In 2008, I wrote an essay for online parenting magazine Babble called "Not Holding Back: Why I didn't redshirt my kindergarten-age son," about how I was pressured to hold my 5-year-old son back from kindergarten because his birthday was August 21 (the Texas cutoff to turn five is September 1). Both his preschool teacher and other mothers in his class informed me that, for myriad reasons from "teachers will be prejudiced against him" to "don't you want him to get a (sports) scholarship?", I was going to severely regret sending my child to kindergarten on time. Instead, they suggested that I follow what everyone else was doing: hold back my 'summer birthday boy' to give him time to mature. Ignoring their insistence, I went ahead and sent him anyway; he turned out to be fine. Now in the third grade, he's happy and doing very well both socially and academically.
An op-ed in today's New York Times by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamot, neuroscientists and authors of Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College, supports my gut-instinct decision with brain science. Titled "Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril," Wang and Aamot describe why, although holding back a child appears to give him a competive edge, scienctific research shows the exact opposite effect.
"In a large-scale study at 26 Canadian elementary schools," they write, "first graders who were young for their year made considerably more progress in reading and math than kindergartners who were old for their year (but just two months younger). In another large study, the youngest fifth-graders scored a little lower than their classmates, but five points higher in verbal I.Q., on average, than fourth-graders of the same age. In other words, school makes children smarter."
The early advantages of redshirting a kindergartner fade by adolescence. "In high school, redshirted children are less motivated and perform less well. By adulthood, they are no better off in wages or educational attainment — in fact, their lifetime earnings are reduced by one year."
And, since this is Texas - what about sports? Conventional wisdom suggests that bigger, more mature children perform better at sports than their younger, smaller peers. "As sports-minded parents know, physical maturity allows older children to perform better. Coaches often mistake this difference for natural aptitude and respond by giving the older children on their T-ball or soccer teams more opportunities to improve their skills. And those athletes tend to gain a lasting competitive advantage."
Since 2008, I have advocated to turn the tide on kindergarten redshirting because I thought, simply, school is good, and more school must be better. It turns out that the latest in brain science confirms my convictions.
Related Topics:
- "Should Children Redshirt Kindergarten?" at The Daily Beast
- "The trouble with older kindergarten" at Slate
- "Kindergarten Redshirting" at Education.com
- Welcome to Your Child's Brain at Amazon
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