We published this piece last May, but this discussion is still relevant for anyone pondering this big decision. See the update at the end to check out how we all are doing.
Erin– Today was one of those days. A few weeks ago, we had THE TALK. Not THAT ONE, the other one—the one where you meet with the preschool teacher about whether to send the baby to kindergarten.
All I can hear is Joe Strummer singing in my head, “Should he stay or should he go?”
Ellen– Remember folks, she not only has a visa for Planet Teen, she is the Princess of Preschool Nation. She’s got five kids in her army.
Erin– Goodness, haven’t I been around this tree before? Am I still supposed to be wringing sweat from my hands about preschool and kindergarten?
Ellen– Shouldn’t it be one of the perks of being a mother of five to get a reprieve from kindergarten being a colossal decision?
I mean, really, you’ve been there and done that 4 times already. Isn’t it the consolation prize that you get to have some things on autopilot? I mean why else would you triple or quadruple your food bill, your electric bill, and your college tuitions? Except for, of course, you also exponentially increase your joy. (For real, Erin’s family is a joy to be around.)
Erin– One of the supposed joys of mothering a brood is the notion that decisions become less fraught because your experience (times 4 or 5) makes you wiser.
So when can I stop and smell the roses? When am I allowed to stop sweating every decision??
Ellen– Apparently never. No GET OUT OF THIS CONVERSATION FREE card for you. Doomed to sit in the little chairs yet again.
Erin– To be perfectly honest, although I love Eddie’s teacher and think she loves him back, I was a little annoyed that I had to take an hour of my time AND schedule it so that Steve could be there too AND this was all ON A SCHOOL NIGHT. Which meant the teens were running the evening routine. Enough said, and GRRRRRR.
Ellen– Shudder. But why is this decision so angst-inducing? He has done his year in preschool, and he makes the cut-off date for kindergarten, right?
Erin– The main arguments for holding Eddie back are that he is physically small, has a late birthday in the late summer, and the majority of his class cohort has much older birthdays.
These are fair arguments. They are just not compelling ones—at least to me.
Ellen– If we are talking about Eddie, specifically, and not in generalizations, they are not very compelling to me either.
Erin– And yet my husband had made me promise to muzzle it and let THE TEACHER talk: “We’ll learn a lot about what to do from what she tells us without our interpretation or input.”
The teacher had no concerns about his academic readiness, his social skills, or his developmental readiness, so my main takeaway was that another year could be a gift to him—another year to play and be a little boy. Hmmmm. Who wouldn’t get on board with that?
The only thing I said during our hour was “Thank you, we would like some time to think this over.”
And that’s what I did, except when I said “think it over” what I meant was give myself time to read everything I could find and poll every person I know.
Ellen– I’m impressed you could tamp down that niggling voice whispering, “This is all a big waste of time.”
Erin– Oh, it was niggling me! More than that really, it was saying, “Put this baby to rest. Send THAT baby to kindergarten. We have bigger fish to fry.” But I put on my Good Girl hat and started doing my research.
Ellen– Good Girl hat? I’m thinking you lost those brownie points when you didn’t immediately accept holding him back. So what did the research say?
Erin— At this point, I want to be able to say that the research (the paper kind and the people kind) clarified everything, but what I found was. . . contradictory at best.
There were some very good reasons for holding him back. One study found that the youngest students were much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and were three times as likely to repeat a grade. Umm, no thank you.
Another study found that the oldest students were most likely to become student leaders. Well, what parent DOESN’T want that? At this point, I started daydreaming about my sweet boy as class president circa Class of 2022!
But by far the most compelling argument for another year of PreK was what my mother (former preschool teacher, current kindergarten teacher) said: “You cannot underestimate the power of feeling confident and capable in the classroom.” Maybe Momma IS always right.
I was all ready to give him another year, but, of course, I then kept reading. The arguments against another year of Pre-K pushed me right back on my fence. There were negligible long-term academic benefits. The differences between the oldest and the youngest are the largest on the first day of kindergarten, but the advantages decrease over time. Younger students catch up with the oldest by third grade. Even studies that matched each child who delayed entrance with a child of like intelligence who had not delayed entrance did not find any solid proof that this practice made any difference at all.
At this point, my head was spinning. I heard Joe singing, “If I go, it could be trouble. If I stay, it could be double.” What’s a Momma to do?
Ellen, singing: “This indecision’s killing me.”
Erin: THIS Momma remembered her maxim to Have a Little Ellen in her life. I handed this mess over.
Ellen: Are you getting the gist? Erin read pages more of research and she sent them to me. Here is my take-away: despite research indicating there is no real benefit, it is becoming a common practice to “red-shirt” for kindergarten.
Erin: We did not make that up. It’s a term. Oy.
Ellen: There are no large studies with good statistical significance to show that it is beneficial to hold back. It is most often recommended to white males, and quite frankly, there are whiffs that it is recommended so that schools have better scores on their “No Child Left Behind” rankings.
Erin: Wake up! At this point, I’m cutting her off. She could analyze statistics for hours. The links are there if you want to read what I read. My last call was to my dad, the fair-minded judge and father of 4. It’s his daily work to evaluate two sides of an issue, balance interests, and come up with good solutions.
He just said, “What did your mother say? Do that.”
Ellen: At this point, I had heard this talk long enough. It was now time to call on The Sisterhood.
They were only too happy to share their thoughts:
SIL with two summer babies: “Was worried, but both kids are doing great.”
SIL with two fall babies who got that valuable extra year: “Kids are happy and doing great.”
Friend with a Summer Birthday Baby and a December birthday Baby: “Hold him back, because you are thinking ahead. If he moves on to kindergarten, he will turn 18 a month before he goes to college. He will be the last in his class to get his driver’s license.”
Ellen– Must interject here. I also have a summer baby, Coco (13), and a December baby, Jellybean (11). And while it is true that the preschool teacher initiated a mortifying conference to discuss Coco using yips to answer questions instead of words, she is doing fine. Upper tail of the bell curve and all that.
Sisterhood Friend: “I wish I had thought to hold X back. He’s struggling socially in middle school, and he has a late summer birthday.”
Other Sisterhood Friend: “I don’t think you can make a wrong decision, but you will definitely know which one is better.”
Ellen: Eddie is ready for kindergarten. He is articulate. He is one of the few 5 year olds I can have a conversation with that I enjoy. His best buds are moving up. And besides, it will make it much easier to work on the blog.
Erin: Rest assured, no decisions were made based on this blog. You did catch that Ellen took the time to read my research.
Then my sister called to weigh in. My mother and father had filled her in on our Big Dilemma.
My beloved sister: “Are we seriously even talking about this?”
Erin: OK, so, maybe my sister Karen is the voice in my head. Hmmm.
So here is the thing I learned that I already knew: all of these kids, including mine, are going to be just fine. The decisions to start preschool or kindergarten and when are important decisions, but they are not deal-breakers. Kids grow where they are planted and nourished and cared for.
I knew that. I needed to remember that. And not for nothing, the fifth time around this tree made it easier to see that.
Eddie is going to kindergarten next year. He is curious, inquisitive, and ready to learn. He is still small, will still have a birthday in the late summer, and will still be the youngest in his class. He will still have time to play and be a little boy, but he will also learn to read and write and, if we’re lucky, eat some paste, because that’s what curious, inquisitive little boys do.
He is going not because of any one thing we read or brilliant insight someone shared. He is not going because of any readiness assessments we took (although they did make us feel better—really). He is going, because one night after we put him to bed, Steve and I looked at each other and at the same moment said, “He’s ready.”
He’s going, because he’s ready, and we both feel that to be true.
I could break into song, but this time it’s not Joe in my head, but the Hallelujah Chorus. No more hand-wringing or sweating this decision.
Ellen: Get Eddie a bigger backpack, because he’s goin’ to kindergarten!
As we were working on this piece, 60 Minutes ran a segment about kindergarten redshirting. Definitely worth a look if you are also in the midst of this decision.
Also, Steve and I found some great resources online to determine academic readiness from sources like Scholastic, BabyCenter, and FamilyEducation.com. We took two readiness assessments—one from School Sparks and one from Covenant Home.
Update
Eddie has adjusted to kindergarten well. He is doing everything we hoped he would in kindergarten, except for eating the paste. For some reason, he just won’t oblige me on this one, even though we all know that’s part of what kindergarten is for. Anyway, he is reading, writing, and doing the arithmetic. No cause for worry, right? Well, not so fast.
I had a meeting with his teacher this week, and she has some concerns. Chief among them is that he is the youngest in his class (sound familiar?) and because this particular class skews old, he looks young. Is he still appropriate for his age? Yes. Is he a behavior problem? No. Is she concerned about him academically? Not really. Is he driving her a little crazy? Maybe.
Eddie has a tendency to dig his heels in, especially when there is something he does not want to do. And by dig his heels in, I mean park his cute little butt down and cross his arms in the international gesture of “Ain’t Gonna Happen. No Way. No How”. But even this is, in her words, still developmentally appropriate for a 5 1/2 year old. We had a pretty good discussion about how I am A-OK with whatever consequences she dreams up for my little sideline-sitter when these occasions arise. Hopefully, this carte-blanche to corral my kid will help her help him toe the line.
Bottom Line for You: If you plow forward with your summer baby and keep him or her with their birth cohort, you might still be talking about this or thinking about this. For AWHILE. This means that if you follow this path, you may be sitting in the little chairs discussing issues a little more often than other parents. Remember what the literature said: it can take until third grade until everything evens out. Or not. All kids are different.
Bottom Line for Me: We are continuing to move forward despite some bumps in the road. School is a marathon, not a sprint, and we are just starting out. I can wait for Eddie, and I am pretty small so the little chairs aren’t such a bad fit for me anyway. I am happy with his progress, and I am OK with talking to the teacher. I am even OK with talking to my hyper-verbal kid and asking him what he thinks about all of this and what he wants. We are putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward taking one day at a time.
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I had the same issue with my youngest. His birthday was in November and he was the youngest one there. However we allowed him to move forward. When he hit 1st grade he had a rough time and we held him back because developmentally he was not ready. Now he is a straight A student and loves school. I fear if we had not held him back in 1st that may not have been the case. I think it all depends on your child and how well they tolerate change.
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Oh, this is good feedback. Thank you for sharing your story. I couldn’t agree more. Erin
I read this story last year, and love that you did an update!
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We both love to know how things turned out, and we were watching some conversations people were having on the webz so we wanted to update it. Thanks for checking back in, Erin
Fortunately for me my 4 year old has a birthday that allows us to not have to make that decision. However we are still stressing over it. Our neighborhood school got ranked one of the worst in the city academically so we are having to try and lottery into another school. We are currently in the process of touring other schools.
You only get to try and lottery in to three schools so not only do we have to take into account which ones we think are the best fit but also take into account which ones do we have the best chances of actually getting into.
I’m hoping that one of you have gone through this exact situation in my city (Portland, OR) while living in my neighborhood and could blog about it to give me some information on what I should do. Thanks!
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Oh, Christian, that is 100% ZERO fun. I was going to ask you if you lived in Pittsburgh, because this is a similar situation to my sister who works as a professor there. My only advice: Save everything you do, write it all down, and write the piece for someone else that you would have wanted to read. I will share it with my sister (who I am certain will share it with her friends). I promise. Then you can say, “Well, at least all that stress was good for the blog.” Erin
I had to go through this twice…had I known the agony of the decision, I would have planned for spring babies!! My oldest had developmental delays so that was a no-brainer. My youngest was a November birthday and very clingy and not confident socially. The preschool recommended holding back and we agreed. He seemed to come out of his shell during that extra year in preschool and the teacher said he was the poster child for giving that gift of an extra year. That being said, had my middle child been a November birthday (instead of a January), I know we would NOT have held him back. He was the social butterfly of preschool and would have been ready if he had been a late fall birthday. So, I am a firm believer in making the decision based on the CHILD and not the birthday. You definitely sound like you handled this the right way…you went with your gut instinct.
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I have an August boy & a November boy, and in both cases, we were told to “think about” holding them back on the kindergarten front because “boys develop more slowly” and “they’ll be so young” and all that stuff. Add to the fact that November boy is tiny for his age and the yellow flags waved even more strenuously. But off they went to kindergarten, small and young and with backpacks that could flip them backwards ala turtle if they weren’t careful. And they are THRIVING (now in 3rd & 7th grades) … I think it’s ultimately worse for kids to be bored than to be challenged: it’s possible to ratchet down from a challenge but if the first encounter with “real school” is to be bored, bored, bored, it’s very hard to recover from that. So I applaud your decision and your willingness to sit in the small chairs…and frankly, I love your kid for his stubbornness. That might mean that later when “everyone else” is dying their hair green & piercing their whatevers, he’ll be all “NO WAY.”
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It is certainly a tricky situation for sure. I was always the youngest in my class. Bottom line was that I never knew it any other way…sure, I can speculate on what would have happened if I had instead been the oldest, but who really knows. Same for your sweet boy…he will never know it any other way.
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I think the cutoff age is a little different in Italy, and we end up making this decision in preschool, not kindergarten because that’s when most kids start school, but my son, who’s birthday is in February could have started preschool at two and a half rather than three, so he would have been on the younger end of the class spectrum and after much debating I decided to keep him at home until he was well over three (so he’s one of the older kids in his class). But he’s a boy and the first, and just seemed like he needed to be coddled a bit longer (or maybe I needed it) but he’s doing fine and is happy and in line with his classmates. My daughter, who was born in November a year after the Boy, started preschool early, she wasn’t quite three. With her I had no doubts because she was already so independent, and used to running after her brother (and also, a girl… ). She’s one of the younger kids in her class, but you’d never know it. I don’t know if it’s a boy/girl issue, but though I did exactly the opposite thing with each of them, it worked out perfectly for both. All this to say, all kids are different, and though I get the angst of the decision making process, in the end no one knows your kid better than you, so you’re bound to make the right decision, right?
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My daughter is always the youngest…and her immaturity in fourth grade shows in her innocence. But she is thriving academically just because she has been through all the twists and turns of 1-3 grades and will continue to persevere because it is expected of her. We never even talk about her age anymore. I did struggle with holder her back when she was so sick and missed so much school…but thanking God I didn’t now. Just like you said- it’s about “Kids grow where they are planted and nourished and cared for”…
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I have loved reading your story from your decision making process to your update. My son is a September baby, so we will be making a similar decision. He does a 3 morning a week preschool now (he’s 3) and he is the very youngest in his class. So far, he is doing very well socially and academically, he’s just the baby. So right now our feeling is that we would continue to move him forward, but I know there will be a lot of discussions with his teachers when it’s time to make that decision.
Good for you for all of your research, and for ultimately doing what your mommy heart told you was best.
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“He’s going, because he’s ready, and we both feel that to be true.” This is the most important thing – being informed, then going with your gut.
I started school at 4 years old (turning 5 that November) and it was too soon. I was well ahead academically (which is why I started then – I was already reading), but I had so much trouble socially that my parents pulled me out in third grade and home-schooled me for a year. When I went back I was badly bullied for years.
It’s hard to know if things would have been easier if I had stayed back a year – maybe I would have had those issues anyway. But it certainly didn’t help.
My daughter is a summer baby and will be eligible next year to go. I’m leaning toward sending her, since she’s already in daycare and it doesn’t seem that different. But we’ll see how ready she is when the time comes.
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This hits home to me. I have a 26 year old son(born in July) that I held back a year before sending to K5. I didn’t want him turning 18 AFTER he graduated high school. He thanks me for this. That extra year made him taller, stronger, and “slightly” more grown up for his high school years. He was better at sports and actually landed a starter position on the basketball team blah blah blah mama is braggin’ let’s move on. I ALSO have 6 year olds that are already in first grade. They were also born in July. They will turn 18 AFTER they graduate from High school. I am still worried about this decision but, like you, they(triplets) are doing fine right now. I think the time we will really know what the right decision was will be during the teen age years. But time will tell guess.
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I remember reading this before as well. Glad it is turning out well for your little guy.
We have a July daughter and though she is on the young side we never considered holding her back. She is mature and intelligent, reading at a high school level by 6th grade. Our second daughter has a spring birthday so this was not an issue.
Our youngest, a boy, has an August birthday so this was definitely a concern. There is a huge difference in his development compared to our girls! But intellectually he seemed ready so we let him go to Kindergarten right after he turned five.
He did okay, but there were struggles. He could do the work, but he couldn’t sit still long enough to do the work! His kindergarten teacher and I discussed the possibility of ADHD but she cautioned me about diagnosing too early, and explained that his behavior was still in the normal range for his age. We were both aware of the statistics regarding the younger kids being diagnosed with ADHD more frequently.
Halfway through first grade we revisited the ADHD topic because he still couldn’t sit still enough to do any work. His age was progressing but his attention span was not! He was put on a mild dose of medication and immediately there was improvement in his ability to sit still enough to do his work. He is in second grade now and has been on honor roll!
In our case, I don’t think holding him back would have helped. Intellectually and socially he is where he should be. If we had held him back, he would be in first grade now and would be on medication to help with his attention anyway.
My girls were born in January, and I was so relieved not to have to make that decision. I’ve taught for 28 years and I see both sides of this coin in my first grade classroom. While the great majority of children that I’ve ever retained has had a late birthday, there are many more that’ve been successful despite their late DOBs. There is no one size answer…..it all depends on the individual child’s readiness and the support they get from home. I’m glad it has worked out well for Eddie.
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I have three boys; August, June, August. I sent my first August boy and it was not good, so we retained him in kinder and it’s going much better (he’s in second grade now), but there was a lot to it-super smart but zero impulse control. Youngest in his (first) class and behind in social skills. There are so many factors that go into the decision, and especially having multiple older siblings, your kiddo’s going to be great!
Thanks, Sally. We forged ahead and he is thriving in first grade. There are still times when he looks super young, but it was definitely the right decision. Thanks for reading, Erin
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