Almost hate to ask..September birthdays

[Anonymous]

My ds has a mid-September birthday. He goes to a private school that has a Sept. 1 cutoff, so the decision was made for me, but I would have still waited to send him if there were a later cut off date. We found a great jk program for that "middle" year. He would have done ok academically had he started earlier, but I think he would have struggled a bit, particularly in terms of maturity. Over the past year, he has really blossomed in terms of both his maturity and his reading ability, and he loves school.

I have a friend who started their September birthday ds in public school "on time," and ended up repeating kindergarten. It was a real blow to the child's confidence. The child is very bright, but has continued to struggle with school, and I think a lot of it is just that he "got off on the wrong foot." This can't be undone. To me, this potential downside would far outweigh any potential drawbacks of waiting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I redshirted my boy who made the cutoff by a week. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, but after agonizing over it for a year, the thing that really decided me was this:

If I redshirted him, I would at least know that age wasn't the reason for his immaturity, social and motor issues. If I didn't redshirt, it would never be clear to me whether the problem was him or the age difference. For me, with a son with substantial issues, taking that one potential regret off the table was worth it.

Why not just get him evaluated to see if the "substantial issues" are something other than age? My DD has spent the past two school years with red shirted boys ( a different boy each year) who are immature and have social issues in her classroom. Both of these boys were the oldest in the class, and yet the most immature and disruptive. But they are older, and seen as cool by the other kids. Age is clearly not the issue with them. Redshirting them has not solved the issue for them, and has created disruption for the other kids.

He has been evaluated. I thought that was clear from my mention of his "substantial issues." But you still don't really know, when your child is the very youngest in a class, what percentage of him being behind is because of delays and what percentage is just the fact that he is, say, ten months younger, so he is never on even footing with classmates and those social issues compound over time. The children in your daughter's class may well have documented delays, which may be part of why they were redshirted to begin with. You wouldn't necessarily know that. I wouldn't assume those boys in your daughter's class would be better off a grade ahead, if they are already struggling. My point was that redshirting might not solve the problem, but when there are no solutions you try to hedge your bets and mitigate the situation as best you can.