How old will your child be when they start college?

Parents Forum
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<p>My November birthday S (in a school system with a 12/31 cutoff) was tall for his age and hit numerous educational milestones well before he was officially old enough to enter K (edit: NSM – along your older S’s timeline). Socially, he was immature. After much agonizing, we waited an extra year for him to start K. The good part: we discovered some issues that were relevant that would have been labeled “immaturity” had he continued to be the youngest in the class. We also had him tested and had an extensive battery of results at our disposal when we needed to advocate with public school officials later. </p>

<p>At the strong recommendation of the principal (small private, where both my kids had attended since 2 yo preschool), we reversed that redshirt year after kindergarten and he went directly from K to 2nd. We were lucky to live in an area where further accommodations were available and he blossomed, once we got past the toxic 3rd grade teacher from @%$#. Of the fourteen kids in his pre-K class, he is the only one who did not redshirt.</p>

<p>He started college at 17. I cannot imagine what would have happened if he graduated a year later. S’s roommate, also a freshman, turned 20 during the school year – different country, different school system.</p>

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<p>I had a girl and, five-and-a-half years later, a boy. (I call them “my two only children.” :wink: )The girl went to school with her agemates. For the boy, born in August in a district with a 9/1 cutoff date, we decided to do a year of pre-K instead of sending him to K as the youngest in the class. So when he eventually started college he had just turned 19. He was not by any means the oldest in his class, as many parents, especially of boys, did as we did. Once I read an article that recommended a six-month “setback” for boys vs. girls starting school.</p>

<p>This was not an academics-based decision. Both of my kids were reading before kindergarten, were in gifted programs, were eventually National Merit Commended, etc. </p>

<p>But the question I asked myself when decidng what to do with my son was, “**Would I rather he someday be 15 hanging around with 16-year-olds or 16 hanging around with 15-year-olds?” **My main concern was whether the youngest in the class might be subject to peer pressure, especially regarding substances, early dating, sexual activity, etc. I figured being older for his peer group could only be an asset in making such decisions maturely. </p>

<p>We never know where “the path not taken” may have led, but I can say that now that my son is 19 and finished with his first year or college, we have never had a disciplinary/inappropriate behavior issue or concern with him. (He is NOT perfect - gets in trouble for a messy room and some slackerdom on occasion, but nothing of great significance.)My kid has never had a driving accident (we also held back on the driving, which we could easily do because his peers were not driving either), never talks on the cell phone when driving, etc. He has impressed me with his decision-making on personal and relationship issues and I think the additional maturity he has in social situations has really been a benefit to him. He is known as a “go to guy” for advice among his friends. *Maybe *it would have been the same had we sent him ahead, but I am not confident of that. </p>

<p>Re academics, we are fortunate he attended a strong school system with plenty of other talented kids to challenge him and lots of opportunities for enrichment.</p>

<p>I had a family member who graduated from college at 19 and that was his lifelong claim to fame – never really met his potential in adult life.</p>

<p>I am not saying that one path is better than another, just that we made a choice based on what our primary concerns/priorities were.
The guidance counselor at his school told us he has known parents who regretted sending a kid ahead youmg, but has never in his career known of parents who regretted holding off. </p>

<p>Again, this does not mean that I think that parents who send kids early are making a mistake, or that it can’t work out in many cases, but rather that these decisions need to factor in a wide range of considerations.</p>

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<p>My son is one of those could be 17 or 18. He is a mid August baby.</p>

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<p>D turned 18 in April, will be almost 18 1/2 when school starts.</p>

<p>I skipped a grade and was only 17 when I started college which was one of the reasons I started at the local cc. I did not like being younger than my classmates and the last one to be able to drive, date, etc. At college my closest friends were in the class behind mine. I must have been subconsciously seeking friends my own age.</p>

<p>S has a Feb. birthday and I honestly don’t know what I would have done if he had a summer birthday. He’s tested as gifted academically, but has always had issues with social skills and is very immature.</p>

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<p>I agree with the “wide range of considerations” that jyber refers to in making such decisions. I think academics is just a SMALL part of it. Lots of kids who wait an extra year before entering K are ready academically and are very smart. The extra year holds other benefits for them. Entering early should not be based on just academics either because there are many ways to solve the academic challenge dilemma. I don’t think a kid should enter K early or enter college early (my second child did both) unless it is very appropriate for that kid socially and emotionally. So many factors need to be weighed and academics is not the only one by far.</p>

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<p>D2 will not be 18 until November and she starts college in late August. Being younger has not been a detriment academically. Her aptitude, grades, etc have not been hindered by her age. However, we had ongoing struggles with her sport, especially during club season. We opted to keep her in the younger age range until she turned 16. Then she jumped to the 17s to be among the other players that she was graduating with. In hindsight, I wish she had another year for sports because she would have matured athletically even more.</p>

<p>Another concern I have is that many of her classmates/teammates are over 1 year older than her. Those with summer and early fall birthdays “lap” her by over a year. They are turning 19 before she reaches 18. There is a social maturity that they possess that she does not. This is certainly not the case with all younger kids, but it is with my daughter. Yes, I am concerned but I probably wouldn’t do it any differently if I had it to do again.</p>

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<p>“I’d like to add that being a year young completely SUCKS for high school sports.”</p>

<p>Completely off-topic I know … but I was visiting in-laws out in “football-land” and was reading the HS graduation listings. Considerable numbers of twenty year-olds heading off to college on football scholarships. I asked in-laws about this and was told that grooming kids for athletic scholarship success was taken very seriously by area parents. Who knew?</p>

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<p>“I see no downside to holding back. Who didn’t enjoy nursery school? Why push child to work a year earlier. I see possible upside, no downside”</p>

<p>I would think that for a girl who wants to get her degree, possibly attend some postgrad schooling, start a career and still find time for a family the extra year would be useful. </p>

<p>It might have been a good thing for my younger son, but I felt like he was ready and giving him time to grow another inch didn’t seem like a valid reason to hold him back. It’s very subjective I guess. He was so close to some friends of the same age he would have been really sad to be stuck in preschool another year while they all moved on.</p>

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<p>My D’s have June and April birthdays, so 18 when they start college. My S has an August birthday and will be 19. I am glad he will be older (there are kids in his class who are several months older than he) rather than the youngest as our district has a Sept 1 cutoff. I agree it depends on the child; I am satisfied with my decision to keep him back.</p>

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<p>I also want to mention that the idea of “pushing children” ahead is not always the case. One can have a child that pushes you! That was a situation we found ourselves in. It was our kid’s idea to graduate HS a year early. As far as entering K early due to missing the deadline for entrance, it was so clear that this was the right placement for this kid and every person who knew her and worked with her concurred. It was not something we pushed but what was simply in her best interests. Looking back, these decisions were right for this kid. I’ve lived with kids who push us to let them do this or that rather than the other way around. One should not assume that kids who go early were pushed by their parents.</p>

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<p>My parents placed me in school a year before everyone else. I graduated high school two days before I turned 17. Since my birthday was a summer birthday, somehow they were able to get away with it because I am in no way an exceptional student.</p>

<p>I hated being younger than all my classmates because I was not very mature or intelligent for my age which hindered my ability to make friends with students in my classrooms.</p>

<p>I took two years off after high school to become mature enough to attend college.</p>

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<p>My husband was very concerned about sending my son to 1st grade because he wouldn’t turn 6 until November. His preschool & kindergarten teacher (same woman) did not see any issues with his intellectual/emotional/physical maturity. I also consulted our pediatrician, and she said that you just never know when a kid will mature – physically and otherwise. I respected their opinions, and off he went to 1st grade.</p>

<p>He had problems beginning in 5th grade with organizational skills and time management, and those problems continued all through high school. He was never obviously physically less mature than the other kids and had only the occasional usual teen social issues.</p>

<p>My husband still blames me for not holding our son back in first grade. I think that there’s no way to know when our son will get these organizational/time management issues worked out; we could have waited till he was 10 to send him to 1st grade and he still might have struggled in high school.</p>

<p>This decision has to be made based on what you know about the individual child at the time.</p>

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<p>My older son turned 19 during his first semester. He’d graduated at 17, done a PG year during which he turned 18.</p>

<p>My younger son repeated 7th grade when he switched schools. The school did not require or push the repeat. He turned 18 at the end of junior year and will turn 19 shortly after graduation.</p>

<p>I would have preferred that he turn 18 after graduation and have that extra year available for a gap year or travel year or PG year. </p>

<p>The older one could conceivably have been held back before kindergarten. It turned out perfectly that he had the extra year tacked on at the end of his pre-college education.</p>

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<p>My daughter was 16 when she started college. Because of her age she did the first year at the local univ. and lived at home. This fall she’ll be heading off to the Flagship State Univ. She’ll be a 17 year old sophomore (already is, actually), but it will be her first year living away from home. She’ll graduate just a month after her 20th birthday.</p>

<p>I agree with others that say it needs to be something determined on a case-by-case basis, but for her it’s been great. She can’t really imagine the alternative of starting at a more traditional age.</p>

<p>My son, on the other hand, started college when he was 18. He turned 19 in the Dec. of his freshman year. That seems to have been the right time for him.</p>

<p>Oddly enough, although they are 2-and-a-half years apart in age, they will graduate the same year. Thankfully one is on semesters and the other on quarters!</p>

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<p>I do some consulting work for an all-boys school. Officially, the cutoff date is Sept. 1. However, in the 10 years I’ve been there, I’ve seen the age of the youngest boys creep backward. Typically, the youngest boy has an early June birthday. It is not uncommon for boys with May (and occasionally April) birthdays to be held back. One parent admitted to me that their decision was based on sports competition down the road. This child was 4 and they already had their eyes on a scholarship. No one wants their little Johnny to be the baby of the class.</p>

<p>Also, for parents who later regret sending their boys to school too early, they are transferring from other schools into our Middle School, citing either academic or social immaturity. At this rate, they better make room in the student parking lot for the 16 year old 8th grader with his drivers license.</p>

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<p>Both of my boys were 18 when starting college. Both have winter birthdays (Feb./Dec) so there was no question of holding either back. </p>

<p>Our state’s cut-off for starting kindergarten has always been (must be 5 by) Oct. 17.
This year, it is changing to (must be 5 by) Aug. 31. to eliminate children starting kindergarten while still 4 yrs. old and not turning five until til possibly five or six weeks later. Our school yr. starts Aug. 25.</p>

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<p>Both my DS and DD are August babies. Both started K when they were 4 - turning 5 during the first week of school. (Needless to say, they were always popular because they were the first kids in class to bring in the birthday cookies/brownies, etc. each year.) I made the decision to start them in school at 4 because both could read and do simple math. I figured they would be terribly bored if they had to wait another year to start school. As far as schoolwork - they are both leaders in their grades so I feel I made a good decision there. </p>

<p>As far as making friends - both made friends, but DD made friends easier than DS did during elementary and middle school. DS caught up in HS. I think the problem he ran into was that he has always been a very prolific reader, and his sense of humor has always reflected his knowledge of a wide range of subjects. It took until high school for his friends to understand his jokes. (He has a very dry sense of humor that requires you to have knowledge of books or characters or concepts. Sometimes it takes me a minute to register just how funny/clever his observations are!) </p>

<p>DS is going off to college just days after he turns 18. I have no regrets about this. He’ll be fine.</p>

<p>As an aside, DS had a preschool friend who also had an August birthday. His mom kept him home for another year before starting K. I remember thinking at the time that she made a good decision. Her DS just didn’t seem quite ready for the transition to K. We’ve moved away from that city and haven’t kept in touch, but I’ll bet her DS is doing quite well in school. I guess it really is an individual choice based on school readiness. Each parent knows their child best.</p>

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<p>For a long while now, it has been in vogue where I live for boys with summer birthdays to wait a year to enter K (our K cut off is Sept. 1). In fact, that meant that my D who entered EARLY, was even more younger than her class because so many boys entered “late”. I can think of her nursery school class (the one she was entered K with but was not really her class as she missed the cut off with a fall birthday) had about a third of the class who were boys who were 15 months older than her. It was not an issue but just saying. Again, in elementary school, we also had multi age classes, so for instance, when she was just five and entering first grade, there were kids as old as nine in her class. This worked perfectly for her though!</p>

<p>(as I said…every kid is so different…but now this is bringing back memories of when my D was in first grade in a gr. 1-3 class and was also ahead one year in school chronologically… and she wrote a little “play” and put it on for the school and she directed everyone in it who were quite a bit older than herself…this happened again in high school when she was 14 and 15 writing and directing shows with 18 year olds…and now, she is 20, a college graduate…and her original show premieres in NYC tomorrow night and she has led all these people who are ALL older than herself …she is in it too… and so it really goes all the way back to an early age…mixing with and leading those older than oneself…that is why I say every situation is so different and I am not an advocate of going to college at 16 but having had a child who did not fit my mold meant going with the flow…this is who she is and this was right for her but most people tend to say…“you let your kid go to college in NYC and she was just 16???”…I get it; I really do…but people who KNOW her don’t say that…they don’t think of her as “younger” in her settings)</p>

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<p>My S started college at 17. He was young for his grade starting school. I wanted to hold him back because he was shy and everyone in our family is on the short side, as he was. So he was a year younger than many and short.</p>

<p>Everyone who worked with him at his preschool prevailed upon me to send him on to kindergarten. In fact, his preschool teacher said she wouldn’t keep him in her classroom.</p>

<p>He could read well at 3, could do arithmetic, could sit in his seat and use scissors. He could read music at 4 1/2 and played the piano. He played the violin shortly after.</p>

<p>He is not a genius type learning math at incredible levels. </p>

<p>But he was ready for kindergarten and met the age requirements of our school district which gave December 31st as the cutoff date.</p>

<p>How did he fare? Well, he’s still not tall, but in every other way things went very well. His academic team (of which he was captain) were all boys who were born after September 1st. They attend: Princeton, Haverford, Williams (my S) and UNC Chapel Hill.</p>

<p>None of us parents regrets sending our boys along.</p>

<p>The professional I consulted said that academic readiness should be the only criterion. I am pleased that I took the leap of faith and trusted him.</p>

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<p>I don’t get this idea that you have to be a certain arbitrary age to be “ready” for something to begin with, since children all mature at different ages. I mean, I get requiring children to be turning 5 the calendar year they enter kindergarten, but I don’t get cut-off dates. My birthday is in July; I turned 5 before I went to kindergarten. I did exceptionally well in school. My sister’s birthday is in December. She turned 5 halfway through kindergarten, before she left for the break. She also did exceptionally well in elementary school.</p>

<p>I entered college a little after I turned 18 and did well there. My younger sister just started college last fall, at age 17 – she didn’t turn 18 until halfway through the semester. She also is doing well.</p>

<p>It just depends on the individual kid, I think. Some are ready to leave at 16 and are biting at the bit, and go to college for early admissions. Some don’t go until 19. Hell, some don’t go until 23 (my 23-year-old cousin is starting undergrad this fall, whereas I’m entering the second year of my PhD program).</p>