Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Parenting: The “Summer Baby” Kindergarten Conundrum

starting kindergarten early, starting kindergarten late, when to start kindergarten, parenting

It’s January and for many parents that means it’s time to start thinking about school registration for next year. Jessica’s back today with a parenting topic that strikes close to home for me– when to officially start your “summer baby” in school. 

Our middle child was born in July so we wrestled with this ourselves and were surprised by the factors that came into play… academic readiness and social readiness, definitely, as well as if kindergarten will be full day or half day.

What it mostly came down to for us, though, was the spacing between all three of our kids. Ultimately, we opted to hold our daughter back in large part because this way there will be two years between her older brother and her and three years between her younger brother and her instead of only 1 year between our two oldest kids and (what feels like) a really large 4 year gap between them and our youngest.

Here’s Jessica’s experience…

Four years ago, we had no clue that our late August baby would mean we’d be dealing with the decision of when he’d actually start school. Our older two kiddos, with their April birthdays, both had a year of preschool and then went to kindergarten the year they were five. Boom, done, no questions asked.

But if we follow the same pattern with our youngest son, he’ll be starting kindergarten as a four year old. And that seems… young. I mean, he’d turn five pretty quickly after the semester begins, but still.

This is a child who still operates on two modes – “unconscious” or “ninety million miles an hour.” I’m a little worried about unleashing him on a kindergarten teacher. I don’t want that on my conscience, you know?Read More...

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