Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gessell Testing Results for Kindie. Help!!!!

Thanks everyone and Thanks especially to Aeh! for the information on the what the test really measures and its reliability. I am sending him. He'd be bored out of his mind sitting around doing another year of the same old thing of Pre-K. I could send him to montessorri or something (so he could be others his age and still learn) and delay kindy but I really, really think it is completely unnecessary. I have just been through kindy with my older DS (younger DS will very very likely even have the same teacher) and there is no doubt at all in my mind that DS5 can not only handle it but do well and thrive. My DS5 is really tiny physically - he looks a more like a 3 year old and I wonder if that isn't playing a bit of a role as well. I think my DH is laying it on a little thick too (I should have gone). DH has been very concerned at how small DS5 is and that he will be the smallest in the class and maybe it's not a good idea to send him anyway b/c of his physical size. So I think he's got a bias. I've got news for you, he would be the smallest in the next two classes - he'd have to go when those that are now 3 to be on par size-wise.

I have a small boy, and it's not a cakewalk, but he would still have been small had we held him a year--and academically even further out of sync.

Sometimes the best overall fit is a compromise.

I have a friend who was small through childhood and only ever hit 5'3" before his senior year of high school, at which point he sprouted to a muscular over-6' frame. Size in kindergarten may not relate at all to size later.

Oh gosh Irena - I wouldn't hold him back! I don't have any research or articles to offer up to show your dh, but I do have a life-time of experience as a very very short person. My dh was also really short up until he hit high school, then he had a huge growth spurt, and the same thing seems to be happening with my ds, who was always the shortest *kid* in his class (note - not the shortest *boy*, the shortest *kid*) up until last year, and now he's having a large growth spurt. He's also always been one of the oldest kids in his classes, because we live in a district where parents *don't* redshirt and his birthday just missed the kindy cutoff.

I mention our heights because - had we held ds back another year hoping that he wouldn't have been the shortest kid in class.. he would still have been the shortest kid in class! And as a short person myself, I can promise you it's a lot easier to deal with a little bit of height disadvantage in school than it is to sit bored to tears because you are older and farther along developmentally than the school curriculum is set up for.

Your older ds is also needing subject acceleration in school, so I wouldn't be surprised if your younger ds does to - at his appropriate age/grade level. Definitely not worth risking holding him back another year.

The other thing about height - my older dd was always one of the tallest kids in her class.... up until she hit puberty. Now suddenly she's not so tall.... in fact, she's not quite as tall as me at this point, and according to her ped, she's about to hit that age at which girls stop growing. No *way* when she was younger would anyone have ever thought she'd be "short". Yet, she's my child that I often wished I *had* held back in school due to emotional maturity. Still wonder about it!

So as you can see... I am very against making school-grade decisions based on physical stature

polarbear

Size is not something to be considered when making decisions about school. Although we have an emotional response to sending our small kid to school it is really not important at least in the first years.

It really sounds like the screener didn't have a very good grasp on development. A five year old who scores 4.5 to 5.5 sounds entirely normal. If he had scored 3.5 to 4.5 maybe there would be reason for concern or to test with a proper test. As for not knowing what you do for a living that would be pretty common. Some jobs are easy for the kids - she is a cook, she cooks but engineer and lawyer are a bit more complex. Unless your husband specialises is bridge building and talks about it a lot i wouldn't expect him to know.

Aeh,

That study was interesting as the only families that I know that I know of that are red shirting their boys are hyper achieving and way higher than average SES white people whose kids are anything but academically stunted.

The parents have realised that athletic prowess is valued far more highly by 'selective' US tertiary institutions than scholarship and want their progeny to have the advantage of a year's physical growth and maturity to give them an edge.

YMMV

Most of the families in my social circle who redshirt would be in that category as well. Unfortunately for their purposes, most competitive team sports have strict age ranges, (typically August 1st cutoff) which allow playing up, but not redshirting, which kick in around grade three.

It is true that kids who just miss the cutoff, and thus are nearly a year older than their peers, tend to be favored athletically, apparently because the perception of superior skill which is created by the purely chronological difference in physical development, leads to access to additional playing time and coaching support, which creates a cycle of compounding skill advancement compared to children who just make the cutoff, and are thus young for athletic grade. Surveys of professional athletes have found greater than chance bias toward fall birthdays.

Maybe they should plan their pregnancies better then rather than holding their kid's back so other people feel pressured to as well. I do think it is wrong that scholarships should be offered on anything but academics though.