Primary school career educator here. Where I work, we are not permitted to suggest what a parent should and shouldn’t do for their entering K students. If they are within the age guidelines, they are welcome to attend and it is the school’s job to work with the students. There are always more than one of each type of student…oldest, youngest, and in the middle. And sometimes you can’t tell at all the age of the kids.
If you are on the fence, perhaps a teacher in a neighboring district could give you some advice…but it might not be considered OK for a teacher IN your district to do this.
Adding, I was asked to do this a number of times. I never told a parent what to do…but I did note their kid’s strengths and weaknesses from my point of view.
We held our very competent reader out. He was also extremely verbal and inquisitive in a good way. but believe me, there was NO kindergarten in the country where he would have fit right in. He was very happy, and fit right in preschool. We actually made this decision when he was a three year old preschooler so that is the year he did twice. We wanted him to be in the preschool class with students he would be entering K with for as long as possible before starting K.
I do hope you haven’t let your son know that you think sending him to kindergarten at the age of four is the one fatal flaw overshadowing his life and that he is emotionally damaged as a result.
He’s 21 now and you are still agonising about a choice you made when he was four. Who filled him with shame about taking pre calc as a senior? That is the regular math sequence in the US. There is no magic flip that suddenly enables you to do pre calc at the age of 17. Plenty of kids take precalc at 15 or 16, plenty of kids never get that far and finish high school with algebra ll. if he failed a math class in high school, he was in the wrong math track, and that track is not determined by age at elementary entry.
Now he’s taking an extra year to graduate. Who’s filling him with shame about this? If you were really convinced it’s all about sending him to kindergarten too early, it’s nothing but the necessary grade correction. If he hasn’t managed to settle down in college by now to manage to graduate, surely you wouldn’t want him in a job or in grad school now?
Tell him it’s okay. Tell him to go to the parties. Tell him to work hard his fifth year, make friends with other 21 and 22 year olds, graduate, move on.
As all of the anecdotal accounts here show, kids’ development isn’t linear or standardized. A younger child can be ready for kindergarten (and indeed could have issues resulting from being bored and under-challenged if held back at that time) and yet can need more time to develop at a later stage. (I’ve often thought that there might be an untapped market for “gap” programs between middle school and high school, which could take advantage of developmental windows by focusing on, for example, language immersion, critical thinking, and various “coming of age” topics that get squeezed out by traditional education.) I don’t think making the right decision at one time precludes needing to recalibrate at another time. And you can never know whether the “road not taken” would really have gone any better than the one you took.
Your son has had some setbacks. Setbacks are hard, but need not be engulfed in shame and regret. Dusting oneself off and moving forward is an important skill that many high-achievers don’t develop until life throws them a curve much later on. I don’t think you can really know whether you made the wrong choice when he was four; but even if you did, dwelling on regrets, when your son still has a bright future ahead of him, can only do more harm. Be proud of him and excited for his prospects, which are no dimmer for the relatively-minor challenges that have arisen. He’s alive and healthy and evidently can afford the extra year of college. Many would envy the position you and he are in. Embrace where you are and move forward.
That’s unfortunate that school districts will not provide some guidance. It would still be up to the parents to decide.
We asked our preschool teacher about my son’s readiness for kindergarten, and she said he was ready. Of course, she is comparing him to what she knows. But her experience was with preschool kids. He was ready academically but only somewhat mature enough.
As a parent, I felt I was the least qualified to make that important decision.
This is all in the past as my youngest is in her 30’s now.
Our public school system gradually moved the cut off date up a month each year. It is now Sep 1.
There was a little wiggle room - like if your kid’s bday was Sep 10, you could have them tested/evaluated by the kindergarten team at kindergarten orientation (which is the spring before they would enter K).
We had people trying to get their 4 year olds into K - much less expensive than paying for daycare! Eventually, they had to make parents sign a form that their kids was in good health on kindergarten orientation day because parents would come back saying 4 year old Johnny really was ready for K, but not feeling well on that day.
Some parents would send their kids to private school for a quarter (maybe a semester?) and then transfer them to the public K (and the public school had to accept them).
In my sister’s (wealthier) neighborhood, boys were regularly held back to they would be bigger for sports. (Sounded crazy to me.)
A few more random thoughts about this (because it’s been mulling around over and over again in my head…feeling insecure about stuff is something that so many young adults struggle with):
To quote/paraphrase my favorite podcast, “It’s your attitude, not your APTITUDE, that determines your altitude.”
EVERY YOUNG ADULT should expect to stumble and encounter difficulties in life. What the specific difficulty IS varies, of course, from 1 person to another.
Your son will graduate from college at an age where a lot of other people are still working at Starbucks or wherever and still trying to figure out what they want to do with themselves.
Go back and re-read #1.
This guy on a Youtube channel that I follow (Justin Scarred/Randomland) has repeatedly said that while you can’t always control bad things happening to you, what you CAN control is how you respond to it. You can turn lemons into lemonade. Or you can continue sucking on the lemons & complain about how horrible it is.
Stop sucking on the lemon.
The decision you made when your kid was 4 doesn’t really matter anymore. You didn’t ruin your son’s life. Your son is doing just fine.
You need to change the narrative. Change the channel on the TV in your head. Pick whatever metaphor works best for you. Change your attitude. And your son needs to change his narrative & attitude, too.
As an adult, nobody’s going to care that he did or did not start K at age 4. But you know what IS a bit concerning? Going through life thinking that your entire life right now sucks because your parents didn’t wait an extra year to have you start kindergarten.
At some point, one also will need to stop blaming one’s problems on Mom & Dad and take ownership of one’s own choices. Ok, so when he was studying for math in freshman year of college, the other dudes on the floor razzed him. That was 4 yr ago. Get over it. Next time somebody tries to give you a hard time about something ridiculous like that, OWN IT…OWN your decision. Like, “Yeah, I AM taking a lower level of math than you. But you know what? I’m gonna master this stuff so I’m really prepared for the NEXT math class. How about you?”
I guarantee you that they’ll back off.
What your son might need more practice in developing is learning how to be mentally & emotionally resilient. Ok, so you screwed up that last test. How did you prepare? What worked well? What didn’t work well? What do you think you should do differently next time? Do MORE of what works…do LESS of what doesn’t work…actively seek out mentors who have been successful in WHATEVER the thing is…ask THEIR advice and then start doing more of what THEY do. And then constantly reevaluate what does & doesn’t work.
In the land of project management & agile software development, for example, there’s a concept that’s practiced all the time re: ‘lessons learned’ and doing a ‘retrospective’ at the end of every 2 week ‘sprint.’ A quick review of what did and did NOT work well, what do we want to do differently next time?
The griping about kindergarten needs to stop though.
** edited to add **
From a parent’s point of view, if your son is constantly hamster-wheeling about this, it might be worthwhile for him to consider talking to a therapist on a short term basis for some guidance from a 3rd party/non-family member.
My favorite. Our cutoff for K entry was 5 before January 1. But families could petition to have their kids enter early if they had January anytime birthdays. One family had a kid with a January 31 birthday and did so. District said yes (I don’t think they ever said no). She was such a baby…and struggled both socially and academically. It was suggested that she repeat kindergarten. Parents declined. It was suggested she repeat first grade. Parents declined.
She ended up repeating 4th or 5th grade. At least she stopped struggling as much.
I’m also in the camp of you have no way of knowing whether holding back your son an extra year would have made a difference. I also don’t see that not getting to Calc in high school or not graduating university in 4 years is a sign of failure.
In our school system the age cut off for school is December 31. It’s quite common to have kids in the same grade being as much as 12 months apart for those with January birthdates vs December. While there can be a significant difference in the level of maturity in the early grades, by the time they graduate high school and go to university there isn’t an appreciable difference.
We have 2 boys, one with an early September birthday and one with a late November birthday. Both started school in pre-K. The older one started at age 4 (first day of school was his birthday) and the other aged 3. In retrospect holding back the younger one a year may have led to a less emotionally rocky elementary and middle school experience, but by high school he was pretty much caught up in terms of maturity. Academically speaking starting school at such an early age had no negative consequences for either one and they both excelled (with the caveat that they both tested as gifted). Being at school from an early age provided a great opportunity for socialization. I suppose they could have gone to pre-school but I was a stay-at-home parent and didn’t see the need for that. Either way it all worked out fine. Holding them back also wasn’t an option as entry for kindergarten is based on year of birth. There is no “redshirting” allowed here. The most I could have done was held the younger one back from pre-K as it’s not mandatory to attend, but he still would have started in K at age 4.
I completely agree with everyone suggesting some counseling - learning to let go of past disappointments, working to stop comparing himself (there are times when this is good but it sounds like he’s comparing to an unhealthy level for no reason), etc. These are all life skills that he will need to build, and a professional may be able to help him pull his head up and focus on developing a more positive/productive attitude toward life’s challenges.
I also want to point out that sometimes these disappointments end up being the moments that shape your future, and it’s really up to him to turn them into positives rather wallowing in the negative.
My brother, whose age when he arrived at college was 18 but is entirely irrelevant, was a strong academic performer all his life but enjoyed the social scene more. He ended up taking a long time to figure out what he wanted to do and maybe didn’t put as much effort into school as he did into making friends and partying. By the end of his 4th year, he was about 3 semesters behind, and most of his friend group graduated on time. It took him 2 more years, a total of 6, but in those last 2 years he made some new friends who are now, 20 years later, his true best buddies. He also took the time to really explore his goals for the future, took some classes that helped him really define a major, and identified his dream career. He’s now making great money and is working in a job he actually loves. He has said many times that if he hadn’t stuck it out and taken the extra time, he would never have figured out what he wanted to do.
I guess my point is that life will throw curve balls, and everyone makes decisions they might regret down the road. You can’t change either of those things, so it’s not worth wasting energy on wishing you could - learn from the experience and move forward. It might actually be exactly what you needed.
You can’t know that the same thing wouldn’t have happening if you’d held him back. Rather than feeling guilty, take satisfaction that he can take the time and graduate at a “normal” age.
A friend’s S was held back then did a PG year for sports and felt really out of sync with his classmates in college. And the kids who were his age were upperclassmen and not thrilled to be hanging out with a freshman.Sure, he worked through it, but it made his college experience quite different from what he’d hoped.
My son, who just graduated, is a late bday. Barely made the cutoff when he started Kindergarten. Then they changed the cutoff the next year. We later moved to a state with an even earlier cutoff. There was only one kid younger than him in his graduating class, who skipped a grade.
We were worried about sending him to K, based on his maturity. We knew he’d be academically fine, but figured he could repeat K if necessary. He was often mistaken for an older child due to his height and speech. Honestly, we needed the cost savings of not paying for daycare. That was the biggest driving factor.
He went and thrived in all aspects but socially. That was only an issue surrounding puberty, grades ~6-8, and it wasn’t too bad, but didn’t feel great for him. No behavior problems ever. He isn’t athletic, so that was unimportant.
We asked him recently about the whole shebang and how he feels about the pros and cons of being the youngest. He said he’s glad he was in his grade for everything but the social aspects of middle school. He has low emotional intelligence anyway, and he started puberty late. So that certainly didn’t help during those years. In middle school, we had to inform him that he was being lightly bulllied. So perhaps his obliviousness was a bit protective in this case.
He doesn’t regret it though and says he’s glad we didn’t redshirt. He was often bored in school. We debating skipping another year but that wouldn’t have worked socially. We’d told him to suck it up, quit complaining, and to find something to challenge himself, so he coped with the boredom just fine.
He feels like the ~3 years of social immaturity were well worth the pros of being a year ahead. That was good to hear as parents. If he were more emotionally sensitive, he either would have been mature enough to handle it better, or he would have been scarred by the social challenges of middle school.
Bottom line is we all have to make important of decisions using the information we have available at the time. We can’t re-live our lives under multiple scenarios. All we can do is keep moving forward in a positive manner.
Agree. And if a decision we made way back then has repercussions- never too late to ask for help. If a kid needs support-- whether old for his grade, young for his grade, exactly the right age for his grade- get the kid support!
I sound just like your son, and I would have told my parents the same thing. My birthday is mid-July. I would have been bored if they’d kept me back, but socially I felt behind. I was so clueless. And I also went through puberty late.
“She had a friend who graduated college at 20 and went off to NYC for a big girl job. She did turn 21 about 5 months later, but man that sucks.”
And why did it suck? Because she couldn’t join her friends whenever they wanted to go to bars. She felt left out, just like our son feels left out right now. His friends are graduating while he still has another year to go, just like this woman’s friends went out partying while she had to stay behind.
It has been decades since I was at college but I had friends from every year (freshmen to seniors) and that wasn’t an anomaly. Are you saying your son has no other friends at college other than people in this year’s senior class?
I get this has been a disappointment, but it can’t have come as a sudden surprise - the need for an additional year. Learning how to move forward should be the goal now…if your son doesn’t know any other people at his school, this extra year gives him time to branch out and make new connections as he finishes up his degree.
While those 5 months might not have been the most fun this young woman had in NYC, it also doesn’t sound like it scarred her for life not to be able to go to clubs and bars for the first 5 months of life in the Big Apple. Most likely she has more than made up for any perceived ‘lost time’.
Your son gets to choose how he decides to spend the next year and how he perceives it. So do you. How are either of you being well served by how you both are handling it now?
