Reply to TO THE MOM WHO RED SHIRTED HER SON AND COMPLAINS HE'S NOT CHALLENGED

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "TO THE MOM WHO RED SHIRTED HER SON AND COMPLAINS HE'S NOT CHALLENGED"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]Delay Kindergarten At Your Peril

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/d...your-kindergartners-start.html

Parents who want to give their young children an academic advantage have a powerful tool: school itself. In a large-scale study at 26 Canadian elementary schools, first graders who were young for their year made considerably more progress in reading and math than kindergartners who were old for their year. In another large study, the youngest fifth-graders scored a little lower than their classmates, but five points higher in verbal I.Q., on average, than fourth-graders of the same age. In other words, school makes children smarter.

The benefits of being younger are even greater for those who skip a grade, an option available to many high-achieving children. Compared with nonskippers of similar talent and motivation, these youngsters pursue advanced degrees and enter professional school more often. Acceleration is a powerful intervention, with effects on achievement that are twice as large as programs for the gifted. Grade-skippers even report more positive social and emotional feelings.

These differences may come from the increased challenges of a demanding environment. Learning is maximized not by getting all the answers right, but by making errors and correcting them quickly. In this respect, children benefit from being close to the limits of their ability. Too low an error rate becomes boring, while too high an error rate is unrewarding. A delay in school entry may therefore still be justified if children are very far behind their peers, leaving a gap too broad for school to allow effective learning. [/quote]

Well. based on my sample size of my own one kid, I'll agree that there are academic advantages to being younger, but socially it has been rough.  Our school is really mixed socioeconomically, and the total number of kids a year older plus than DS, due to affluent kids who were redshirted and non-affluent kids who could not progress to the next grade due to attendance issues and other personal issues, is significant.  I would actually say that pretty much all of the children, whether they are a year older than DS or not, are genuinely nice kids.  But they are just not a match in terms of interests and social maturity due to the age difference. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics