My D17 is also a late November birthday. She was tall and reading before four, so we were encouraged to put her in kindergarten at four. Academically she did fine throughout and I never saw a downside on that front. Socially, developmentally, and biologically she was behind her peers and that reared its head throughout school. In junior high she was so oblivious to the way her friends were behaving as she was just not at the same developmental stage. She didn’t start her period until well into freshman year of high school. She couldn’t drive or date until well into junior year. When it was time to move her to college at 17, while I knew she was academically ready, I feared she wasn’t socially ready. She was a college graduate looking to start a career at 21, and again, not socially ready to adult. In retrospect, I would not do it again and my daughter agrees she could have used another year of cooking.
And for the parents who seem to have tied that one decision not to redshirt to all of this. Please don’t make your son feel ashamed that he is taking another semester or year to graduate. It really doesn’t matter when he graduates and I hope you are sending him that message – that’s it’s no big deal and many people take a little extra time and/or fail a class and then go on to lead happy successful lives. It’s how you roll with these bumps in the road that sets you up for success.
And here is an advantage to letting them start school on the younger side…
My eldest has a November birthday and started K as a 4 year old, with no issues socially or academically. She graduated in the pandemic and worked full time for over two years. Now, she is in a post grad program and most of her peers are her age. Many of her current cohort took a year off to work before going back to get higher degrees. So she isn’t “behind” any more. In fact, because she already has two years of professional experience, she’s probably “ahead.”
It doesn’t matter. As mentioned before, these are adults now.
You are entirely correct. I have changed this to “disappointments” (since the post could still be edited) on the basis that taking more than four years to graduate might be disappointing to some, but is not a failure.
University is a time for students to grow. Some of this is academic. Some of this is sort of going partway away from their parents towards living in the world. If it takes five years, then what is the big deal (other than paying for the extra year, which has not been presented as an issue in this case)?
That’s what it has been in Illinois for a long time. Many people hold back their boys with a summer birthday and do a second year of pre-K.
Oh my…as others have said, there is no way you can predict a different outcome if he started K a year later than he did. (Would one year have really changed his math abilities?)
He should be happy for his friends and continue on his own path (what does the size of his friend’s house have to do with anything?)
I ask, as nicely as possible, is it your son…or his parents who are having the issue here?
That is mainly a byproduct of being very selective to the point that they only admit and enroll students with high enough academic strength and no financial worries (either parents with plentiful money or generous financial aid), so that very few of them will have difficulty graduating in four years.
Most private colleges do not fit into this category.
Was time off / gap semesters to work to earn money to pay for college, or needing to take reduced course loads (e.g. 12 instead of 15-16 credits per semester) to allow time to work to earn money to pay for college, a significant reason for needing more than eight semesters?
Not for the kids I know. At the college I attended as a commuter student, certainly.
Perhaps the OP should read this thread where it is mentioned more than once that a LOT of students are taking longer than four years to graduate.
OP- I would encourage you to detach what you are observing in your son and the decision not to redshirt.
Your son seems to be experiencing some very common challenges that kids face whether they are young, old, or “right on time” for their grade, and blaming it on a decision made over a decade ago seems counter-productive. Perhaps move on from the decision- figure out the best way to support your son-- and close this long-ago chapter in his life.
A look at the 2022/23 CDS (https://registrar.princeton.edu/document/421) tells a different story:
4-year graduation rate for bachelor or equivalent = 88.2%, which is a comparatively high rate for colleges in general, but not in any way unique among peer institutions?
It’s long been the same in Texas, age 5 by September 1. I’ve also seen many parents hold back boys with summer (or increasingly, even late spring) birthdays and start K at 6 - in some areas there are even upscale preschools with designated “gap year” or “redshirt year” programs for this purpose. The ostensible reason usually given in my experience is “they aren’t mature enough to handle a classroom setting,” but the gap year programs are essentially in a classroom setting. In practice it often seems to be driven by the hope that an extra year of growth and maturity will be helpful for sports down the road.
Now and then, parents will advance 4-yr-olds into K before their designated year, often at the behest of preschool teachers who recognize advanced academic ability. I haven’t seen one of these that ended up offering any real benefit. Our sister-in-law started our niece in K as an older 4-yr-old, I think mostly because she was talked into it by well-meaning preschool teachers. It was a disaster socially and emotionally, and she ended up repeating 2nd grade and suffering a lot of unnecessary embarrassment. I knew several kids in this situation growing up as well, and in every case, it seemed to cause social awkwardness for “that kid” who was noticeably younger - the one still playing with action figures when the other boys discovered girls, the only one who couldn’t go to the PG13 movie, the only one who couldn’t drive, etc. etc. I have no doubt that there are instances where this skipping ahead turns out fine, but I would guess that it was going to turn out just fine anyway had the child started in the designated year.
For those in areas with a Jan 1 cutoff where older 4-yr-olds are expected to start K, that’s a tougher issue. My bias is to keep kids with their designated cohort so that they will experience all of life’s milestones together, even if those occur a little sooner or little later than they would for others elsewhere. But I can see the point that some 4-yr-olds are just not developmentally capable of handling a Kinder setting.
Our state was 10/1 forever and in the past few years has changed to 8/1. But the entire holding back has been around a long time, especially in the private school world, and even more so in Catholic schools.
It certainly is a tricky situation (specially for first time parents). We might make decisions based on solid academic assessments (“She’s definitely ready for Kindergarten!”), while the social/emotional readiness and speed of future development is much harder to assess and to project 10 years forward!
Our daughter didn’t turn 18 until freshman-year in college - but academically it had been the right choice to give in when she “declared” she absolutely was going to Kindergarten.
Socially she was well-grounded. But even though she conducted herself much more maturely than older kids in her grade – emotionally and otherwise, latest by middle school and through high school, she was keenly aware that she was indeed “a year behind” in various different ways and by different non-academic milestones/experiences.
Fortunately, it never rose to the level of a “crisis”, but I can definitely see how easily this could also have back-fired.
So I do feel for any parents trying to balance/predict diverging academic, social and emotional maturity at such an early age, when a year (or even just months) still make huge differences.
Both statements can coexist
Speaking for my son, he was definitely “ready” for kindergarten at just turned 5 (as in, August birthday with a Sept 1 cutoff). We sent him off to K without thinking twice, as his preschool teachers all said “he’s ready!!”. Academics were never an issue, and honestly we weren’t thinking of the social/maturity aspects that could arise down the road. Well lo and behold, middle school hits and he’s clearly less mature (physically and emotionally) than his peers, and plays a sport that is known for having kids be much older than they “should” be. So we repeated him in 9th grade, and now as a rising senior he is right where he should be. He is not the oldest, not even close (there are probably a dozen boys that repeated 9th when they entered his private high school, with some having fall '04 birthdays meaning they will be turning 19 as their senior year starts) but not the youngest either. It all worked out, and it will for your son, too.
My summer birthday oldest son was, at just turned 5, way more than academically ready for kindergarten. He was reading chapter books and doing elementary school math. But at the time we could see there was no way he could handle full-day kindergarten, which was the only option where we lived. Our solution was to homeschool him. We thought we would play it by ear year-to-year, and eventually put him in school when his maturity caught up with his academic level.
What we did not realize was that he is mildly on the autism spectrum, so his “maturity“ never caught up to his academic level. When he hit eighth grade, still homeschooled, we could see that he needed more than four years (and some targeted social and executive function training) before he would be able to manage going to college.
So we had him repeat eighth grade, which was not terribly awkward since he was homeschooled. He found it pretty upsetting for a year or two. Now, he is heading off to college in August, and I think he is ready. A year ago I would’ve said definitely not yet. But he has matured and grown a lot in the past year and I think he has as good a chance of being successful as most college-bound kids. For him, I really think that extra year, along with the targeted training, was necessary. I guess I don’t know yet whether it will be sufficient for college to flow smoothly and finish in four years, but I’m glad he had the extra year to grow.
In my case, as I have said here before on this forum, I have two sons. The older one has a birthday just before the cutoff and youngest about 6 weeks before the cutoff. We held the older one back. It was not all that beneficial. He was already reading and writing so was bored. He did not finish college and is still struggling a bit. Socially, he did fine but sometimes felt like he should have been in the next older grade. He has some learning challenges but mostly focus issues.
For a number of reasons, we sent the younger one “on time”. He did well academically and socially. Graduated college in 4 years. Has a decent job. The only way it may have benefitted him was for his sport. However, he had a great experience with his club team which he would not have had if he had waited (this was before our state turned to calendar birth year and still followed the school cutoff for ages). I have no regrets, although he probably “grew up” at bit faster than he would have otherwise.
My point to the OP is that it is very unlikely that sending him to school “on time” is the reason he failed calculus or did not graduate from college. I would suggest having a conversation with him about how he is approaching his schoolwork and see if you can come up with a reason - ADHD, learning disability, depression, or simply too much partying or gaming can all be reasons for academic challenges.
I am in the “depends on the child” camp.
My son, our oldest, has an August 31 birthday. His elementary school allowed treats to be brought in to celebrate birthdays. As he was physically the biggest kid in the class, many times his teachers thought he was one of the older kids in the class, not the youngest. He was smart enough to do the work right from the start but was somewhat immature emotionally and had a hard time just sitting down and doing the work. His first-grade teacher said that the emotional aspect would disappear by third grade. She was correct.
My son was in the advanced track for math and took calculus BC his senior year, so no issues there. His biggest issue that he voiced to me was about sports. He said that if we waited a year, he would be bigger, stronger and therefore better at his sport. True, but he was already first team all-star, and he didn’t want to play in college, so, it seemed to me to be moot point anyways.
My daughter, second born, was an October child. With our concerns about my son’s emotional state when he entered kindergarten, we were thinking about hold her back. But she was quite ready, emotionally, to start; so, she did. She had no issues whatsoever and was on the gifted track.
So, it really does come down to the individual. The hard part is being a parent and being able to identify whether your child is truly ready or not. Maybe, the school district might have a teacher that could sit down with the children that are on the fence and evaluate them!