Experience as a summer birthday at Sidwell, Beauvoir, Potomac?

[Anonymous]

If you have a child with a summer birthday at one of these schools - was she/he 'held back' or 'moved forward'? What has your child's experience been? - have you been happy with your decision? Have you found there is a trend (as in, all summer birthdays tend to be one the old end / or young end?)
Thanks!

[Anonymous]

2 kids, not held back, everything is great, except for having kids who are more than 12 months older. Those issues have been discussed in this forum.

[Anonymous]

11:42 here, hit the submit button too early.

2 kids, not held back, everything is great, except having kids more than 12 months (and in some cases 16 months) older than my kids. The issues associated with such an age spread have been discussed in this forum.

[Anonymous]

Thank you - I know the issues have been discussed and I've been reading those threads with interest.

I was just trying to get a sense of the practice at those 3 schools - whether it is more common to place the kids on the older side or the younger side. Of course there will always be someone who has to be the youngest and the oldest and no matter what they do w. the summer birthdays where will be a large spread (kids with May & September birthdays will be much older/younger too, etc).

[Anonymous]

We have a late summer boy. I wonder what you mean OP when you say that a school would 'place' your child in a grade.

In the schools you named (plus the one DS attends, which is competitive but not on your list), I think the process is that you identify the grade you want your child to be in and then, frankly, compete with all the other applicants for that grade. The admissions teams needs to seat an entire class and compare each kid against the others to make a balanced class without 20 girls and 1 boy, etc.

I think it's less likely that they'd look at your child and say o.m.g. this kid is amazing let's find a place for him somewhere in our school, preK, K whatever!

[Anonymous]

Totally agree, may have used the wrong word, what I meant to ask was whether they tend to recommend children move forward or stay back - that is, whether most of the summer children are on the old or young side. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

11:43 here.

The schools will work with the applying family to determine whether a summer birthday should be held back. In some cases they say yes and in others, they say no, go ahead and start now.

Quite frankly, there doesn't appear to be any reason to hold the kids back based on what I have seen, so I am not sure if this is the school or the parents driving the decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have a child with a summer birthday at one of these schools - was she/he 'held back' or 'moved forward'? What has your child's experience been? - have you been happy with your decision? Have you found there is a trend (as in, all summer birthdays tend to be one the old end / or young end?)
Thanks!

I am curious about this as well because my early summer birthday DC will be attending K "on time" at one of these schools in the fall. It does seem more common at certain schools for children to wait the extra year before beginning K than it is at other schools. This could be due to the "domino effect" that occurs when parents choose to hold back their child as much as to any spoken or unspoken school policy on the issue.

[Anonymous]

Some or all of the schools listed will indeed require mid to late summer birthdays (particularly boys) to wait a year. Usually applies to July or Aug birthdays.

[Anonymous]

Sidwell skews older.

[Anonymous]

They might "recommend" it, but they don't "require" it.

Anonymous wrote:Some or all of the schools listed will indeed require mid to late summer birthdays (particularly boys) to wait a year. Usually applies to July or Aug birthdays.

[Anonymous]

They might "recommend" it, but they don't "require" it.

They require it in a backhanded way by not admitting your late summer birthday kid, is what they do when you don't take their recommendation and forge ahead anyway. Let us not forget who is holding the cards in this process.

[Anonymous]

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't seem to me that any one poster is really qualified to make any sort of overall judgment about what any school does. Each poster can talk about her own individual experience with her own summer birthday children that applied to these three schools. Maybe she can talk about friends' experiences, if those friends really confided all the details about all communications with the school and about how the friends' summer birthday children are currently doing. But when I see these sweeping statements about what the schools do or what the schools require, I just don't buy it. If there's one thing DCUM has shown me, it's that almost everyone thinks she knows what the schools think, but almost everyone is guessing/supposing.

For me at least, a story that is personal and individual ("Here's my child's experience ....") carries a lot more weight than 10 sweeping pronouncements that lack proof.

[Anonymous]

Well said!

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't seem to me that any one poster is really qualified to make any sort of overall judgment about what any school does. Each poster can talk about her own individual experience with her own summer birthday children that applied to these three schools. Maybe she can talk about friends' experiences, if those friends really confided all the details about all communications with the school and about how the friends' summer birthday children are currently doing. But when I see these sweeping statements about what the schools do or what the schools require, I just don't buy it. If there's one thing DCUM has shown me, it's that almost everyone thinks she knows what the schools think, but almost everyone is guessing/supposing.

For me at least, a story that is personal and individual ("Here's my child's experience ....") carries a lot more weight than 10 sweeping pronouncements that lack proof.