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I have a December birthday and so started Kindergarten when I was 4. The driver's license was was the only issue that bothered me. Boys are different and don't want to be much smaller than their peers so it doesn't hurt to have them grow another year.
I have a December birthday and so started Kindergarten when I was 4. The driver's license was was the only issue that bothered me. Boys are different and don't want to be much smaller than their peers so it doesn't hurt to have them grow another year.
It depends on the kid. My boys were both 6' by the time they were 13 years old.
They were among the taller kids in their classes. Kids don't all get their growth spurts at the same time.
The purpose is this post is to encourage parents of kids born between October and December to think long-term when deciding whether or not to send them to kindergarten at 4. Our son has a late November birthday, and when he was 4, all that mattered to us was that he was ready for Kindergarten. We didn't ask ourselves how he would do in high school or college. Thus, we sent him at 4, and he has ultimately been emotionally damaged because of it.
Now contrary to popular opinion, he didn't feel as bad about being the last to get his driver's license as one might expect. After all, it's a hard and fast rule in this country that if you're under 16, you're now allowed a driver's license. Thus, our son knew that his classmates weren't driving before him because of anything he had done wrong; he knew that it was just the law and there was no reason for him to blame himself. However, our son experienced other problems that I'm sure were an indirect result of his relative age. However, because these problems were an indirect result, he had a much harder time not blaming himself for them.
One such example is that he didn't make it into his high school's top orchestra until his senior year, while most of his orchestra friends made it in their junior year. Concerts were torture for him his junior year, as he had to sit in the audience watching his classmates perform some of the greatest classical pieces ever written.
Another example is that he failed Pre-Calculus his junior year, and had to retake it his senior year, meaning he graduated high school with no knowledge of Calculus. Whenever he got together with his friends to study during his senior year, he had to endure the shame of pulling out his Pre-Calculus textbook while all his friends pulled out their Calculus(and in some cases, Multivariable Calculus) textbooks.
But, most recently and most importantly, is that he failed to graduate from college in 4 years. Due to his immaturity when he entered college, he wasn't able to handle as much as most of his classmates, and the result was that he ended up falling a year behind. He should've graduated this spring, but he didn't. It's going to be another year before he graduates and he is miserable about it. These past weeks, he's had to endure his friends from high school as well as his friends from his first year at the university(including his old roommates) posting pictures of themselves in their caps and gowns on facebook. The moderator of that group, the other day, made a post saying, "Congratulations college grads!" which filled our son with shame. A parent of one of his friends from high school invited them to a college graduation party at their enormous house, to which our son had to gloomily decline. Even though he's graduating next year, the people he's going to graduate with are people he barely knows, whereas most people who graduate from college together have shared the full 4 years together, from start to finish.
I've never heard a parent say they regret redshirting, but I've heard many parents say they regret not redshirting, and now I understand why.
I have heard some interesting discussions about this topic with regards to sports. Megyn Kelly has had some guests talk about it.
I have a December birthday and so started Kindergarten when I was 4. The driver's license was was the only issue that bothered me. Boys are different and don't want to be much smaller than their peers so it doesn't hurt to have them grow another year.
I'm also a late birthday and started kindergarten at age 4.
I don't feel damaged. I continued to accelerate through high school and college and attained my BA whilst still in my teens. I'm not a genius; I was just bored with most classes so I continued to skip grades and attended summer sessions to get my BA in fewer than four years. It saved considerable money and I entered the work force several years before I would have, had I followed the usual age/grade path.
Some children are ready at age 4 and some are not. It's impossible to tell what the long-term effects will be on any particular child.
I am so happy that my parents started my formal education at age 4 rather than waiting another year.
I have heard some interesting discussions about this topic with regards to sports. Megyn Kelly has had some guests talk about it.
Yeah, we have parents here that have held their sons out for up to two years to get a jumpstart on athletics. Enough so that the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association put upper age limits on athletes as well as limiting the number of years they can play (some high schools were using strategic failures to redshirt the really promising athletes).
Two of our sons were 18 during their senior year. It was really rough with one of them. But, I suspect some of those issues would have arisen at some point. School just magnified it.
Our youngest daughter was on the young side.
Boys, on average, mature later. Some do better with the extra year, some do ok starting young. I would say, if they seem immature for their age, wait.
I'm also a late birthday and started kindergarten at age 4.
I don't feel damaged. I continued to accelerate through high school and college and attained my BA whilst still in my teens. I'm not a genius; I was just bored with most classes so I continued to skip grades and attended summer sessions to get my BA in fewer than four years. It saved considerable money and I entered the work force several years before I would have, had I followed the usual age/grade path.
Some children are ready at age 4 and some are not. It's impossible to tell what the long-term effects will be on any particular child.
I am so happy that my parents started my formal education at age 4 rather than waiting another year.
We opted not to red shirt our son who has a summer birthday and he has never said that he wished we had done so.
In fact, that kid would have graduated HS at 16 but we were able to talk him into staying in HS for his senior year, taking most of his classes dual enrollment - he commuted between his HS and the community college campus. He graduated from HS at 17 with a fair amount of college credit under his belt. He's glad he did that because those classes helped him to graduate from his 4 year university early.
If we had red shirted him I doubt that we could have convinced him to stay in HS for his senior year. He would have likely opted to graduate early and headed off to a 4 year university. He wouldn't have had nearly as many college credits under his belt so he would have been in college all 4 years, instead of graduating early like he wound up doing.
You can't know any of this stuff when you are making these decisions for a 4 or 5 year old. You just have to make the best decision you can for your child at the time. I remember how monumental that choice seemed. Oh, how I fretted about it. But in hindsight I don't think it really made much of a difference at all.
Maybe it's because this has, on rare occasion, turned out to be the case with other posters, but this account sounds to me more like the son's point of view than the parent's.
(Edit for clarification: I mean it sounds, to me, more like the son's account of his own point of view, rather than a parent's account of what they think their child has been going through.)
I don’t see any of this as an issue. Not everyone moves at the same pace through their schooling, even if they are all treated as one cohort for public school purposes. There will always be those ahead or behind. It’s not anything to do with “redshirting” which is not even a thing in most places bc there are laws regarding it. I skipped a grade and was still in honors classes. Really screwed up in college bc I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was pretty immature but it’s not uncommon even for those who are the “correct” age.
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