When is the right time to send your child to school?

Thank you, Digitalart for the picture!

Society

Society and oftentimes government (by the rules/regulations/funding) say that a child should start kindergarten when they are five and first grade when they are six.  There are some teachers who are adamant about children not starting kindergarten until they are six.  However, every child is different and this is not always the case.  There are some cases, where the parents need the child to go to school as soon as possible because they need someone to care for their children while they are working.

Background

There are many teachers and teacher’s assistants in my family.  I grew up believing that boys should start later than girls and children with late (summer) birthdays should really consider waiting another year before sending their child to school.

Our Situation

My oldest was born at the end of July, so with my background knowledge, I automatically had it in my head that he would go to preschool when he was five, kindergarten when he was six and so on.  Imagine this; Life happened and I ended up not returning to teach like I had planned.  (The plan was for him to be in my preschool class).  So, since our plan did not come to fruition, we did not have money in our budget to send him to preschool.

However, the public school offers a free preschool program to those who qualify and to those who are four on or before August 31st.  So we revised our plan and had him tested to see if he qualified.  He qualified, so we sent him to preschool when he was four.

Our plan was then to send him onto public school kindergarten for a year and then have him go to kindergarten again at the Catholic School that we had planned on him attending for the rest of his elementary education.

This wasn’t a big deal until the first conference we had in preschool.  He had a glowing report, was exceeding in many areas and the teacher told us that she thought that we would be making a big mistake if we sent him to kindergarten for two years.

This completely caught me off guard, because I thought that most teachers would agree with our original plan (many do).  So I thought and stressed about it a lot.  I got opinions from people who knew my son very well, from those who didn’t, and from those who have had many children and been down this road before.  Many of the people advised that if there is any doubt to “hold him back,” however, many also advised to go with my gut instinct.

I prayed and thought.  Thought and stressed.  Prayed and prayed and prayed.

How We Came to Our Decision

My husband and I had many conversations over this issue (we had both been on different pages from the beginning).  We finally discussed the consequences that we thought we would encounter if he went to kindergarten twice and if he went to kindergarten once.  We then made our decision on which consequence we thought would be the best (two years: being very bored and giving up/not trying hard versus one year: being socially immature).  We ended up sending him to kindergarten for one year.

At the first conference in kindergarten, his teacher informed us that he was doing exceptionally well and that he was already reading.  She said that she was sorry because she felt that she did not have the resources to be able to push him as far as he needed that year. She inferred that many in the class were on the immature side.  I thought this was the answer to our prayers and relief that we made the right decision.

If most of the class is immature, then possibly, this will not be an issue for us in the years to come, like we have anticipated.  And as far as not being able to challenge him, I wasn’t concerned about that, I felt like I have enough education and experience to fill any gaps that may exist.  But for right now, we want him to enjoy school and work on maturing, so we are not pushing him academically.

My Advise

If you find yourself in the same situation as us, I would recommend the following:

• Pray
• Ask for others’ opinions (of who you trust)
• Sit back and listen and observe your child
• Discuss the pros and cons and decide which you think would be the best to deal with

and most importantly, LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER’S INTUITION!  No one knows your child better than you do.

I would also like to note that if you make a decision and then feel like it’s not the right one, then fix it.  If we would have regretted our decision, we would have put him in kindergarten again this year.  It is much better and easier on everyone, especially the child to try again in kindergarten, than be forced to try again in third/fourth/fifth grade, etc.