This gets at the debate about red-shirting.
I was amazed last year when volunteering in my (then) first grader's class how, after awhile, I could pick out the kids with the really late birthdays who were young for their age. They were not always the smallest. They tended to be very immature, have poorer fine motor skills, and were just sillier.
One girl used to randomly wander around the room- I would gently redirect her to her desk to try and write the little paragraph the class was doing. I finally realized that her birthday was in August, and she was almost a year younger than everyone. (I don't know if she was gifted or not).
At such an early age, K or first grade, you can see a difference in how they write or pay attention, simply based on age. I think it can make a difference too in how they do in school- if you can't sit still to write you paragraph, simply because you are way younger than everyone, then you will miss out on that academic opportunity.
I think this is highly dependent on the child. No one, from teachers to friends to other parents, has ever noticed that my child was younger than the others. In fact, for two of my kids, people are still convinced that we redshirted them. And, once people do find out my kids' true ages (which we don't hide but don't advertise either), they are usually very suprised. And I'm not sure it's just because my kids tend to be mature, but also because there is such a huge range in kids in any given classroom. Also, we took small motor skills, like the ability to write well, which I think is important, into account. Now, I have had people when they finally find out my children's ages after a year or two who begin saying things like, "Well, he
is young for grade . . . " because their knowledge of their age begins to color their perceptions. But when they don't know their birthday, no one ever suspects a thing. Academic maturity is different than social maturity which is different from physical maturity and they don't necessarily correlate with birthday. Which is kind of why we're all here -- our kids don't fit the norms.
