Such a difficult decision, I’m sure you put a lot of thought into it before making a final decision, so you must have good reasons for doing it. So stop beating yourself up, you’re only trying to do what’s best for your kids.

You just have to go with your gut instinct and do what’s best for you at the time.

I think lack of social skills can be well and truly made up for, and the younger brain is a sponge absorbing more information younger. Some kids have un-diagnosed disorder/s that mean social skills will be hard whatever age, yet they can excel academically. Unless they’re struggling academically, keep them where they are meant to be in the right age group.

I think social skills are a really important factor – they need to be developed enough.

It is a dilemma knowing timing

Play is the work of childhood. Look at the Scandi countries – Finland doesn’t start formal lessons as such until kids are around 8 years of age!

There are other disadvantages too to holding back – intelligent children get bored and disengage.
Children shouldn’t be held back unless they arent ready. When too many children are held back it creates unfair pressure on those who are ready to be held back too so they are not at a physical disadvantage to their peers.

All children are different and you know what is best for your child. Just follow your maternal instincts and you won’t be wrong

Go with your gut. We sent my son as a 4 year old turning 5 in the April. We checked everything off and even his PreSchool teacher said he was not on her radar for him to not attend school. Do I have any regrets? I followed closely the year after him and the group of kids and always felt I’d done the right thing for him. Only when all his mates were turning 18 in Year 12 and he was turning 17 did I start to see the difference – they all got their licenses, starting drinking. Do I regret it? No. We always knew it might be an issue and have been on top of it every year. We manage each issue and challenge related to him being younger. And he’s a fantastic young man… who I have to drive to work for a couple of months until he turns 18!!!

My third son was born in December and the cut of was Dec 31 then. He had speech problems and his pre school teacher wanted him to stay there another year. It was half days and I thought he would be better off having full day schooling. His speech improved with going to big school but he ended up repeating y1 as we thought and his teacher said it was better. He still had trouble at school and never recovered , even with extra help at home. Rules have changed for my younger children with cut off Jun 30, and Dec babies still have trouble. This time harder as twins, turns out one needed more time at home so home schooled my son and now fingers crossed is enjoying school in the same grade as his sister.

Believe me it is worse if you start your child too early. Two of mine started school at almost the cut-off point for that year and one struggled big time all through schooling and the other was held back in grade 3 and couldn’t work out why when there wasn’t a problem with performance at school that age restricted going to the next level with schoolfriends. End result of that was not trying for the balance of school years. Such a pity as school should have been a great fun place to learn.

At the time you made decision convinced it was the right thing to do, now you doubt it. Nothing you can do about it now, don’t beat yourself up about it. This year is not wasted, your child learns lots of things at preschool ad well.

It’s a hard decision and one I feel as mums we need to trust our gut instinct

We kept our daughter in preschool. Until the year she was turning six. Only because of her speech difficulties..but it turned out that she was going to get the help she needed at school. But I think that extra year worked out great for her.

If she is old enough then she can be enrolled at school anytime during the year so just enrol her if she’s ready?

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  • • Blossom replied
    • 13 Feb 2019 , 9:33 pm

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  I don’t know which state you live in but at some the birthday for the school year is some time in April as far as I know and they start at the very beginning of the term. I don’t know if schools will take pupils after the start of the term.

My daughter missed starting school because she was 27 days over the cut-off. While I think she would have been fine academically, I’m glad she was hold behind because she’s quite a shy girl and she needed to interact more with kids and work on her socials skills.

I’m lucky I avoid this choice due to the cut off.

I guess it’s up to each parent to do what they feel is best for their child. In my case I felt that the earlier start wasn’t ideal but made my child mature more as they progress through the school year.