Would some one please tell me the advantage of sending your child to school early?
Little background info. I am a single father of a 4 yr old son who’s mother insists he start school this fall rather than next. He misses the cut off by 2 weeks but she has been looking to send him to a private school who will ignore the cut off. My son is quite intelligent for his age and well developed however he does show issues w staying focused and paying attention in general. I for one feel this is a horrible idea and have experience being the youngest in my class graduating at the age of 17 but he will already be in college by the time of his 18th birth day.
Any input for or against would be greatly appreciated.
Would some one please tell me the advantage of sending your child to school early?
Little background info. I am a single father of a 4 yr old son who’s mother insists he start school this fall rather than next. He misses the cut off by 2 weeks but she has been looking to send him to a private school who will ignore the cut off. My son is quite intelligent for his age and well developed however he does show issues w staying focused and paying attention in general. I for one feel this is a horrible idea and have experience being the youngest in my class graduating at the age of 17 but he will already be in college by the time of his 18th birth day.
Any input for or against would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
As long as you provide hime the proper stimulus at home, it probably won’t make much difference.
It is a double edged sword. When I was growing up they had the concept of “acceleration” - if you were seriously outperforming at a grade level they could move you up a grade - this happened to me twice - grade 2 and grade 5 were essentially skipped.
Now the thing is intellectually you are probably working closer to your level, and the focus issues tend to diminish since you are not bored out of your mind. However, later you pay a big price socially. I hit university at 17 (and this was when Ontario had grade 13 before you went on to university). Dating in high school was hell - all my piers were 2-3 years older, and just meeting someone two grade behind you wasn’t common. At the time drinking age was 18 - so when my friends in grade 13 went out on a Friday a lot of times I couldn’t join them (yeah fake ID was done but it was still a headache). So you are always a bit of a social pariah. I was fortuante enough to have enough activities outside of school where this wasn’t so much an issue (my lifeguarding piers were all the same age), but there were times high school was a pain.
Our son is the youngest in his class. The problem we are facing is that so any people “red shirt” their boys here in Georgia. They want their boys bigger for football. So, we have a bunch of bigger kids pushing around the smaller ones. I’d take a look at his potential classmates and see if he’d be in friendly enviroment.
Would some one please tell me the advantage of sending your child to school early?
Little background info. I am a single father of a 4 yr old son who’s mother insists he start school this fall rather than next. He misses the cut off by 2 weeks but she has been looking to send him to a private school who will ignore the cut off. My son is quite intelligent for his age and well developed however he does show issues w staying focused and paying attention in general. I for one feel this is a horrible idea and have experience being the youngest in my class graduating at the age of 17 but he will already be in college by the time of his 18th birth day.
Any input for or against would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
We had to go through this discussion about our son who was also very “precocious” at a young age. I was worried about him being bored. In the end, we decided to have him go the next year (when he was supposed to due to the cutoff as well). I’m glad we did. As the kids get older, their maturity makes a big difference in their classroom behavior, and 1 year differences can be HUGE. You can nearly ALWAYS pick out the younger kids in a class based on that alone. BTW, my son just had his 6th grade “promotion” ceremony yesterday…he was one of the few in his class who earned the Presidential Educational Excellence award this year
I’ve never known anyone to regret waiting the year and having their child start later, but I can give multiple examples of folks who wished they hadn’t started their child early. In fact, I know of one child who started “early” who has eventually really struggled…to the point that the parents have considered having the child repeat a grade. That’s kind of tough to do to a child without them changing schools…
What is the rush, to get him into the soul-sucking workforce a year sooner? I’d let him be a kid for a year longer.
Geeze Dude, with such a slacker attitude like that coming from adults, no wonder these kids have trouble with paying attention and staying focused. That’s what’s wrong with America today . . .
I agree with everyone else. It is NOT an advantage to be the youngest in your grade. I know several kids who skipped grades and it causes huge problems from a social point of view. There are ways to handle kids who are advanced for their grade other than having them skip a grade or start early. There are ways to enhance the curriculum for them so they are always challenged yet stay with their age group. This is what you should be looking at for your son. Not starting him a year early.
Find a really good preschool program for him for this coming year that will give him what he needs intellectually, but will still allow him to stay with his age going into kindergarten. Oh, and be careful about the private school thing. I did that for my daughter because I wanted her in full-day kindergarten. I thought I would switch her to public school for grade 1, but she was doing so amazing in private school I couldn’t move her. Now, 11 years later I’m still paying private school fees. She’s doing amazingly well, but it’s a lot of money.
My six year old turns 7 in July, and she’s now finishing 1st grade. She, too, will graduate high school at age 17. So, she’s one of the younger in her class, but she happens to be second tallest (her mom is 5’11"). If she were to have waited a year before kindergarten (don’t even know if that was an option), she’d have been bored out of her mind and that would have been a serious issue. As it is, she found the spelling words too easy, and (by herself) Googled “6th grade spelling words”, copied down a dozen and added them to her list. Her teacher includes them on her spelling tests.
Wife is a first grade teacher and we held our kids back until the proper slots for them to enter. I think having that extra year to mature, work on social skills, conflict/resolution instead of crying, etc. did wonders. Our kids enjoy school and don’t dread it because they were pushed into it a year earlier. Your son might be bright and catch on, but what happens in 4th grade when in a disruptive class, teacher doesn’t have the best resources or teaching methods to get thru to concepts and your child struggles, gets picked on, etc?
My six year old turns 7 in July, and she’s now finishing 1st grade. She, too, will graduate high school at age 17. So, she’s one of the younger in her class, but she happens to be second tallest (her mom is 5’11"). If she were to have waited a year before kindergarten (don’t even know if that was an option), she’d have been bored out of her mind and that would have been a serious issue. As it is, she found the spelling words too easy, and (by herself) Googled “6th grade spelling words”, copied down a dozen and added them to her list. Her teacher includes them on her spelling tests.
In your case, she went when she was “supposed to” right? That’s different than being just past the cutoff (usually end of October?) and attempting to start the child 9-10 months early. It seems to me that even just 6 months of difference in age can have a noticeable effect on behavior.
My daughter’s birthday was at the tail end of the cutoff range in August…so, she also turned 7 during the summer after 1st grade. She’s done great academically too…but at times we notice the relative behavioral immaturity compared to her grade since she’s one of the younger kids in her class.
Kids in North America and England start school at age 5 and that is already too early. Kids in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland all start at age 7 and Finland has the highest education standards in Europe with those others close behind.
There are other factors of course (specifically the education level of parents and the socioeconomic status) but there is no evidence that starting children in school earlier is beneficial but increasing evidence that the opposite is in fact true.
It is NOT an advantage to be the youngest in your grade. I know several kids who skipped grades and it causes huge problems from a social point of view.
While this thinking is common in the education community, it isn’t necessarily true, and studies have found that acceleration ISN’T a problem for gifted children.
Abstract From the two perspectives of a literature review and a longitudinal comparison of accelerants and non-accelerants, an examination of the potential effects of acceleration on the social and emotional development of gifted students revealed no identifiable negative effects.
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Daurio (1979) argues that opposition to acceleration of gifted students is justified primarily by concern for its effect on the students’ social and emotional development. This report examines the merits of this argument from two perspectives. First, the results of several major studies of the social and emotional development of accelerants are reviewed in the context of a core of issues central to the problem. Second, the social and emotional development of gifted radical accelerants and the social and emotional development of nonaccelerants identified through the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth are compared. Neither the review of the literature nor the comparison of the SMPY gifted students identified any negative effects of acceleration on social and emotional development. Indeed, any effects of this sort seem to be positive. The validity of the claim that acceleration is somehow detrimental to the social and emotional development of accelerants must thus be seriously questioned.
The cutoff for your school is August? Jesus it’s creeping up. Ours was November, the end of November, actually.
I started K at 4 years old, and also graduated high school at 17. I was in college before 18, and graduated at 21. Staying home another year would have been pointless. I’m glad my parents did what they did.
Did any of this hurt me? No…as I said, our cutoff was much later into the year, so I had classmates who were younger than me. Frankly, I rarely thought about it other than when I was nearing 16 and a lot of other kids already had drivers licenses. Of course, I wasn’t big into team sports, so there was no issue there. It was never an academic issue either (graduated top 3% of my class).
Maybe we should wait until kids are 6 or 7 to send them. I mean, after all…they’re bigger, and it gives kids more time to be kids.
I haven’t read the study and I’m sure there are many kids who skip grades and do quite well. However, for all of the kids that I know who have done this, it was a disadvantage from a social point of view. The kids did fine and got along, but IMO they would have done much better had they stayed with kids their own age.
Also, skipping grades is not the only option to challenge these kids. We are lucky enough to have learning specialists at my daughter’s school. That person not only helps kids who are struggling, but also helps kids who find the work too easy. There are ways to challenge the kids in their own grades.
My six year old turns 7 in July, and she’s now finishing 1st grade. She, too, will graduate high school at age 17. So, she’s one of the younger in her class, but she happens to be second tallest (her mom is 5’11"). If she were to have waited a year before kindergarten (don’t even know if that was an option), she’d have been bored out of her mind and that would have been a serious issue. As it is, she found the spelling words too easy, and (by herself) Googled “6th grade spelling words”, copied down a dozen and added them to her list. Her teacher includes them on her spelling tests.
My daughter is born in July as well, same situation (just finished 1st grade as well). We’ve had no problems, but kids who will graduate HS at 17, then go on to college at 18 are at the youngest end of the age spectrum for a shcool year. Any younger, and they do start to run into social problems. School was a good thing for us, as she enjoys it and reads on her own for enjoyment. She would have been bored at home (Mom taught many Kindergarten and up skills before she entered pre-K), but I’d not want to see her with kids outside her age range- gotta keep Daddy’s Little Girl a LITTLE GIRL!
I’m a mom of 3 boys. Our youngest is a late summer b-day (Aug. 21) and had I not been homeschooling at the time I would not have put him in kindergarten. Since I was already homeschooling the other two, and since our youngest knew his brothers had started kindergarten at age 5 (to him age 5=kindergarten!), I stopped the pre-K cirriculum and moved him up to kindergarten. Let me tell ya…it was rough. He could handle the material without any problems and tested far above his grade level, but emotionally he just couldn’t deal with the structure. I could get in about 30 minutes of structured schooling each day and if I went over it was tears and wailing. This went on for most of his elementary years, but I kept him on track because I was homeshooling (and had the flexibility) and it would have hurt his heart too much to repeat a grade. And, like I said, he was testing out way above grade level. It was simply a matter of emotional maturity.
Now he’s in school (we put all the boys in in jr high), going into 9th grade and doing well. We still see bits and pieces of drama when he thinks he has more work than he can handle (this is almost always a misperception…“I have TONS of homework and I’m going to be up 'til midnight getting it done!!” Then, 2 hours later…he’s done…sheesh), and only a few tears here and there, but pulling straight A’s.
All that to say…if I’d not had the opportunity to homeschool I would have held him back. He simply wasn’t ready, and that had absolutely nothing to do with his intelligence.
I don’t post around here often, but I hope I helped out in some small way.
