<p>I was wondering how old your child will be when they start college. And, more importantly, how you feel about that.</p>
<p>I'm asking in part because I'm a member of another board with lots of people who have pre-school kids and there has been a lot of discussion lately about sending kids to kindergarten, kindergarten cut-off dates, holding kids back, sending kids early so they'll be youngest in their class, etc.</p>
<p>My sons have a summer birthday and as a result I waited a year to send them to kindergarten. My mom was an elementary teacher and I think she'd have clubbed me if I'd sent them the year they first 'qualified' to go to kindergarten instead of waiting a year and starting them just after they turned 6.</p>
<p>As a result my sons have been 19 for a month now and will start college this fall. </p>
<p>On a very personal level I have been delighted with them being the oldest in their class. They have matured so much just in the past year and I feel that it has a lot more to do with their age rather than the fact that they were seniors in high school. (Because I didn't see a corresponding jump in maturity among some of their youngish classmates.)</p>
<p>In any event, I've pointed out that some of these parents should consider how they'd feel sending a kid who was barely 17 off to college. And someone said, "Why worry about college at this point?" I just didn't get that.</p>
<p>(And I want to say, in general terms, that I think that there are probably plenty of 'youngish' kids who go off to college and do fine...but if you DO have a youngish kid going off to college (or have had in the past) do you think you'd be more comfortable had you waited to send them to school way back when so they'd be older when they started college?)</p>
<p>My oldest started college at 18 1/2, second started at 19 and third will be 18. I think another milestone that is weird to be the youngest or oldest is when they get their drivers license.</p>
<p>My S will be 18 (April birthday) when he starts college. He got his driver’s license at 17. (He was less focused on getting one that we were but I pushed the issue, as we wanted to be confident he was a safe driver before he flew the coop.)</p>
<p>My son will turn 18 a few days after starting college (as did I). I think he’s mature enough. I’m not so sure about kids a whole year younger, though.</p>
<p>D was few weeks shy before turning 18. I wish that they could be done with HS couple years earlier. 13 years is way too long. There are countries with 10 years school. Most of them, though start at 7 in first grade. So, that would make them to graduate at least one year earlier. If they are planning to go to Grad. School, then you have to start buying Health insurance for them. That is one reason. Another, most of school years K-8 is very much waste of time for busy work that teaches very little, and make kids hate school for primarily being completely bored with it, even makes them hate their favorite subjects (my grandD. who is going to 6th grade is already complaining about math that used to be her favorite, being very boring and the same over and over). Why they are made to go thru such a boring unchallenging experience?</p>
<p>My older S started at 17 because he had skipped. He didn’t turn 18 until the next winter. He flunked out of college due to immaturity, and at age 25 finally has become reasonably mature.</p>
<p>My younger S started college at 19 because he took a gap year after high school. He has handled college in a very mature way, and I think that being older and having had a productive gap year made it much easier for him to navigate college, including avoiding problems with partying, problems with roommates (S handled well a very immature, inconsiderate roommate) and organizing his time. </p>
<p>In general, males mature later than do females, and probably are most likely to benefit from delaying starting school or college.</p>
<p>My S’s comment in regard to maturity issue was that kids who were tightly controlled at home, will get way to loose in college. He said that he was glad that he got “party” attraction out of his system in HS. It is not to say that he never hit them in college, but he knew his limits timewise, while a lot of others from much stricter homes did not, because they finally did not have parent’s control over their time.</p>
<p>With the popularity of taking a gap year, I think there is a viable alternative for a child who is not yet ready for college after hs graduation (whether they are 17,18, or 19 doesn’t really matter)</p>
<p>That said, here are my family’s stats - I started college at 17 (female, Mar birthday). S1 started at 18 (Jan birthday) and S2 started at almost 19 (Oct birthday).</p>
<p>I think this issue is highly individual. Also, in a very general sense, it is different for boys than girls as often boys mature slower than girls. For instance, it is very popular where I live to give boys an extra year and to start K a year later. </p>
<p>Where we live, the K entrance cut off is September 1. </p>
<p>I have two daughters. </p>
<p>My oldest D made the K cut off by just five days thankfully. She was the youngest in her grade all the way through. However, she was very advanced even for the grade she was in. Being the youngest had NO effect on her whatsoever and most would never have guessed it given that she was a leader and fit in and also excelled academically. Our elem school had multi age classes. Even for the grade she was in, she accelerated in MS and HS going beyond her grade level classes. She ended up as val senior year and went off to college and turned 18 the day she arrived there. She is now in grad school and by far the youngest in her class as she was one of only two people right out of college to be in the class. This has been a non-issue for my kid but that doesn’t mean it would work for someone else. If you met her, you would not know she was younger than her peers. </p>
<p>My second daughter who is 25 months younger than the first one, missed the K entrance cut off. She was granted an early entrance into K (still 4 1/2 when you had to be 5) because for her, this was the right placement (and according to her nursery school as well in which she was in the class going onto K even though she was not the right age to enter K). Even in this grade placement she had to be accelerated in her academics and luckily the multi age classes in our elem school helped (plus they did much individualization and accommodations) and she was always in the youngest grade of her multi age class (except in sixth grade). In middle school, she had to take some classes in the high school (was even in with seniors when she was just 12). Her peer group was always kids older than herself. She was in extracurriculars and a summer program away from home where all her friends were older than herself by quite a lot. She was a leader in many activities where she led kids much older. She ended up graduating HS after her junior year of HS (her decision) and when added to the K early entrance, she ended up being just 16 1/2 when she got to college (in NYC no less after growing up in a town of 1700 people). It was of NO issue for her academically, socially, or emotionally in college. Her friends are all older than herself (and not just by a year) and she excelled academically and artistically in this setting and was a leader in many endeavors during her college years even though she was younger by far than everyone she leads. She just graduated college and is 20 and supporting herself. Is this for everyone? No. Was it right in retrospect for my kid? It seems to have been exactly what she needed to do. Chronologically, she is only supposed to be a rising junior in college right now. </p>
<p>I have a nephew in another state who has a late July birthday and his parents chose to wait a year to enter K. He is about to turn 19 and is about to enter college. In his case (and he is a smart guy), this was the right choice in terms of maturity and I support such decisions about waiting. For my kid, she went against that general philosophy and entered early. But for her, it was the right placement.</p>
<p>I also have a sister-in-law who is much younger than us, who I watched grow up and who is quite gifted. She ended up doing grades 7-12 in four years and graduated as val at age 16 and went off to college, then grad school and became a professor at a young age. It seemed to work for her and she has always been around older people.</p>
<p>Agree with sooze. Highly individual. My son started college at 17. Turned 18 late November. He was always one of the youngest in his class. He went to college 3K miles away and never looked back. At his orientation before college he pretty much ditched me…every time I looked for him he was working the room. Never would have known he was younger.
In our case I really didn’t have a big choice. He went to preschool and was reading at Kindergarten entrance. His preschool teacher told me he absolutely need to go to K and if the public school thought he was too young I’d better find a private school for him.
He was just ready.<br>
His younger sister has a spring birthday (a very planned birth) and so none of those decisions came into play.</p>
<p>My oldest had a birthday one day after the state and private school cut-off in our state for kindergarten so he was an “older” kid. My second one, same thing. My last is dyslexic so we took an extra year at first grade to get some intensive work on the dyslexic issues so he, too, will be an “older.” I had all kinds of concerns about the kids being the older ones in class, but I’ve found that with boys it has all benefits and very few drawbacks: they are physically more mature so do well in the sports, they are socially more mature than the youngest boys in the class and they don’t have that boy/girl lag that occurs so frequently. My best friend had a son after too super achiever girls and has regretted to this day starting her young 5 in kindergarten and not waiting a year. Some boys do fine, but I think the vast majority benefit from being at the older end of the spectrum. Most of my “teacher friends” started their boys at 6, too, which was reasurring. In retrospect I’m glad things worked out the way they did although it’s disconcerting to have high school freshman taking driver’s training! I had bright kids so many moons ago I fretted that I was in some way “holding them back” but I realize now that is a relatively unfounded worry. These days it doesn’t matter very much if they are reading before kindergarten, during kindergarten and at the end of kindergarten. So in a nutshell I had one that was 18 going on 19 as a college freshman, one that will be 19 and one that will also be 19 when he starts.</p>
<p>“My S’s comment in regard to maturity issue was that kids who were tightly controlled at home, will get way to loose in college.”</p>
<p>It depends on the kid. Older S refused to socialize at all while in high school. H and I literally tried to force him to socialize, and he refused. He hated the thought of partying. In college, though, he quickly fell in with an older crowd and began partying heavily.</p>
<p>Younger S was more social than older S, but still didn’t go to many social events. The ones that he went to and hosted were things like games parties --parties with board games, not drinking games.</p>
<p>In college, his idea of fun is to host parties in which people bake cookies and listen to each others’ favorite music. At 21, by his own choice, he doesn’t drink at all. Literally he has never had an alcoholic drink. Meanwhile, H and I are social drinkers, and it would be perfectly fine with us if S were a social drinker. </p>
<p>There are some students who’ll party regardless of how their parents raised them. There are some who have no interest.</p>
<p>I will be 17 when I start. My younger brother will be almost 19. I think it is just a matter of maturity. My mom says that I was very verbal and interested in school and learning from a young age, so she started me early. My brother was not.</p>
<p>This is very trendy in my area also, but I felt my son was totally ready for school. For club sports it’s very unlucky to have a June/July birthday. I’d say he’s suffered much more in that area than starting school sooner.</p>
<p>S1 was 17 and was ready at 15. S2 will be 18 and is ready at 16. Both were always adventurous, independent, mature and self-reliant “for their ages”. They’re both so interesting it’s tough to see them go. Then again, some of their classmates won’t be ready before 25.</p>
<p>In addition to the sports where it is pretty obvious, I’ve watched as some of the “younger” friends of all my sons have struggled with their “later maturity.” They really do struggle with being smaller, shorter, no “facial hair”, little boy voices vs. the deeper voices, less muscle development, unable to drive etc. It’s easy to be intellectually capable of the work, but to be way behind physically can be emotionally difficult for some of those “younger” boys. You see it most in 8th and 9th grades into 10th grade. That is something I never thought about when the boys were 5. It was interesting as a female to watch the boys and their friends get through the impact of the physical changes.</p>