At 18 months, my son was dribbling basketballs. It was a sight to behold. This kid is athletically inclined.
Or so we thought.
Fast forward to this spring when, at age 4.5, we stuck him in tennis lessons and on the soccer team.
Everyone else on the court and field were 5 or 6 years old. No big deal, I thought. So what if he’s a whole head shorter than the rest of them? He’s got the sporting genes! (Not from me, from some great aunt or something. I can barely explain what a corner kick is.)
Short attention span
Then I hung out at the clubhouse to watch him play tennis. It didn’t go quite the way I’d imagined.
Every 15 minutes or so, he’d drop his racket and run over to me, announcing that his lesson was over. I’d give him a pep talk and inform him that my job was to expose him to new things, like tennis. In exchange, his job was to learn the new things. Nice try, buddy. Off you go to get your racket and play a little longer.
After class, I asked the coach about my slacker kid, and he said, “Well, 4… That’s still a little young…” His voice trailed off and he didn’t elaborate.
Still a little young? In fancy places like New York City or Silicon Valley, kids that age are already Junior Olympians! I mean, I figured I’d pretty much handicapped my kid already by delaying his chance to get into the, uh, game. How can 4 possibly be too young?
Then soccer season started. On a field near the airport. Which means AIRPLANES every 10 seconds. Without fail, my kid was the one stopping mid-run to shout ANOTHER GIANT PLANE. Or when it was his turn to play goalie, he’d spend his time facing the wrong direction, watching the kids playing on another field. Or he’d climb up the goal post. Or he’d need a WATER BREAK and he’d run over to sit with me on the sidelines. I spent my time bribing him with the promise of extra half-time snacks to get him up and playing again.
His attention span is apparently non-existent.
He’s an active, always-on-the-move boy, so shouldn’t sports be the perfect way to keep him engaged? But there are RULES you have to learn and follow and remember. And he’d rather kick the ball once, then run around the goal three times, then tackle a teammate just because, then drink some water, then kiss his mother, then kick the ball again.
And now’s the time to enroll him in kindergarten. Where he’ll be expected to sit A LOT and concentrate A LOT. With his small-ish attention span. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. So we’re going to wait another year to let him grow up some more.
ADHD misdiagnosis
Because I’m terrified of things like ADHD.
Because my kid is an end-of-August baby, and Harvard has something to say about that:
‘Our findings suggest the possibility that large numbers of kids are being overdiagnosed and overtreated for ADHD because they happen to be relatively immature compared to their older classmates in the early years of elementary school,’ said study lead author Timothy Layton, assistant professor of health care policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.
Most states have arbitrary birth date cutoffs that determine which grade a child will be placed in and when they can start school. In states with a Sept. 1 cutoff, a child born on Aug. 31 will be nearly a full year younger on the first day of school than a classmate born on Sept. 1. At this age, Layton noted, the younger child might have a harder time sitting still and concentrating for long periods of time in class.
That extra fidgeting may lead to a medical referral, Layton said, followed by diagnosis and treatment for ADHD.
It’s your decision
But here’s the thing. The decision about whether or not to red-shirt your kiddo and delay the start of kindergarten is FAMILY – and child – SPECIFIC. It’s up to YOU and your family to decide when your baby is ready for school.
Forget the worries of ADHD. And don’t let other people (like me) influence your decision. Here are the things you should actually consider.
Finances
It’s about family financial needs. I mean, who wants to pay for another year of daycare if you don’t have to?
Siblings
It’s about sibling order. Sometimes little brothers can totally hang with older kids and are socially ready to give school a try.
The child
It’s about the needs of the actual child (duh.) Is the kid one who can concentrate for a long time? Or does he tend to wiggle and burst?
The school
It’s about the school. Are you looking at public school where kindergarten isn’t what it used to be, where kids are doing math problems, instead of taking a mid-day nap? Or are you planning on a small private school or home school scenario that caters to the whims and individual needs of the kids?
It’s doubtful my kid will end up with ADHD if I enroll him right now, as an almost-5-year-old. But I do know he’s got a better chance learning to dribble balls for more than 5 seconds and paint a picture of a boat uninterrupted for an hour if I give him one more year to get the wiggles out.
My job is to expose him to new things. His job is to learn the new things. When he’s ready, kindergarten will be the perfect place for him to experience those new things. He’ll just have to wait a little longer to get there.
What about you? How did you decide when to send your kiddo to kindergarten? Comment below or on Facebook at MothersRest.
Photo credit: Dae Jeung Kim from Pixabay
Hi Ginny! First, I agree with you that this is very much a family decision, and five years out, I’ve seen it work out fine for kids that went either way.
In our case, we didn’t expect to do this. In the town where my kids were born, the “cutoff” was later than it was in the town we moved to when my oldest was four. In the new town, if we didn’t “redshirt” him, he would have made the cut by ten days. He’d have been a model student and enjoyed school (which was half-day). But, though precocious in lots of ways, he was very shy around kids his own age, especially in groups; I worried about this. And in our town, the majority of parents do hold their kids back if they are even 4-5 month before the cutoff, so his preschool buddies, older than him by the calendar, were not going to kindergarten. And so neither did he (kind of last minute – we got to go to kindergarten orientation twice!).
In our case the extra year was helpful to get to know people in our town – surprisingly, here at least it’s much easier to do that in the preschool realm than once your kid is in school. And we put off the world of handouts and homework.
For us it was the best decision, all factors considered (Ginny covered them well so I won’t babble on more than I have already :)).
Now, as I look at that big boy, who just started middle school (grade 5), this is also in my heart: it’s not a race…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em73dnA38Tk
Thanks for weighing in on this and for sharing your experience. And what a great point you make about those mom-friend connections we make when the kids are in daycare, without all those sports and extracurricular commitments getting in the way of pure, blissful play dates. Miss you, my friend!