So Much of Parenting Is Making An Informed Gut Decision

by ParentCo. September 15, 2015

Unlike many organized and goal-oriented women I know, I did not plan my pregnancies. Let me rephrase that: I made the conscious decision that I wanted to get pregnant and voila! - my e.p.t. was positive (with help from my loving husband). However, I did not give one iota of thought as to when the best time would be to have a child and how that might affect, oh, the rest of my kid’s life. Case in point: I have two fall babies, and in many places (in Vermont, anyway) this is right around the cut-off dates for school enrollment. So here we are. It’s September and my daughter is back at pre-school for her final year. She’ll be five in October. Many of her friends have started kindergarten at their public or private schools. Could she have handled the five-day-a-week, six-hour-a-day schedule? Absolutely. I am convinced that my daughter is well above average (as are all of your children and children-to-be). She knows her numbers, her letters, is dying to read, focuses for long periods on activities, has a rich and spontaneous imagination, plays well with others and stopped whining when I dropped her off at school half-way through last school year - thank God. Plus, we have the added advantage that our rural town’s teeny-weeny public school is anything but crowded, and testing her in early for kindergarten was a possibility. Why not, then? There are arguments on both sides of the issue. Redshirting, or holding a child back so that they have age advantage over their peers in academics and sports, has become a common practice among parents. These kids have an obvious developmental advantage. Conversely, studies out of Norway and Sweden point to the benefits of being the youngest in a class which influences children to work harder and strive more to compete with their peers. Later in life they are more likely to earn higher incomes and have higher IQ’s than their older counterparts. These are the issues that make my parental head spin. What to do? I struggled with this dilemma quite a bit last spring, when I had to make the fateful decision. Was it worth testing my daughter in early so she had the young advantage? Or the alternative, have her be on the older side of her classmates? When I really thought about it, redshirting wasn’t something I was even considering. The fact that my daughter was born in October would put her on the older side of the spectrum just based on the standard cut-off date. There are plenty of other children with fall birthdays who’d be in the same boat as her. So why put her under the unnecessary pressure of testing in early? Why put that pressure on myself? Is the goal of education to make my kids strive more and do more and earn more money later in life? Or is it to be happy, well-adjusted human beings who can take care of themselves and contribute to their community? I’m not sure starting school early or late guarantees any of this. Part of the reason we moved from NYC to Vermont was to try and extend childhood for our kids, not cut it short. This is what I want for them. As parents, my husband and I have the privilege of making these very critical decisions on behalf of our little ones. We’ll continue to be informed but also go with our gut. Truth be told, I’m the one who’s not ready for her to start kindergarten. Why rush it? After all, she’s only four... and three quarters.


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