Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Young 5's or Summer Birthdays

I just pm'd you with my phone number. If you want to talk on the phone, please do. I think we are on the same journey. I feel your pain.

If you don't want to call, my short answer is either skip public K and go straight into 1st on time or go into public K, but make sure you understand how behavior modification works in the school before you do that and see if you can get a teacher who is nurturing.

If he's like my daughter, the issues your son is going to face are going to be labeled behavior choices. For a sensitive kid, that can be a problem. Do you have testing? If so, you might be able to talk to a tester or a gifted psychologist about potential accommodations at the very beginning.

We (also in TX) held back our August kid on the advice of the neuropsych who tested ours. She had miserable K year because it was all drawing, which she refuses to do with a teacher who labeled every motor and executive function failure a behavior choice. Now she has a great teacher and our current problem is trying to keep her from working ahead.

She loves to learn. We're not at all worried about her being "held back" educationally because she's pretty easily entertained and can do sight word worksheets till the cows come home and she reads an insane amount of nonfiction. Her current reward system for not starting her work at school before the teacher says to is that we give her a challenging standardized test at home once a week :-). Totally not joking.

I don't regret what we did. I think it was necessary--and her writing still isn't where she needs for the next grade up and holding back can be easier than trying to fight for accommodations as long as you can support the child on the behavior piece-which is hard. (I never know what is behavior and what is dyspraxia and what is just not learning much.)

But we are managing and our kid is managing and becoming really articulate about her feelings and is learning to be okay with herself slowly but surely.

Really bumpy road. Really hard. But I believe if we just hang with her, she's going to be okay.

Yep. Asynchrony IS giftedness. Many ages at once. Also...agree with each is different. I have 2 with IQs very, very close to one another, with different strengths and weaknesses and VERY different personalities. They each present their own unique challenges.

We, too, liked play-based for pre-K. It is great for social skills. Also, even if your DC is in school all day (and I agree that K usually includes lots of social-skill work), hopefully, there will not be enough homework for quite some time to prevent playdates after school...plenty of time to work on social skills.

I mistrust maturity issues. Sometimes people just don't fit in with age mates. This may last their entire childhood or entire life and should not be used to deny them academic challenge.

Me too. Handwriting issues are also sometimes a red herring. We had a school tell us they wouldn't let our kid in the math class he needed because his handwriting was so poor. A different school told us that as long as he could communicate understanding in some way (verbally, e.g.), he certainly wouldn't be held back in math. Fast forward years later, and he still has pretty crummy handwriting, which he would have had if we held him back or not. (I'm not talking about a diagnosed disability here, just things that teachers sometimes say to hold back kids.)

This. DS was in a traditional age-based classroom at a daycare and even at 3, he felt like he did not fit in at all. We were starting to have some issues develop, especially at home. And all the kids he hung out were 1-2 years olders - in fact, it got a little awkward when he would gravitate to the older siblings of his same-age classmates and have nothing to do with the same age classmates.

We had him start at a gifted private school where his class was for 4-5 year olds (basically kindergarten plus) - and there, he fits in with peers that are within a year of him. He still likes hanging out with older kids too, but he loves his class because his peers are like him.

I wouldn't hold back even if you had very specific social concerns.

We have among our children a very young-for-grade autistic 2E and an extremely young-for-grade 2E. We recently received an apology from someone who insisted that we hold these kids back-- she now realizes she was utterly wrong about that.

If there are social or behavioral concerns, you work on them as a major priority. But you don't want to create an academic mismatch in the process. A held-back kid loses a year of working on those concerns because he's not in the environment where the skills will be stretched.

That said, if you are permitted to go observe in K classrooms, you should. If it's academic K, it may be a poor fit anyhow. If it's a playroom K or some kind of mix, it could work. But you need to find out what goes on to assess the fit.

I'd like to point out that oftern their is a lot of growing up done between 41/2 and 5. My DD would not have been ready socially for school, now she's 2 months off 5 and she will be fine. Can you hold you decision off?

Thank you everyone!
You have been a sounding board for my own inner concerns and brought to light some things that hadn't occurred to me.

Yes, we can enroll him next month and pull him before August if he hasn't improved in the next few months. I do think 5 months could do the trick. We are going to enroll him in some extra classes now, to help with some social stuff. Classes at our Children's Museum, etc. Not too much though.

I do think holding him back, then placing him in Kinder next year is a very bad idea. He would be very bored and just cause problems. If we did hold him back, we would try for 1st grade next year. Though I am not a fan of this idea.

We have found two private schools, one is for gifted kids, that we will use if public doesn't work. They are costly so we will start saving now, just in case. If not private, then homeschooling.

The kinder here is not play based. It's a full on classroom. I have observed it. That might work for DS. He could do worksheets all day! Plus they have art, music, and PE. He takes Taekwondo and will take piano. He's already a good piano player with no lessons.

I will be working with the school counselor. I know they don't do pull out, but maybe they could do a gifted social class. They have some for other issues, like bullying and decision making.

The school counselor has been the single best thing about my daughter's school. My daughter knows she always has a safe person that she can trust to talk to. That's a good relationship to develop.

My DS6 is in first grade now, and I'm awfully glad I didn't delay his start in kindergarten. He's a late May birthday, so he was still a couple of months before the deadline. We are now in the process of learning that he is probably at least somewhat autistic, despite prodigious skills in reading and writing. I'm very glad to have access to the resources at school.