Should I have my kid start school a year later?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hey all,

The legally mandated school starting age in the UK is 5, but many people have their kids start at 4.

My kid’s birthday is the very end of August. School starts in September. That means she’ll be one of the youngest in class.

I’ve been thinking about how younger kids can struggle to keep up when cognitive abilities vary so wildly at young ages. She risks being way behind the older kids (born in Spring). I’ll have to dig it up by Malcolm Gladwell quoted a study about this regarding a Canadian school hockey team where the 13-year-olds did well and got encouragement while the 12-year-olds struggled and many gave up.

Is having her start a year later so she’s older a wise move, do you think? Any counter-arguments?

2

I think you have to base this on how ready you think she is.

My daughter was in exactly the same situation as yours and we struggled a little with this but by the time we got to decision point it was clear that she was as capable as any of her peers and, more importantly, she was itching to be in amongst it and would thrive at school.

3

I don’t think any of us can usefully offer any valid insight. You know your child better than any of us. You might consult with your child’s doctor for their input. If you can contact the teachers that potentially would be instructing your child, they most certainly can advise you.

My default view is that yes, you probably can start her but I don’t push that position very strongly. If you have doubts or concerns about starting her, don’t start her. I’m not sure there is any bad choice here.

4

I wa born on December 31. The age for starting school was, you could start kindergarten at 4, if you would be 5 by New Years Day. But you could let your kids wait a year, and that is what my folks did. If I had started earler I would have been the absolute youngest in the class. For me it was a wise decision to wait, at that age a year can make a really big difference.

You know your child best, it is up to you. If it was me I would wait.

5

I think it’s really going to depend on the kid; but bear in mind both academic readiness and social readiness.

I was academically precocious and socially very much the reverse. My parents recognized only the first as an issue relevant to which year of school I should be in. (In their defense, this was in the 1950’s.) I’ve often wondered whether it would have been easier on me to have gone through school a year older. No way to tell now, of course. (And come to think of it I’d have had an even harder time of it than I did when I hit puberty earlier then the rest of my classmates; but I doubt that issue’s predictable as early as 4.)

6

When my daughter was in preschool, her teacher told us that she was definitely ready for kindergarten and would do well. We took her advice and things worked out great.

When my son was in preschool, his teacher (same person) told us that she would hold him back a year. We took her advice again, and things worked out ok.

We were lucky to have this woman’s advice. She had a PhD in education/child development.

7

I was the youngest kid in my class, due to the cutoff where I started school being way different from the cutoff in the state where I ended up. Both my late Summer/early Fall kids were among the oldest. My son made the cutoff by 3 days and we held him. My daughter missed the cutoff by 20 days but was reading at four and I could have made the case - but socially she struggled (and continued to struggle).

8

The Firebug’s birthday is at the end of July, and there were a couple of people in our family who urged us to ‘redshirt’ him (IOW, wait a year) rather than have him start kindergarten when he’d only just turned 5.

But he had clearly grown bored with what the day care/early learning center had to offer. I was more worried about his becoming a troublemaker and possibly a bully during that ‘redshirt’ year than his being socially unready for kindergarten at 5. (We weren’t the least bit worried about him academically, and since he’s always gotten A’s and B’s, we’ve been right about this part.) I think it has been somewhat difficult for him to be one of the youngest and smallest kids in his class, but he seems to have dealt with it OK on the whole. I still think we made the right call.

9

It depends on the kid and the capabilities of the school system.

I was the 2nd youngest (by a few days) in my first grade class but I was also the best at reading and arithmetic.

Around here they have a “readiness” program. If a kid in kindergarten is not ready for first grade, they go to readiness. It’s not officially holding them back as they learn new stuff that year instead of repeating things. And gives them a running start for later. It works quite well a lot of them time. Kids all over the age range do this and there’s no stigma.

10

The pros and cons of red-shirting are hotly debated in academic circles.

some kids benefit and some dont. Older kids have an advantage at athletics, but red-shirting has no effect on PhD achievement.
As others have said, it comes down to whether you think your child is “young for their age” or not.

mc

11

FWIW an older thread with some decent discussion beginning further in, more like post 33 (biased as I am :))

Redshirting not only has no measurable impact on PhD achievement, it also has no impact on post-graduate income. As noted above there is little to no evidence of long term benefits and there is some that suggest some long term harms. The premise of redshirting taken from hockey, that it places them on a trajectory of getting the starting positions, the extra attention, and the extra resources as the higher performing one, do not apply in the same way.

Who really cares if a child does marginally better on standardized tests so long as it isn’t the ones needed for college entrance or later?

Of course if a parent has a strong sense about their specific child there is room for flexibility, but the default should be the default.

I would also argue that parents trying to make the decision based on where their child is at that particular moment socio-emotionally and cognitively is usually an unfair ask.

Development is very non-linear. Barring an actual disability, delay, or giftedness, the correlation between where a child is today and where they are in a year, let alone in several years, is not very high.

Spoken as one with an August birthday, one of the youngest and shortest boys in my grade throughout. And whose parents at KG entry were pretty sure was not all that bright.

Look, the ideal is to be in the middle of the pack. But you no more want your child to be the bored kid than you want her to be the one who has to work a little harder and who needs and gets a little extra teacher attention in grades KG to 3 to keep up with the pack.

I’ll add one more item into the mix. Gap years later on are more and more common. The norm for medicine now is to NOT go straight through but to spend a few years doing other things before applying to get some life experience under your belt. Add another year at the start too and it begins to add up! We’d like them eventually earning some money and saving for their own retirements …

12

Our youngest would have been near the youngest in her class. We delayed her a year and it worked out great. She was the most mature in her grade, and in college she did some stuff (like take a year in Germany) which might have been tough on her if she were younger.
Our school district had a pre-First program for kids who graduated kindergarten and who weren’t considered quite ready for first grade yet. I think that holding her back was much better than her going into that, not that it was considered failing kindergarten or anything.
But it depends strongly on the kid.

13

Malcolm Gladwell has looked at some of the studies. Generally speaking, seems like being the oldest in the class gives a lot of advantages.

FWIW, a single data point. In hindsight, a niece of mine was “advanced” for her age, and advanced a grade. Disaster for all and she’s still trying to make up for it as a 20 something.

If your child is truly gifted, then get 'em into a program or supplement with after school stuff. Being the youngest in a grade seems to me to be a pretty tough barrier to overcome, especially in the younger years. Remember, you want your child to also succeed socially as well as academically.

14

Our twins were born jut after the cut-off date. That made them the biggest, oldest, most physically mature kids from kindergarten right through college. No way would I have wanted them to be the youngest, least physically mature kids for 13 years.

15

My daughter’s birthday is in Jan. When I asked her doctor, his reply was “There is next to no advantage to starting her early, and so many ways it can go wrong.”

We did not start her until the following Sept. no regrets.

16

My oldest is a July baby. Academically and socially he was ready with the rest of his preschool class. 6-8 years later though he had slipped as physically and athletically he always seemed a year behind his classmates. He was the youngest in his class and always seemed to be trying to keep up. Grades were hit and miss which were reflective of other development issues. I hadn’t thought of the physical development being an issue but it was.

17

Another anecdote:
My birthday is in August and there were two people younger than me (one at the end of August and one in September). We were always the youngest, by a lot. In fact, even now, it’s funny to watch some of my old classmates turn, say, 35 and later in the year she’s turning 34.

None of us struggled. I was average throughout school. She’s now a teacher and the other one is an MD and always at or near the top of the class. Granted he’s one of those people that’s just ‘good at everything’.

IIRC, she (with the September birthday) had to test into our grade when she enrolled in elementary school. I believe my parents had the option to pick which way they wanted to go. And, FWIW, I was close to the smallest/shortest kid. The other August b-day was shorter (and still is) than I and she, the youngest one in the grade was a good 6+ inches taller than everyone else (and also still is, but she comes from a family of very tall people).

While it may depend on the kid, I’m not sure if you can really tell if a kid should start school this year or wait a year when they’re only 4 or 5 years old. I think it’s more up to the parents. IME, starting that early, they’ll be at the same level as the rest of their class.

I think if you want to talk to someone, go talk to a counselor at the public school (because there’s no tuition or incentive to get the kid enrolled) in your district.

18

I could see that being a puberty issue which, I’d think, would resolve itself within a year or so. But I’d guess it varies wildly from kid to kid. I don’t know how much contact you had with the other parents, but it would surprise me if some of the parents of kids that were a ‘normal’ age for their grade went through the same thing.

19

I don’t think anyone can say without knowing your kid. To add another data point, a friend started her son a year late, as his birthday is in the last week of August. He was actually physically pretty advanced for his age, tall and sporty, but he wasn’t at all interested in learning to read or count and wasn’t really good at talking to other kids, partly due to speaking German for preference like he mostly did at home. He’s turning 10 next month, is popular and enjoys school, happily reading for pleasure. He’s not top of the class, but I don’t think that was ever on the cards; he’s competitive at sports, but he doesn’t want to be more than middle of the pack academically. He was, however, ready to get into it when he started, rather than the first year being a battle.

His Mum at least credits the year’s delay for helping him enjoy it right from the start, though she’s probably biased because they start later in Germany, where she’s from.

To add another data point though, in my class at school, which was a selective school with a lot of academic pressure, I discovered after a few years that one of my classmates, who I’d never noticed as different, had been bumped up a year, and was a July baby to boot. She was almost 2 years younger than the oldest in the class, and was totally holding her own academically and socially (socially, she did much better than me, lets face it). There was enough variation in growth that she wasn’t even the smallest in the year.

20

I wouldn’t (and didn’t; my daughter was born at the end of July). You would probably have to make an application to have your later-entering child start school in Reception rather than year one, and you don’t really want your kid to miss Reception - it’s a lot more play-oriented than the numbered years and also has a focus on helping kids transition to school. Starting straight into year one would be a disadvantage.

Even if she can start in Reception, there’s not a lot of evidence she’ll do better academically: School delay does not help summer-born, study shows - BBC News Socially it must be a toss-up - she wouldn’t be the youngest, but she would be the oldest, and the kids would know she’d started late.

A couple of people I know have gone for a different option - have their kids go to school part-time for the first term or until they turned 5 (I can’t remember precisely).

BTW the older kids would be born in Autumn, wouldn’t they? Even if the school you’re looking at does a staggered intake, by year one the oldest kids will be Autumn-born. FWIW you’d be surprised by how many kids are born in the summer months - I’m sure it’s more common in the UK than it used to be, but it definitely is very common: How popular is your birthday? - Office for National Statistics

September has the most births but July and August aren’t far behind. She’d likely be going to school with a fair few kids also born in the Summer.