. I obviously learned before school. I was tested kindness grade and put in the talented and gifted program. In first grade, I spent part of the time with the normal kids and part with the other gifted kids. If there hadn’t been a gifted program, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
I was the youngest in my class and still was bored shitless most of the time. I probably would have done better socially with another year. I don’t know if Ireland does the same thing with sports here, but I would have been a hell of a lot better relatively if I had another year. I was always one of the best players in my age group in private, sport club teams, but in school I was playing with kids a year older than me. Basically making me average.
I question the smart=bored relationship as well. The stupid kids were plenty bored as well in classes. There’s a lot of options for gifted kids as well. My high school allowed kids to take classes at the local community college.
My understanding is that the age at which one learns to read has little to do with intelligence. It is similar in that respect to other developmental milestones - failure to develop within a certain range may be a sign of issues, but remarkably early development of certain milestones is not indicative of future intellectual ability.
I read at three and my son read at five. We’re both alike in the sense that ‘he’s like how I was at that age’, but the difference is that I kept him out of preschool whereas I went to a private preschool. We had a literacy-rich household but I wanted him to play, explore, create and be ‘a kid’ for a little while longer. Plus I had an odd work schedule, so the preschools in town were not going to cut it.
He turned five in December and obviously started reading this school year. He’s a pretty smart kiddo and is more mature than the others.
Do what you think will be best for her maturity level. As far as academics go, I wouldn’t restrict or push anything in the preschool years. Go with what your child is interested in. My son is a six year old science geek who makes wonders out of K’Nex. Skipping preschool didn’t hurt him.
I, too, was a way early reader - Mom says I was reading at 3, mostly self-taught (thanks, Dr. Seuss!), but I don’t know if that’s really accurate or not. I do remember reading a passage out of the Bible to my grandmother because she didn’t believe that I was reading already.
There was talk about me skipping a grade when I was in grade school. My mom adamantly refused. I’m so very glad she did - at younger ages, I think it’s the social development that’s equally as important as mental education. There was a kid who’d been skipped ahead two grades in my high school/secondary school - agewise, he should’ve been in my class, but he was two grades ahead. He had a very rough go of it.
Obviously, do what you think is best. If it were me, however, I’d do what I could to keep her with her peers. Of course, I was never one of those to act out out of boredom, either - I’d find my own ways to keep my self occupied that weren’t disruptive or harmful to my school career.
Our daughter was a few days shy of the deadline, and we wrangled her in anyway. We have always regretted it. She could handle the academics, but never managed the social stuff.
She’s fine now (graduated college cum laude), but if we had to do it over again…
Just another anecdote - my kid has either been in mixed grade classes or in her age group classes.
She took the Woodcock Johnson II test and according to their criteria, she is gifted (98th to 99th percentile across the board, whatever that means).
For her (and I am *only *speaking for her) she does better socially in the mixed classes where she makes friends easily amongst kids slightly older than she is. She also does better academically in those classes because she’s not singled out for ‘extra’ work.
She skipped a year when she was 7/8 and did very well, then the rules kicked in and she had to stay with her age group (something about middle/senior primary school having an age bar). The last two years in that school were horrible for her.
She was back into a mixed class (new school) last year and blossomed. They are again age restricted this year but this school is getting her involved in enough extra credit / extracurricular activities that she’s feeling suported rather than punished for doing different work than her age group peers.
Ouside of school, age makes no difference and she’s happy playing with whoever is around.
She was reading about 3 or 4, it was encouraged at her pre-school, along with creative and practical activities (woodwork, cooking). I honestly don’t understand why any kid that wants to learns how, should be prevented from reading. Can someone explain the reasoning behind that?
I was the youngest in my class most years (August birthday) and academically now was in the top ten percent of the class. BUT I hated hated HATED being the youngest. I felt that I was struggling to catch up the entire time. It was less bad when I was younger but when it got to the high school years it was miserable. I did go out drinking with my legal friends, sweating the whole time that we’d be busted, but when it came to driving and voting and all the other stuff that you simply have to wait for, I was miserable. If my parents had put me up a year, it would have been so much worse.
I’m glad someone else questions the smart=bored thing. I don’t know how old I was when I started reading, but I was always reading faster and more advanced than most of the kids my grade, but there were plenty of other smart kids and good readers, too. We didn’t have gifted programs so much back then, but there were enrichment classes and independent study things that got a few of us out of regular classes. And of course I was in Advanced Placement classes in high school. I can’t recall ever being seriously bored with school. Very few of us took early college classes…few were offered, and surprisingly those of us in AP classes were NOT the ones taking early college classes. Today it seems like so many kids are, that it seems meaningless. Someone told me yesterday about a friend’s daughter getting enough college classes to get her associate’s degree two days before her high school graduation. To me that means something is seriously wrong with that school, or with the college classes she was taking. But I digress…I just had so many other things happening in school that reading faster/better than others was not a hinderance to my happiness.
I’m not trying to single you out, Hokkaido, but I don’t understand this. I mean, in any grade level there will be, generally speaking, two ages, with half the class one age and half the class one year above or below. How can any one student be ‘the youngest?’ And does half a year really make that much difference? For what it’s worth, I was on the younger end and never really noticed, except when it came to things like ‘Sweet 16’ parties and getting a driver’s permit.
As to the OP, my brothers and I were fairly smart. My older brother was in accelerated Gifted and Talented programs. He had trouble fitting in and it disrupted his normal life so much when the school approached my mother about putting me into one she flat refused and even failed to mention the opportunity to me until years after. I was bored in school and never really took to note-taking and studying, but I am a bit more socially-adjusted than my brother.
You can be the youngest by being the youngest. I’m not sure what you don’t understand.
My birthday, for example, is Nov 26. The year I started kindergarten, you had to be turning 5 on or before Dec. 1st to start. If your birthday was Dec. 2, you had to wait until the next year to go into kindergarten.
I was the youngest because no one in my schools had a birthday from Nov 27-Dec 1, 1974. There were, however, kids who had birthdays in early December of 1973, making them very nearly a whole year older than I was - they hadn’t been allowed to register the previous year, because they missed the cut-off. They’d already been 5 for almost a year before starting kindergarten, while I was still 4 - I wouldn’t even turn 5 until 2 months after school started. A week after I turned 5, they’d turn 6.
Dates vary by school district, of course, but that’s how I ended up the baby of my class.
She sounds like me at that age. Or so my mom tells me.
In my earlier years we were living in a ghetto part of Detroit, so there were no programs for gifted children or anything like that. I didn’t get into a gifted program until 3rd grade, after we moved to Atlanta, and for a year I had to sit in with the 4th graders because there was no one else my age.
I don’t remember being chronically bored. Some classes did bore me at times, but I think you could say that about any student at any level.
I agree with this. My step-daughter skipped Kindergarten, which unfortunately was a bad choice. Last summer, before starting high school, it became very clear that she really could have benefitted from another year in middle school. And her freshman year was very tough because she just wasn’t ready for it, maturity-wise.
I see. I never gave it that much thought or kept track of whose birthday was when, and it seems like nearly half of every class I was in had a birthday before the cutoff- sometime in early December. It never seemed to be a huge deal in my school.
I entered college as a Sophomore because I had so many AP credits. My senior year of high school I took AP Calc BC, AP Physics, AP Chem, and AP European History along with a fourth year of German and regular English. I was able to get credit for all of those AP classes and tested into some German credit. It wasn’t bullshit either. My senior year of high school was harder than my freshman year of college.
Having faced a similar decision when my daughter was young, I’ll let you know how this turned out for her. The cutoff date for being 5 was Sept 1. Her birthday is August 31. I put her in the pre-school that was affiliated with the public school system (in the same building as the kindergarten) when she had just turned 4. I asked her teachers, I watched her behavior, I watched her academics and social skills. Collectively, we all thought she had the skills to advance to kindergarten. She even said to me towards the end of preschool that she was bored and she wanted to learn things and do more than preschool.
Every year after that, at the beginning, middle and end of the year, I would check in with her teacher. Is she ok socially? Is she ok academically? Was this still the right grade level for her?
Always got “yes” across the board. I worried, though, that once she hit middle school age, the social issues could become problematic and more so in high school.
Unfortunately, I was right. She is 17 and about to graduate. She is not as mature as she should be. She is not making good decisions. She’s trying to be as old as everyone else around her is. The last to get her license, I’ve had to worry about her driving with peers a year sooner than if I’d had her do another year of preschool. Most of her friends are 18, and she still has 3 months to go. I’m convinced she would have done better academically and she would have been at the same level maturity-wise as her peers. Just in these last few months that decision has come back to bite me in the ass HARD. Many things would be better for her if I’d held off one year. Another year of preschool and I could have been teaching her to read in the meantime and asking them to give her extra work. She would have been the leader, not the follower and I think had more confidence.
All kids are different, of course, but this is a sore subject right now and I really regret letting her start as early as I did. It’s easier to bump a kid up a grade or get them extra/different work or higher level classes than it is to hold one back once they’ve reached even the early years of elementary.
When I went to school in the UK (which may have changed now) there was a cut off day of August 31st. So, if your birthday was September 1st, you’d be the oldest in the class. Your classmate whose birthday was August 31st would be 364 days younger than you.
Yeah, it was explained upthread, I just never paid any attention to that at all. Certainly not enough to single out the kid who was the youngest, though with a September birthday, I’m guessing it was likely me, at least in the early years.
Or so my mom tells me.