Please give me an honest answer

[Anonymous]

i am trying to decide what is in the best interest of my son who is 4 years old - summer birthday. his teacher suggested holding him back b/c he is the youngest in his class. the public school we want to go to gives a hard time about doing this apparently. my question is for anyone who has held their son back b/c they were going to be the youngest or whatever... are you happy with the decision? my worry is that my child we almost be too old if we hold him back because all of his friends do seem to be older. the problem is that his teacher says he is a follower with the older kids. not sure if he would be that way anyway? now is the year that i would have to do this so please give me your honest answer and not just say it was the best thing to justify your decision. i really could use the insight. thank you in advance!

[Anonymous]

Hold him back -- I'm saying this b/c I wish we'd done that with our summer birthday son, who's now in high school. True, he's done well academically and socially, but I do see a lag in emotional maturity, and think he'd have been better off if we'd waited a year. Also, when we moved him from public to private school at 7th-grade, he went from being one of the 10 youngest boys to one of the 5 youngest -- a big difference.

[Anonymous]

You might want to move your question to the general schools forum.

[Anonymous]

Hold him back. I taught all boys forever and they are almost ALWAYS better off older. You will not regret it.

[Anonymous]

op here. thank you so much for your responses! this is a major decision which i know sounds silly but i feel in my gut that if we are to ever do it it should be done this year otherwise he will be aware of his friends moving up etc.... and him repeating a year. thanks again!

[Anonymous]

We have two sons, both are the youngest in their respective classes. Both are doing well academically, one is having some minor social adjustment issues, but for the most part, we simply could not imagine them in the year younger than where they are. It simply wouldn't make sense from an academic standpoint.

Besides, someone has to be the youngest in the class, and as this trend continues, that birthday will soon be in February.

[Anonymous]

Our daughter (now in 8th grade) is one of the oldest in her class. We agonized over this decision. I have never regretted her being the oldest; she is a leader in the class and has more self-confidence than I've ever had. Her younger sister is one of the youngest in her class, and sometimes struggles with standing up for herself. Being older is MUCH better, in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Ah yes but in grown-up life no one is ever the oldest or the youngest, and if your confidence only comes from being the oldest in the room it is a very fragile sense of self that will quickly disappear first day on your job!

[Anonymous]

Our son is a summer birthday in a private school in K, and the school felt very strongly last year that he was ready for K, and really said that we should send him on. This year at our second parent-teacher conference, the teachers told us that we absolutely made the right decision to send him on, despite being the youngest boy in the class. They said he would have been bored senseless had we kept him back in Pre-K. I worried about him too, in the sense that he is more of a follower, but I have come to realize that simply being with younger children would not bring out the leader in him. He has younger siblings, younger cousins, and essentially he ends up acting "younger" than he really is.

We know an internationally recognized child psychologist/educator on the subject who did say, however, that you should rely on the opinion of the school. They tend to want to protect boys against things for which they are not developmentally ready. He did say too, that keeping him back, when there is no need, has psychological consequences of its own in the form of boredom ad frustration. These children, he argues, often become idle and are prone to getting into trouble as they look to stimulate themselves.

[Anonymous]

OP, consider Montessori Kindergarten. You get the best of both worlds. He will be in K, but with younger kids, he'll be a "leader", then you can decide later.

[Anonymous]

OP, another perspective. My oldest son has a June birthday. He is in pre-k this year (4), the youngest boy in his class, with three girls who are younger than he is. He's thriving and I'm so glad we pushed him on ahead. I've never been an advocate of this holding back concept, except for kids that really need it, and the majority don't, IMO. Being the youngest has pushed him (in a good way) academically and socially and he has proved that he is more than up to the challenge. I sort of feel sorry for the kids that turned 5 months ago and are still working on concepts that are almost boring to them. The idea that 6 year olds will just be in kindergarten is sort of silly, don't you think?

Why this fear to let our children grow up, I wonder? Parents throw around silly terms like "the gift of a year," but, in my experience at least, it's really more for the parents (moms?) who are afraid to let their kids grow up a little.

[Anonymous]

OP, DS is only 2 but has a summer birthday too. Unless he shows some development issues (which I doubt since he hasn't had any so far) or struggles signficantly in his preK class I don't plan to hold him back. I think its unfair to you that the school is encouraging or pressuring you to hold him back. It strikes me that teachers and schools are disadvantaging boys by holding them back rather than meeting age appropriate needs and provising enough physical activity.

You may want to talk to other parents or contact the PTA at your future schools and ask what their kindergarten experiences were and how the teachers managed the class. While I don't think its good for a generation of boys to be held back, if their is a "mindset" at your future school you may have no choice.

Interestingly, I know a few men with summer birthdays. It may be coincidence but while they were not the "big guy" or leader of the pack in school they are all amazingly successful. Sometimes the kids who have to work harder to keep up develop stronger work ethic skills and come out ahead in the end. I also agree that someone needs to be the youngest, oldest, tallest, and shortest but learning to work with what have is what counts.

[Anonymous]

PP, I must disagree with you. There are STRONG studies showing how boys are late bloomers when it comes to learning, esp. when placed next to their female counterparts. (Not to mention, did anyone see the TImes article talking about the relative success of the old to young kids, staggering) Girls are able to sit longer and "look" the part while it take boy until they are around 11-12 to truly get there. I am not advocating low standards, but MANY boys need the time to emotionally mature, not academically mature. As a teacher, the boys are always getting in trouble, getting called out, being repeatedly asked to sit, etc. It is the strongest argument for all-boys ed. You know your kid best, OP, so make the right decision for HIM. Don't worry about anything else...

[Anonymous]

I have an july boy who is not even close to being the oldest in his grade/class though he could have been a year ahead. When he was 4, he was reading complicated chapter books and could not only add and subtract but could also multiply (but not divide). This whole "he'll be bored" thing is not the reason to hold him back or not. It isn't about when he is 4 or 5 anyway. it is about when he is older and there is a ton of research out there about brain development. I know people advised me many things but I was taken by some of the research I had read which suggests that complex math problems require a level of brain development and even 3 months can make a difference.

The whole notion of holding back makes it seem like a negative. It depends whhere he goes. In our school, there were plenty of older kids, with earlier birthdays. Lots of boys and some girls born in june/July/Auguest seem to routinely start late (my preferred term). I thought about do I want him to be the last in his grade to be driving or the first? Neither actually. how about shaving/puberty etc? Too far off to understand what that would mean. I thought about sports, as he is a good athlete, do I want him to be the smallest or least muscularly developed or is it better for him to be bigger and stronger (maybe, hard to know growth rates at that age).

Since he was reading and had this fabulous math ability, do I need to have him step it up? Is there truth to the boredom thing? The school asked me for my input as I am guessing he would have been accepted to either pre K or K. At the end we went with our gut, and with pre K. FWIW, he was never bored. The teacher challenged him, the school understood how to deal with kids with advanced abilities. He has never been bored and is not always the best at everything either, and I know he would have bene just fine in the higher grade too. but I like where he is, he is a leader, he is not a huge kid so being older has helped him make teams I'm not sure he would have made for sure.

Go with your gut, don't let a school pressure you. Look up some of the reasearch too, and do what is best for him and your family.

[Anonymous]

I posted a similar question on a thread on the general schools discussion, as a mom of a 3 year old Aug boy. A post on this thread makes a really interesting point that has me second thinking "holding him back." My son is a bit of a mimic. Right now, he mimics his baby sister when at home. Baby talk, even though he is perfectly able to form coherent interesting sentences. (I think it's an attention thing, drives me insane.) When he's with his 8 and 9 year old cousins, I swear you can barely tell the difference between his maturity and theirs. I notice it when he's playing with his various friends- he always brings himself to the level of the people he's interacting with. So with one from he runs around like a wild animal, with another he plays dress up and make believe, with another he plays sports, so on and so forth. It's really kind of odd. I commented to husband that we'd better make sure he never hangs out with drug addicts I guess maybe he's a "follower"- but it's even more than that- he's a chameleon. So I wonder if pushing him forward would be better for him. Though sounds like if we want to do the push for the "big 3" or whatever people call it around here "holding back" might be our only option. Interesting...