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[quote=Anonymous]NP here - I'll share this with you OP:  DS is a mid-Aug birthday, oldest of 2.  He has speech articulation issues, physically on the small side and we sent him on time even though we intended to old him back.  I'll tell you why we sent him on time - he fought tooth and nail for us to do so!  PreK is a very very good set up - they really prep kids well academically in a fun way for K.  However, PreK comes with a lot of rules ie naptime whether the kid wants/needs to nap or not, they are required by law to give that time to kids even if quiet time.  He was ADAMANT about going to K.  Not that we're parents without a spine but the kid begged us he was ready and honestly, selfishly, we figured that we could always repeat if it didn't go well.  So - he went to K.  IT WAS AWESOME!  He did great, loved it, etc.

Come first grade, we hit a snag with a teacher who long story short, managed a classroom that didn't altogether run smoothly.  For a variety of reasons, it made for a hard year.  Academically, starting off slow, DS caught on and finished strong at end of year.  However, he asked to repeat.  As his parents, while the school felt he was on par academically and did not see a need socially/academically to repeat, we could see that it was a hard battle for him to catch up academically and we worried about 2nd grade work for him so we allowed him to repeat.  Yes, his friends had to be made anew.  He was now the oldest of his class and while the work was not exactly the same, it was similar to what he had done previously.  The repeat of first grade went smooth - it wasn't anything bad or special.  He received speech therapy in school for free so by repeating first grade, this was year 3 of it.

Skip to this 2nd grade year.  Academically, DS is reading end of 3rd/beginning of 4th grade and math is TAG at 4th grade doing multiplication and division!  Let's just say we are not parents that push or kids so it's not like he's doing all this extra homework that's jumped him academically.  I think it's that everything clicked by slowing him down a bit.  In our case, repeating has been helpful.  However, it's possible that we could have stayed in 3rd grade this year and academically, he would have been on par anyway.  I think socially, it's been fine.  He may have been fine going into 3rd and maybe even better off since he is a "young" age 8 and quite silly :)  Maybe he would have gained more maturity as the youngest in his class.  I've stopped torturing myself however as we struggled over the years to whether to have him be youngest or oldest of his class.

My point is that 1. kids are more resilient than you know - they can catch up through the school year, it's not a bad thing to have them work for it.  2. you can repeat - at this young age - it really is ok.  3. You'll never know.  A lot depends on the personality and even at age 5/6 - what your kid is asking for.  Not suggesting they should make all the decisions but we took into consideration how DS felt trusting that at this young age, we wanted him to most importantly LIKE/ENJOY school and learning.  He has to be comfortable with where he is all day 5 days a week.

It's not easy and you'll never know for sure.  You kinda just have to be assured that whatever your decision, it will work out for the best.  Good luck!
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