Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Should I 'hold back' my son from preschool?

Good to file away in our minds as we continue to search best school fit.

DS8 and DS4 both have summer birthdays. We've gone back and forth on this subject. Initially, my intent was to have DS8 start kindergarten at 6- a decision based on research I'd read about boys of summer. He was enrolled in a Montessori and after two years of preschool his teachers advised we let him go ahead and start K at 5. This decision was based largely on his academic performance and since he would still be in a class with 3 & 4 year olds I didn't worry too much about him being the youngest.

Fast forward to first grade where he was the youngest in a three year class (1st-3rd). His immaturity in organization skills, work habits, attention span and handwriting started leading to struggles. He was doing above level work but at below level speed. Thats when we heard the first murmurs of attention disorders. I decided it was just a matter of him starting 1st grade too soon and at his teacher's advice had him repeat 1st grade with all 2nd grade (and up) work. Differentiation in a Montessori is pretty easy to do so we didn't feel like this was going to cause him to suffer at all.

Halfway through his second year of 1st grade, we started hearing that attention word again. DS was capable of doing high level work but was just not attending or showing any self direction. On a day when he was expected to complete 4 works, he would often do 1. I felt like we'd adjusted for age and still he seemed the least mature of his class. And on top of it all, he hated school now. Finally, at the direction of the school,we went to Vanderbilt for testing this summer.

What we learned was the DS was very gifted, had an excellent working memory (141) which (along with other tests) blasted those ADHD suspicions right out of the water, and was really a perfectly "normal" gifted kid. We were given some ideas to help engage him (project work- letting him dig deeper into works to satisfy his need for more) and are working with the school to get him back to liking school.

What I learned through all of this is that he internalized both his sense that he was different with the fact that he was held back in 1st grade as him being "less than.". Although we had told him was just being adjusted for age and although he'd done all his lessons and work at a higher grade level he felt stupid. I don't know if redshirting him at a younger age might have been better but it was certainly a flop the way we did it. Now we are left pondering how best to clean up our mess.

Really- this has been a long winded way to tell you I don't know what I'd do in your shoes. But maybe you can take something from our experience as you decide what to do.

In my mind, here's the thing: this is preschool. If his social development has not caught up with his intellectual level, is preschool causing him more frustration than it is worth? Maybe preschool isn't necessary.

When I was studying special education back in the 80's, two professors at my college were in the midst of a study on summer children, and the statistics pointed to something like 70% of the boys being held back by grade 2. Girls were not nearly as affected.

But gifted kids have the added frustration of being intellectually ahead of most of their peers and even those older than them.

We enrolled my older son in Kindergarten when he was barely 5 - made th e cutoff by two days - and while there were a few challenge (much physically smaller than other boys in high school, some immaturity issues in mid-school), I'm not sorry we enrolled him early. It was a "grade skip" without the battle, and he needed it academically.

But we also kept our kids home until Kindergarten. My son had 5 full years to be "normal" at home before having to contend with his differences in the classroom setting. I think it was a big boost to allow him to develop at his own pace at home, and I think the lack of stressors of not fitting in in preschool helped him actually be more prepared for Kindergarten.

Just my thoughts based on my experiences, for whatever that is worth. (By the way, his toughest year by far was as a freshman in college. As a sophomore, he's finally gotten his groove and is loving the challenging engineering courses.)

Montessoris are very different from any other school type. I would not necessarily decide if your older boy really has attention issues just based on their say-so.
I do think some boys do better if they are a little older rather than younger. I volunteered each week last year in my first grader's class, and I could easily pick out the younger/later birthday kids (both boys and girls). And it wasn't based on their physical size.
The schools demand so much in today's world of sitting still and doing academic things at such an early age. Some kids are very bright intellectually but are emotionally at their chronological age, and the two don't mesh as well in early grades.

I'm curious - how long has school been in session? And have you talked to your ds about it all? Does he have any kind of ideas about why he has a tough time sitting in circle? I know he's only 4 so he won't be able to figure it all out, but sometimes our kids have a viewpoint that we'd never imagine, and it could make all the difference in knowing how to handle a situation.

Another ? I have is - is this his first preschool? If so, I'm not surprised he hasn't been totally excited about sitting down at circle time. Do you think he's been given a good trial run with his age group?

If you are comfortable with the school and believe they'll differentiate, I'd suggest this - let your ds be with the 3/4 class for the start of this year, and ask that he be moved back into he 4/5 group at the start of 2nd semester, or sometime in the spring. If the issues with circle etc are simply maturity issues, they'll most likely be better by then.

I wouldn't agree to move him back to 3/4 with the idea that he'll stay with that group of kids forward through elementary school. It *might* be a good thing for him but he's way too young and it's way too early to know that's the right thing to do for him. My ds is one of the oldest kids in his class due to birthdate, and due to 2e we had too much of a battle on our hands to even consider asking for a grade skip etc in early elementary. It worked out ok early on - I was glad for awhile that he was one of the older kids because as jack's mom mentioned, in K/1 it was pretty easy to see who was younger/older based on how they acted (not true for everyone, but for the most part it was true). However, by the time he was in 5th grade, our ds was *beyond* bored with the pace of instruction, with the level of questions asked in school, and with the lack of intellectual challenge. Being up one year in grade level wouldn't have solved all the problems but it would have helped.

On the flip side, once kids get to middle school it's often much easier to get differentiation and subject acceleration plus there are more opportunities for after-school academics... so our ds is much happier now.

One other thought... it sounds like perhaps this school isn't the best fit for your ds. If you aren't contracted in for the rest of the year, if it was me, I'd look around at other preschools. Even the "best" and "gifted" schools or schools with great reputations aren't always the right fit for every kid. One of the things that I think is important in preschool is that kids have a chance to be kids and have fun and not be worried that they are being judged on behavior or expected to learn huge amounts of academics *unless* they are driven and doing it themselves. But that's just me

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses!

School has been in session for two weeks now, next week is week three.

This is not our son's first preschool. He attended a local Montessori for several months last year. He was in a 3-6 room. They weren't as accommodating as we had hoped. He, according to his teacher, was doing 6-year-old works from day one. About two months into the preschool, behavior issues started to crop up. Mostly, not wanting to sit still, not wanting to do what he was told, and refusing to participate in their circle time. Basically, he was too much of a handful for them. I theorize that he ran out of stuff to do, but who knows. Communication with the school always seemed a bit preemptively defensive on their part. We pulled him out thinking that he was maybe too young for preschool and maybe this particular one just wasn't a good fit.

So these behaviors aren't totally new. When we do activities like "My Gym" (a parent and kid gym class) we have a hard time getting him into circle there the time comes. We ask him why, but he doesn't really articulate a solid reason (not too surprising given his age). He basically just says "because I don't want to."

When I picked him up on Friday last week, his teacher told me that the 3/4 classroom would be better for him socially, and they could still meet his need academically. She said, as an example, there was a child in there that is reading at a 4th grade level. I was glad to hear that. Also, the student teacher ratio is really outstanding in the 3/4 classroom. 10 kids and 3 teachers (as opposed to 20 kids and 3 teachers in the 4/5). So he'd get more one-on-one attention.

I want to do what is right, and this issue is just all grey area. I have no idea what is right. I hope we will have a definite idea about what we want in time for the meeting. Right now, I feel myself going back and forth constantly.

ETA: I asked on Friday about skipping grades in the future, and the teacher said that "yes" they do skip grades if it is deemed appropriate. So, if he "catches up" socially by, say, 1st grade and is still far ahead academically - he might skip 2nd grade and go to 3rd. That was just an example she gave. I didn't ask about moving him mid-year, PolarBear, and that's a really good point. I'll bring that question up at our meeting next week.

It sounds like your meeting is just with the teacher? And she's assuring you future grade skips are possible?? From prior experience and other advice on this board, make sure the administrator/principal also assures you of this and does so in writing. Sometimes teachers do not have the authority to make these statements on their own. And what if she quits? Or they change their policy between now and then? Just be careful on this point.

Our family has twice made the decision to send an asynchronous, intellectually ready but otherwise questionable and young for grade kid to Kindergarten on time. For the first one, it made for some bumpy years, but we are now quite happy that we did send him on time, as the lack of intellectual fit would over time have become a huge problem, and gradeskipping not a great choice for a kid with social challenges. Too soon to tell how the second time will turn out, but I'm thinking it was still the right thing among our particular menu of choices.

When we were deciding, we read some studies saying that even if a kid has a disability, redshirting is a poor choice; rather, best practice is to place them with age-peers, giving them opportunities to advance, but also give them extra supports to try to catch them up. For a kid with no known disability but challenges in class participation skills, I would think the same case could be made. This is, of course, controversial.

DeeDee

ETA: re: "catching up" socially from earlier in this thread: if we had waited for that to happen before letting DS10 advance academically, we'd still be waiting, because he has Asperger's Syndrome. It was much better to make a plan that met his academic needs and kept working on his social needs as we went along, rather than holding him back with peers who had similar social skills to his, because no matter how hard he and we all try, he is going to be asynchronous in this area for the foreseeable future.

And that can be the case for NT kids, too. When DD was in 3rd, I was talking to the mom of a kid I'd pegged as either the youngest in the class or grade-skipped. Nope, oldest in the class, having repeated K to let him catch up socially. He was still way, way asynchronous.

I wouldn't redshirt under the OP's conditions. Plenty of children are immature, in terms of following directions and rules in class, in kindergarten and even in first grade in my location. I wouldn't want to take a gifted child and widen the default academic gap even further.

I was reading recently (on a fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers' forum) that in some areas redshirting is the norm. That makes zero sense to me academically-- parents who follow the "Outliers" mindset seem to have succeeded in those areas in simply delaying the start of academics for everyone by a year. That's no way to get ahead academically long-term, especially for gifted children. On that same website it was mentioned that this is sometimes done for athletic reasons; I'd never do that with a gifted child, with such a pre-existing mismatch between age and academic level to start with.

Acceleration, and especially radical acceleration, by its nature often involves increasing the apparent effects of asynchrony due to placement with older children. Research shows that it can still work quite well for highly gifted children. That means to me that DeeDee's approach is the best one generally-- support as necessary while you do your best to meet academic needs.