WWYD, kindergarten for July baby?

[chrismauritz]

@jellofishxo In our state the cut off is turning 5 by December 31 so there's definitely a lot of kids with late birthdays and those parents have a very hard choice to make (me being one of them). Do you have a list of what educational and emotional milestones are expected? What do you feel in your gut about readiness? That being said my 4 year old is starting Kindergarten in the Fall and we have been spending a lot of time getting ready in various ways so I feel good about it. Her emotional and social readiness plays a lot into the decision and also the recommendations of her preschool teacher.

 

[krazeban]

@jellofishxo I'm an early October baby and my son has the same birthday so he's going to be the oldest in his class like me and will be basically 6 when he starts. I was always jealous of people who got to be done with education earlier, but as a kid I didn't mind being older.

For me the biggest thing is sports - being older is as vs advantageous there. . Also I was already a late bloomer so physically it was probably better for me.

I'm actually annoyed because all the sports programs follow school rules so I can't get him into baseball until a year after some kids who are two months older than him. He's really happy doing dance at the moment though. Being on the cutoff line is weird.

 

[edit]

@jellofishxo Absolutely anecdotal, but I am a late summer kid who started school at 5. Socially, I was a little shy, but that's still true of me as an adult. I had several close friends throughout school and am still friends with them in my 30s. Academically, I was more than ready to go and was the valedictorian of my class. I loved school and would have been bored to tears if my parents had held me back a year.

Our son's birthday is just before our district's cutoff, so we are considering what to do, as well. He's not yet 2, so we have time, but we lean toward starting him at 5, unless his daycare/preschool teachers suggest otherwise.

 

[trimeresurus]

@jellofishxo Work with your teachers and ped to make a decision. That's what I'm doing - I have 2 with August birthdays, the oldest will be 5 this year. Our state is 5 by August 1, or can test in early if 5 by October 1. My oldest's PreK teacher told me she was ready for Kindergarten during a review last September. So she's going this school year. Her little sister will start PreK this fall after she turns 3, and the school asked if I was playing to go early Kindergarten in two years. My answer was I'll see when it's time. It depends on each kid, and where they are academically and socially (and social is as, if but more, important). There are going to be students of all ages and maturity ranges. I have 5th grade girl scouts who often act more like my 2 year old, and 1st graders with more patience than me. The teachers are used to variety, and can help you assess if your little man is ready.

 

[kleio]

@jellofishxo So I’m in Canada and my oldest is born July 2019 as well. Here they base it off birth year. For example: Jan 1st 2019 - Dec 31st 2019 will all be in the same class year. So my son will be in class with kids all born within 2019. Technically he will be in the middle in terms of birthdays. “Late” here is considered after the first day of school. I’m a November baby and I started kindergarten at 3. My son is very emotionally attached to me and that’s why I started him in daycare last year just to prepare him and let go of me a little. He has a speech delay and selective mutism and he’s still going to kindergarten. He’s enrolled in a private school and we’re very excited for him to start. My son surprised me when I sent him to daycare. He settled in well and has learned so much! If I were you, I would send him. Even if my son was a December baby I would send him.

 

[walterbl]

@jellofishxo I have an end of June baby and already think about this so I really understand. In general as an educator I tend to be pro team send them “on time” but honestly it’s different when it’s your own kid.

There is a lot of interesting research that shows that sending at 6 has a lot of benefits…at first. Basically in elementary school older students typically out preform academically, receiving achievements and athletically. But as they get older this drops off and they actually have lower grades, lower graduation rate and higher rates of suspension by the time the reach high school.

The takeaway here is not if you hold him back your son will turn into a delinquent (it’s just a trend) but more that long game wise older kids can get restless towards the end. In general, if multiple teachers are giving the green light that seems like a good sign to me.

 

[needs2b3]

@jellofishxo Where I live, it’s so much simpler than this (to me, anyway) - you send them based on the calendar year they were born in. Kids start school with Junior Kindergarten the year that they will be 4 by the end of the year.

My son is starting JK this fall, he was born in October 2019 and will be turning 4 after he has already been in school for a bit. When he turns 6, he’ll be in Grade 1.

I wish I had l advice to offer, but it seems like a lot of other parents that are more familiar with the type of system your child will be in are saying to base it on the individual child’s level of readiness - while this makes sense to me, I also know that kids can really thrive when they are pushed out of their comfort zones! It’s called keeping them in the zone of proximal development - basically always keeping them challenged while maintaining the support they need to learn how to address the new challenges. That support can come from an adult figure like a teacher or EA, but it can also come from a child’s peers. I think school can be so valuable for helping parents maintain this with our kids!

 

[jellofishxo]

@needs2b3 Thank you!

 

[adamgarfield]

@jellofishxo I think it also really depends on the trend in your area. I held my August child and she will start Kinder later this year the week she turns 6. But in my area holding a kid is very common, many of the kids in her “young fives” class have May, June or July birthdays. So we were concerned there would not have been many or any kids her age and a lot of her classmates would be over a year older than her.

FWIW, her cousin who is a month older started kinder so we split them into different grades. I actually saw this as a positive, though, because I hope it will reduce competition and comparison, especially when it comes time for college applications, etc… (My extended family can be very competitive. My husband and I are not.)

We looked at it as giving her one more year of childhood, and maybe most importantly more time to mature before middle school. My husband and I were both kind of late bloomers, and my daughter was seeming the same way to us. (I still wanted to play games and pretend when my friends were all getting interested in boys and other tween stuff.)

A lot of parents in our area also hold their boys for athletics, because they have a better chance of making it onto teams if they’re on the older end.

My daughter also had a tough year of pre-K with a lot of older girls (early birthdays) in her class, so we were wary of sending her straight to K.

We just finished school and have zero regrets about her “young fives” year. She has developed so much confidence this year and we are happy to be sending her to school without the hesitation we would have felt last year.

Good luck with your decision! Sounds like your son will do well either way!

 

[ariel]

@jellofishxo Looks like I'm the opposite of a lot of these comments - My Sept baby missed the cutoff by 3 weeks and started kinder at almost 6. We hated not sending him the year prior because he seemed on par with all of the other kids at daycare that went at 5, he's huge so now he's exponentially bigger than the other kids in his class, plus the cost of daycare was astronomical. But he has really bloomed in kinder. He's a leader and they all look up to him. He's doing second grade math at home in a work book because he's totally into math (thanks NumberBlocks), but he's at a normal reading level and isn't bored at school because he chooses to challenge himself. He goes to after care at the school and plays with both the kids in kinder and plays chess with two 3rd graders. We know other folks with big boys that get in trouble a lot because any time there is an incident it is blamed on them simply because of their size, but we haven't experienced that. I think the biggest difference is in his confidence in himself. Would he have been fine if he had started kinder last year? Absolutely. But am I glad we waited a year? Absolutely. I think in the long run it was harder on us financially but it was the best choice FOR US.

Your kid will be great either way. Do what makes sense for your family. Situations change all the time, don't feel bad if you had your mind set to wait until 6 but something came up that made it not work. Don't let the mom (or dad) guilt win. You are already winning by caring.

 

[jellofishxo]

@ariel Thank you for this! It means a lot. My guy is 95% for height (his cousin is too ) but he’s very sensitive and tall and skinny so I hadn’t considered the size thing. That’s a good point.

 

[ariel]

@jellofishxo Yes, my 6 year old looks like an 8 year old but he's a gentle giant, which is probably why he hasn't had the same issue with getting in trouble. He's a rule follower though so I hope he doesn't turn into an enforcer!

Luckily this won't be an issue for you, but we had to deal with if he tested into kinder at almost 5 he would have been in the "post-covid" year with all the kids who were held back in fall 2021 so they wouldn't do remote kindergarten. In our area (greater Seattle) the fall 2021 kindergarten class was almost double the size of a regular year. There is still trickle-down in that there is an extra large diversity of kindergarten readiness in the fall 2022 k class. At the start of the 2022 school year some kids could already read and some kids didn't know any of the alphabet. But Covid restrictions were more strict here than a lot of other areas of the US, so your results may vary.

 

[bethlehempriory]

@jellofishxo My school district is where everyone born in the same year gets to go. So, December is the last month allowed. I would definitely feel okay with a July baby going to Kindergarten. I would feel fine with a December baby too. I feel if the kid is ready (and yours sounds smart), then why not?

I went to school that was also the September cutoff. I knew kids born in October who still got in. They did fine. One of them was a good friend of mine. He went to an Ivy league college. I would send your kid.

 

[kleio]

@bethlehempriory That’s how it works in Canada too! I was a November baby and it was fine. I started school at 3!

 

[andujartyler]

@kleio Each province has different cut offs! The one where I live is September 30th.

 

[pressedbutnotcrushed]

@andujartyler Interesting! I Googled and Alberta is still Dec 31st.

 

[jemoess]

@jellofishxo I think as a society (USA) we think too much about this type of thing. Send the kiddo if they meet the cutoff. I’d they don’t meet the cutoff, don’t send them

 

[risensoul]

@jellofishxo I’m a teacher in the same boat. If we start preschool (no privates by us only public) we must be Team 5. I really wanted to be team 6 but the idea of going at 5 I’m coming to terms with.

I was told by our school district that we can repeat kindergarten if we don’t see the social emotional readiness for moving up.

 

[cherivee]

@risensoul We only qualify for UPK if our son attends at 4, so we are sending him due to that reason alone.

 

[hardrocker]

@jellofishxo I was a late September kid and always the youngest and smallest in my class, but academically always top so it never occurred to me it was a problem. I am female though and my best friend was male and held back because he had an August birthday and so he was 13 months older than me, and also academically always top.

Do what works for you but I really doubt you will have a problem if the daycare folks say he’s ready.