Reply to When did your June birthday boy start school? How do you feel about it now that he is older?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DD is late August bday and went to K "on time"- just days after turning 5.

She is now a freshman in college.   She was not reading chapter books in K, actually she didn't read chapter books until late 2nd grade.

However, even though she struggled a little academically initially, she learned how to handle a struggle.  She excelled as she got older and is doing very well her first year in college.

Socially, she was rather typical as a 5 year old and always had friends.  In some areas she was less mature than others and others much more mature.  She went through puberty a bit on the early side, so being with some older kids was a bit of a blessing.

Driving wasn't an issue.  I was thrilled she wasn't the first to get her license and she was by no means the last.  Many of her friends waited a year or took a long time with their permits.

[b]She did head to college just prior to her 18th birthday[/b].   This lead to a few challenges in that she couldn't open a bank account or sign certain documents without a cosigner.  I also had to be sure she was able to access medical and insurance information when it automatically flipped on her birthday, which was slightly harder from a distance.  But, I was able to show her ahead of time and then when it happened she knew what to do.

You should really think about the implications of being one of the first to hit puberty, turn 16/18/21.  For us as parents, we much preferred being on the later end.

Do you want to have the first driver?  The one everyone is asking for a ride?  To be the parents who have to enforce the no other teens in the car w/ a new driver before others consider it?

Do you want one of the first kids to be 21 and legal drinking age?  Do you want your DS to be asked to buy classmates alcohol?  The ramifications for buying fur underage drinkers is typically worse than being the underage drinker.

Do you want your son to potentially be one of the first to go through puberty?  (maybe this isn't as much of an issue for boys as girls).

Anyway, there are some benefits both as the parent and the student/child to watching others navigate some of these "milestones" before you.

Make the decision based on the information you have today.  If you son is ready for school, send him to school.  Don't make him wait so he won't be the "last" to hit later milestones.  Instead he'll be the last to go to school and may lose some of his tenacity, curiosity and excitement about learning that currently exists.  Deal with the rest as it comes.
[/quote]

All very good well-stated points!

I wanted to mention to the highlighted, this used to be the case regularly.  When I was a MoCo schools student back in the dark ages, the cut off was Dec. 31.  A quarter of the kids started K before turning 5, and a quarter started college before turning 18.  Those were actually some of the more emotionally mature students who did very well in school and beyond.[/quote]

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