My oldest was born in the spring, her birthday falling a day after mine. From the time she was an infant, I thought I had her early education planned out. She and I would attend a parent/toddler class when she was two and a half. Then she would go to two years of preschool followed by kindergarten at five and a half.
My plan closely followed what I did as a child and I figured since her birthday is literally a day after mine that she would follow in my footsteps. What I didn’t factor into this equation was the difference between the kindergarten of my childhood and the current kindergarten climate.
During her second year of preschool, my husband and I started to hesitate. Not because of academics, no, on that front we had full confidence she would fair just fine. We realized that not only was she one of the youngest in her preschool class, she was also one of the quietest and still napped on a regular basis. Was a full day out of the house five days a week really the best fit for our child at this point in her life?
As I read stories to her and her younger brother right before Christmas that year, it struck me. My kiddos lived in an innocent bubble: their belief in the magic of the season was strong, they considered each other a perfectly suitable playmate, and they had no idea about the violence in today’s world. I liked this innocence. This was the life I wanted for my young children and I wasn’t quite ready to rock that boat.
Two years have now passed since making the decision to delay kindergarten and I’m continually glad we made that choice. My daughter is a first-grader and the expectations already feel leaps and bounds above the safe kindergarten hallway decorated with scenes from Eric Carle’s books.
Take the homework for example, it’s practicing for a spelling test every week and signing that we saw the results of the test. Checking to see how many letter sounds our child can correctly say in one minute and documenting it. Listening to our child read for a minimum of fifteen minutes and initialing that they did it. Helping our child complete an entry in their science journal and confirming they did it by, you guessed it…signing it. (Can I just say the amount of parental accountability in my child’s homework is a little over the top?)
If they’re expected to do that at home, imagine what a day at school is like. It makes me tired just thinking about it!
I’ll admit it though, up until this fall I was only 95% sure we made the right call. Emotionally? Yes, beyond a doubt. There was no way she would have had a good experience going all day, every day at age five. I even questioned our decision last year when, as a kindergartner, she was reading well above most of her peers and could easily solve many math problems. I wondered if she was getting challenged enough.
Now as a parent of a first-grader, I have the benefit of seeing a bigger picture. I can understand how delaying formal school by one year would, yes, hopefully, allow her to mature enough that she wouldn’t fall asleep on the bus coming home, but also give her more time to develop her ability to keep herself organized. To hone the skills necessary to share her thoughts with her class. To become more responsible in order to keep track of all of her folders and grab all of the necessary supplies at the end of the day. After all, in our case, it wasn’t academics as the reason to wait in the first place.
In the next year, our son will be age-eligible for kindergarten. We’ll be faced with the decision from a few years ago: send or wait. This time though we have the benefit of knowing what to expect and using that to help inform our decision. In my mind, age is only one indicator of readiness and if there is a benefit to waiting to send him based on his needs we feel ready to make that call.
I’m curious, at what age do you plan to start your kiddos in kindergarten?
