delaying kindergarten one year--need advice

I don’t see any down side to keeping your son back, especially with a late Aug. birthday. You can easily tell him/others that there will be children turning 6 in September and he will just have turned 5.

IMO, he is much better off being one of the older in the class than one of the youngest, if not the youngest. Especially with his issues. I think this is even more of an issue with boys because the girls are generally so far ahead maturity-wise. There is an ocean between 6 year old girls and 5 year old boys (not to mention 6 year old girls without issues and 5 year old boys with them!). An additional bonus is that as one of the oldest in his class he’ll have size on his side (unless he is on the tall side already). Height is important to boys. My son is one of the youngest in his class and is the shortest…it really bothers him.

Even though my son was reading in PK4, he had undiagnosed mild sensory issues and poor motor skills. As bright as he was/is, K, 1st and 2nd grade were tough. He was by far the best reader in his class with very good verbal skills, but any written work was poor to say the least. His self esteem definitely suffered. Hindsight being 20/20, even though he was so very far ahead in many areas, I would have kept him back and he was a late May BD.

I believe a developmental K is probably best for a kid with sensory and motor issues…it is more developmental time that they need. Why put him in a academically challenging environment if he doesn’t have all the skills he needs to be successful? The 1 year’s time is meaningless, IMO, to the rest of life. It’s much more important that he has the skills necessary to be successful and get off to a good start in school.

Good luck.

Lori

How common is redshirting in your district?

Where we used to live it was so common a full third of the boys were back a year(basketball was king)

I think very few people notice early on and, if you dont now and choose to later, I think it becomes more noticeable. We ran into that. I wish I had held mine back from kindy and as school became more difficult and I really wanted to(3/4 gr)I couldnt bring myself to do it. He was hysterical at the thought and what do you do about activities like scouts where hes been with a graded group all those years?

If you have doubts and its not unheard of in your area, Id wait

Or, give yourself a year. Put him in a private kindy and then decide again after the private kindy. He might be even more ahead academically but you have bought a little time before you enter the ‘school zone’

I believe that redshirting is not so uncommon where we live (lower Westchester County, pretty intense, competitive district), I just need to find other moms who have done it, too. The advice I’ve rec’d here has been great. I may go the private K route, too; his fine motor skills really need to pick up (they are, though).

I’d like to address this from the other end of the question.

I started all my children (3) in kgrtn at six years of age. All summer birthdays.

Now the twins are 18 years old and seniors in high school and I’m so glad
I have them one more year and they aren’t off to college this year.
They are not ready and I’m not ready!!

With all the challenges at colleges, all the stresses, all the potential for
mischief that I well remember (!) I’m thankful they will have another year of maturity
under their belts.

All my children have reading delays and the extra year helped. The twins
are in the top of their class, taking AP and Honors classes. One of them is
working at a scientific lab as an intern part of the day.

My brother went off to college at 17 and it was really rough.
So consider the other end when making your decision.

I agree on the other end. My nonLD 12 year old daughter has a fall birthday and where she started K, the deadline is December 1. We sent her after much debate. I regret it. She is a very strong student, so that isn’t the issue for her. I can see that she is emotionally younger than her middle school peers. This was compounded by a move to FL where the deadline is Sept 1, making her over a year younger than many kids in her class.

We’ve already decided she is going to live at home her first year of college to give her time to catch up. She won’t be ready emotionally to go to college at 17.

I wish I could give her that year back now.

Beth

One of the decisions I look back on with the most regret is not keeping our two boys out of kindergarden for another year. They were always the youngest child in their class and the most emotionally immature.

Then we starting dealing with learning disabilities and ADHD on top of the age difference, the gap just became even greater.

If only I’d known then what I know now…! Talking with parents now, I know that many, many parents decide to wait. Wish I’d been one of them.

thanks for all the very helpful stories. We were at a birthday party this weekend and, for all the gains my son has made, I see that he is emotionally not well-equipped for dealing with the older kids. We’ll probably do a 5s program and maybe private K after that if he’s doing well academically. Thanks again!

I can’t speak for your area but around here, tons of children are held out of kindergarten for a year. Especially boys. Around here, no explanation would be necessary as it’s so commonly done. If you need to make an explanation to others, tell them you wanted to give him ‘an edge’ or explain that because he’s small in statue you wanted to give him a chance to grow so he wouldn’t feel like the smallest one in the class.

If in a year, he is really cruising with his reading, he’ll be the best reader in his nursery school class. Nothing wrong with that. If he doesn’t get sufficiently challenging reading in school during the coming year, you can certainly keep him reading at home. Many strong readers never get sufficiently challenging reading material in school - I was one of them - but we can always read at our level out of school.

I held back both my son and daughter - son’s b/d 10-23-85 daughters b/d 11-21-88. Our cut off for school is Dec 1. I talked with the kindergarten teachers at the school he would be going to as well as their teachers at the preschool and they agreed to give them one more year to grow.

They were both immature. My son does not have any ld’s and excelled in school - he was upset with me when he was old enough to understand that he was given the extra year. But when he was old enough to drive he was one of the few to get his license as a sophmore in high school.

My daughter struggled with frustration and a down spiraling of self esteem in school. Her 4th grade teacher pick up on her inattention and was diagnosed with ADD and Auditory Processing Delay. She entered the Resourse Specialist Program (RSP) at our school district in 6th grade - because of the steps you have to go through. Once in the program she went from C-D’S TO A-B’S she never received anything lower then 3.5gpa on her report cards.

If you are unsure talk to some teachers and get their input. The Kindergarten teachers see this all too often - a child too young and not ready. Putting him in school at age 4 - he may do OK but if he doesn’t then you will be facing this problem after he has already been through Kindergarten.

Hope this helps.

My son, now almost 19, was bright but emotionally immature and quite short at this age. We were debating the issue of holding him back. Coincidentally, one of my petite friends at work happened to tell me how she was the only one in her class at elementary school who couldn’t reach the reading shelf to get a book during free time, and how humiliating it was for her—she still winced at the memory. That was my deciding factor! We held him back and have never regretted it—nor has he. He was in fact quite happy to be the first of his friends to get that driver’s license! No one ever questioned him or teased him. It was a complete non-issue. You’ll find lots of kids are being held back for a great assortment of reasons, some valid, some not, and your son’s status will not stand out as much as you think.

I see only advantages to giving your son an extra year before kindergarten. Where I live (metro DC), kindergarten gets more academic each year, and teachers don’t always present the material in a developmentally appropriate way–thus they expect children to sit still too long, do too many worksheets, etc.

I think you are more likely to defind a private kindergarten/preschool that honors children’s need to play and learn through activities and that will give your child more room to develop at his own pace.

I thought some of you might enjoy this little story though it might be a bit OT. When I was in kindergarten, my mom was told that I should be kept behind for a year. I was reading and my mom was very curious about this. They said I was “immature”. My mom, not the most up on the various psychological terminologies told them that “kindergarteners were by definition immature”. :-) I doubt another year in kindergarten would have hurt anything. (Or helped too much in my case.) But in the grand scheme of things…

—des

I would hold him back. I don’t see a reason to rush through school and an extra year can make a big difference in maturity.

Sometimes I’m sorry I didn’t hold my son back a year because of his immaturity. The problem I had to consider is my son is very tall and he was born in the late spring. If he had been smaller and born in summer I probably would have done it….and yet, I probably should have done it anyway!

I really wouldn’t worry about what anyone says regarding this. You can always mention his later birthday, or say you just wanted him “home” (to enjoy him!) an extra year. I’ve learned not to worry about others, but try and make decisions based on what I thought would be most beneficial.

Both my kids have late August birthdays My eldest (13) had multiple medical problems including CAPD, vision disorder, ADD, sequencing disorder, expressive langauge disorder, fine motor issues etc., now mercifully fixed. I sent her into Kindergarten at age 5 (just 4 days before cutoff), and that was a horrible decision and a miserable year. First grade was, unbelievably, even worse. We were doing huge amounts of remedial work and therapy on top of the too-difficult-for-her homework, and she had no free time and felt terrible about herself. We were all exhausted. When a move out of state offered a chance to recycle her (in third) without humiliation, we took it, even though she was keeping up with her classmates in a regular program at that time, and the experts recommended against it. It was an EXCELLENT decision. It allowed her to feel smart in math, ordinary in reading, science and social studies, and okay, she was and is still a crummy speller and grammarian, and she is still somewhat disorganized, but hey, that is why we have spell/grammar checks, and MindGenius and Word Web on her computer. She’s now in 7th grade in a very demanding preparatory school, doing elementary algebra, (Algebra I next year) with ease, and getting good grades in english, science and social studies which she handles more or less independently but with heavy parental editing for her essays and reports. Latin (new for her this year) is coming off the floor, (F on her first exam, but C’s and B’s since then, and she is getting the hang of using her Latin to improve her English vocabulary). She has been top of her Spanish class for two years. Her ERB scores range from the 50th percentile to 95th percentile, and she is thinking about med school. (We’d have been grateful for finishing high school back in Kindergarten.)

My second child (age 6) didn’t babble until 11 months (4 months after getting her tubes, and had quite a few delays as a kiddo. Since by this time I was an experienced parent, she got Fast Forward at age 4, and quite a bit of home OT from age 7 months (when adopted) through age 5, and yes, I taught her to read early, because I didn’t want to wait for the school to screw it up. I did send her to Kindergarten (public school) last year, but recycled her in Kindergarten this year in her sister’s preparatory school, even though she is reading instructionally at the end first grade level, and for pleasure at the beginning first grade level, and has no trouble with math, attention, or writing. This was for social reasons; she is shy and small, and I just wasn’t going to watch what happened to my eldest happen again. It is a good decision so far. She has made lots of friends, has learned to ride her bike and be brave enough to walk to her friends homes, and her teacher pets her like a poodle and calls her a little smarty-head. This was the introduction to school that I had been hoping her sister would have had…

My brother, who was academically very able, was recycled in eighth grade entirely for social reasons. He had skipped a grade, and was a late developer. At age 12 he was first soprano soloist in our church choir, first violinist in the school orchestra, academically brilliant, studious, diligent and very polite. All of the above were MAJOR, MAJOR negatives from a social perspective. In addition, he was physically prepubertal, scared of girls, too small for football, too weak for baseball, and too short for basketball. His fellow students all assumed he must be gay and called him filthy names to his face and he was seriously concerned about whether he might in fact, be gay. My parents therefore took him (and us girls too, but it was because of him), out of the public school and sent us to single sex preparatory schools, recycling him in eighth grade. Since these were the preparatory schools attached to the National Cathedral in D.C., his musical and academic talents went from liabilities to strengths. He was still the shortest in his class, but he no longer looked like a midget. Mercifully his voice changed at the end of his second eighth grade year. They also bought enough fencing equipment to equip a fencing team, and hired a fencing instructor to coach three times a week plus tournaments. Fencing is a sport at which small, smart, agile people can excel. By the time he was in tenth grade, he had acquired a nickname - D’Artagnon; his team was winning most of its meets; he had quit worrying about his orientation; had added guitar strumming and the composition of love songs to his musical talents, and he was quite a hit with the girls.

I read this board because of my son’s learning disabilities, but I’ve also got a daughter with whom this issue came up. In our state, the cutoff date for school is Sept. 30th. My daughter’s birthday is in early November, so she started school nearly 6, and is one of the oldest kids in her class. I really wish we had pushed harder at the school to do the opposite of what you’re considering, that is get her started the year before. She spent her first few years bored and causing trouble in class because of it. She doesn’t cause trouble in class anymore, but she’s still bored. She missed a month of school last year due to an extended trip, and it took all of 1 week to make up all that work while keeping up with the new stuff.

Is your son in preschool, and keeping up with the social and academic aspects of preschool with kids his age? You mentioned he had problems with older children at a party, but that may mean he was just uncomfortable with people he didn’t know. Can he do all the developmental things the school lists for entering kindergarten? If he’s already an emerging reader, does he have the temperment to put up with already knowing what the class is being taught? Does he have an older sibling? (A lot of times, the kids with older siblings tend to act a bit more mature in school, because they’re always trying to do what their big brother is doing, and know what to expect.)

Only you know your child well enough to make the call whether to start him on time or red shirt him for a year. The advantage if you red shirt him is that when he is in high school is he’ll be one of the first driving, so you may better be able to control who he actually drives with. The downside is the possibility of him being bored in elementary school. We’re finding that to be a huge downside. (So I guess I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, given everyone else has recommended keeping him home another year.) We’re hoping once my daughter gets to middle school (with assorted higher level classes and extracurricular activities available) that she’ll get more out of school.

I doubt that holding my LD son back one year (he has a spring birthday, and is now in high school) would have made a bit of difference with his learning issues. (LD in written expression) They actually didn’t become detrimental until the later grades in elementary school. I do have a niece that was held back year during a move (where there wasn’t the social stigma) and it helped her academically.

Good luck!

Kay

Finally, there are exhibits C and D, my twin sister and myself. Like our brother, we had skipped first grade on the strength of our outstanding reading skills. In third grade however, we were in Sri Lanka with our foreign service parents. This was a country new to us, although not to them. While most of the curriculum at our school was taught in English, we were very backward at Sinhala (having spoken mostly English at home). Furthermore, since we had been moved around at least every two years since we were born, we were social retards, although we were very good readers. In addition I have always had difficulty with background noise, and have poor auditory memory. There were at least 40 kids in our class, all of them one to two years older than us. We were placed at the back of our classroom, a lovely, open-air, room with the typical tropical absence of window glass, a stunning view of the playing fields immediately adjacent, and of the lush, surrounding tropical lanscaping filled with insects and birds.

Our teacher was a “Miss Gema”, a middle-aged lady with a very soft, weak, voice and one wall eye. She habitually held her hands in front of her like a velociraptor, looked EXACTLY like a frog, and was clearly intimidated by her young charges. She had an uncanny ability to make the most exciting topic sound dull. She taught her class by reading off yellowing mimeographs of some long-dead teacher’s lecture notes, and mostly looked at her mimeographs as she lectured. (The other kids had no problem with this at all; they all behaved beautifully.) Since “Gemba” means frog in Sinhala, we started calling her “Miss Gemba” (Miss Frog) immediately. She assumed this was a mispronunciation error on our part, because there were certain sounds in Sinhala which we couldn’t make, and because Sri Lankan children are usually very well behaved. She therefore did not correct it. Nor did she call on us, mostly I think, for fear that we would address her as “Miss Gemba” to the mingled horror and amusement of the class. For my own part, although I am pretty good at reading lips, I really couldn’t stand to look at her, because I would inevitably start focussing on that eye. Although I didn’t spend much time listening to her, I do remember her drivelling on for what seemed like forever about long-dead kings. The only bit I actually remember was that at some point in the distant past, some king was beseiging some other king, and the beseiged party poured boiling oil on top of the first king while he was on his WAR ELEPHANT!!!! I immediately interupted the class to make my only contribution to the class that year. “Oh Miss Gemba, how terrible for the elephant! Was it hurt?” Unfortunately, Miss Gema was unable to provide me with any information on this point, although I think she did tell me what happened to the king, excepting that I have forgotten it. Not an auspiscious start to the year. We spent a lot of time looking wistfully out the window at the trees and flowers, birds and insects. Then, HALLALUJAH!! two months into the school year, we received word that our family was to be transferred to the United States in under three months. At this point, we naturally saw no purpose in spending any more time in class. Nevertheless, it was a fact that we were dropped off there every morning and not picked up until the closing bell, and furthermore that did not seem likely to change. The solution was obvious. “Miss Gemba,” we explained to her one morning during class, “We do not see any point in being in class any more, because we will be going to the United States soon, and we will not need to know about Sri Lankan kings or speak Sinhala there. So we will just go out and play quietly when we feel like it.” She looked taken aback and asked if we were sure, and we said, “Oh, yes! Absolutely!” After that we just went to recess, sports, art, library, and lunch for the next three months. It was great! Our mother didn’t figure it out until just before we left, when seh went to the school to ask for a report card, and the school said they were unable to give us one, because we hadn’t been coming to class. She was pretty mad about it, and while she buried our academic records by claiming that we had been home-tutored during that period, we both had to repeat third grade in the United States in order to actually learn the material. But hey, we never had a problem with repeating the year, socially.

My daughter is repeating 2nd grade this year. We read the reports that grade retention does not have a long term benefit for most kids but those reports were not specifically addressing the special needs of LD kids, nor were they addressing the underlying flaws in the way LD (an NLD) kids are taught in many school systems.

We were starting to see behavior problems at the end of school last year, her self-esteem was just terrible. I was worried we would soon have to deal with a chronically depressed child.

She is now in a private LD oriented school. She is for the first time receiving instruction in the structured, sequential, multi-sensory manner that she needs to really succeed.

And she is happy, and she is not frustrated and angry all the time, and she is learning the material. Our conclusion so far is that this was definately the right decision for our situation!

I think she is the oldest in her class, at her age it does not bother her. There are others at this school who are repeating 2nd grade so she does not feel socially isolated by this experience.

- Kim

I’m also on the other side, having raised a verbally gifted/dysgraphic/ extremely active child. She thrives on challenges and goes nuts with frustration and lack of activity; tends to become a trouble-maker out of having the screaming meemies, although in a challenging environment she is sweet and positive and everyone’s friend. A year later in school would have just made her climb the walls and her hands wouldn’t have grown that much more and she wouldn’t have written notably better. I fought to get her into Grade 1 at 5 1/2 and when the junior high was a pit and she was spiralling downhill in behaviour again the solution was to skip Grade 8 and go directly to honours courses in Grade 9 — by then she could type with one finger. Now as a young adult she is having problems again with low expectations and is going through a very bad patch.
Personally, I would really like to see the age = school grade theory thrown out; in my high school/college (Grade 13) graduating class the average age was 18, I was 16, and two classmates who had taken some time off were 25. Didn’t seem to do anyone any harm to not all be in the same lockstep.

It’s amazing to read about all the different experiences! It really helps (not just me but lots of people, I’m sure) get a better sense of what happens out there at this age. Reading all the posts has been enlightening.

My son will probably pick up reading this year; I know it’s hard to compare mom/son, but I was a very early reader (2nd grade level at age 5, Feb. b-day) and I remember being bored in kindergarten, too. But I had very good fine motor skills and I was mature for my age—it was suggested I skip 1st grade, but my mom (and I) declined. Possible result: I went through school feeling smart and confident, though lazy when I felt unchallenged and annoyed when I felt my classmates were immature. Still, I always felt I had some strengths and would come out on top. Knowing more about LD now, I see I may have had a math LD; maybe I’ve got a dash of NVLD! Who knows?

My son’s test scores indicate he may have similar strengths and relative weaknesses. Socially, he’s ahead in many ways, but really deficient in others. Esp. lately—I’m having a baby in November, and he’s starting to act out, particularly in school. Academically, he seems to be just where he should be by my estimation, maybe a bit ahead in some areas. So it’s hard to say if he’ll feel bored if he’s reading well or feel safe given his fine motor delays and sensory issues. As I’ve heard the kindergarten is really nothing special in our public schools, when he’s six I might look into a private K for one year if being bored bothers him. But all the switching around! And he’s a peewee, too, so there’s that. (I was avg/tall and very athletic, but the opposite now!)

Of course, we have to decide everything within the next month or two! Ay yi yi, these deadlines! I’d love to read more thoughts on this. Thanks everyone.