Should I stay or should I go?: A Case Against Kindergarten Revisited

After writing "A Case Against Kindergarten" I received a lot of feedback from readers. Numerous parents told me about their decision to put their son or daughter into a young 5 program instead of kindergarten and how it was the best decision they'd made. Many asked what our final decision was. While my husband and I were leaning towards not sending him, my answer to everyone was that we didn't have a final decision yet but our plan was to take the "reserve, wait, and watch approach." This basically means that we reserved a spot for Nicholas in a Pre-Kindergarten class (in case we decided not to send him to K) and to closely watch him in all situations to evaluate how he would handle kindergarten. In the meantime I did more reading and research, in which I received more conflicting advice about what is best for Nicholas. Here is my report.

If you recall, a great part of the dilemma I was having was based on Nicholas's age. Nicholas will not be 5 until October 20 of this year, which, because Michigan has a kindergarten cut-off date of December 1, makes him eligible to attend kindergarten in the fall. This means that he would be one of the youngest in his class and perhaps behind in maturity and social growth when compared to his older peers, some of which could be a full year older than him.

I recently discovered that Michigan is one of three states where the cut-off date is later than the middle of October (California is December 2 and Connecticut is January 1). The rest of the states in the US have adopted a much earlier cut-off date, the earliest being July 1 (Indiana) and the majority being September 1. This means that if we lived elsewhere I wouldn't be having this dilemma because Nicholas wouldn't be eligible for kindergarten this year!

In May I went to a parenting conference in Lake Orion in which I attended a short seminar on Kindergarten Readiness hosted by the director of Early Childhood at Oakland Schools. I was excited about this session because I thought it would give me the latest and greatest information on what they've discovered about when to send children to kindergarten.

The majority of the seminar's attendees were kindergarten or preschool teachers with a smattering of parents like myself thrown in for good measure. At my table sat 3 preschool teachers and myself. We had a few minutes to chat before the seminar started and I mentioned that I had a son with a late-fall birthday who I was thinking of holding back. All of the teachers told me that was the right thing to do, and I was sure that their opinion was going to be echoed by the seminar's presenter.

Boy was I in for a shock. A lot of the material I had read previous to this seminar had given a positive spin to giving late-fall children (especially boys) a year of growth in a pre-kindergarten setting. The message of this speech, however, was to encourage parents to send their child to school when he or she is age eligible, stating that studies are showing that age doesn't impact academic performance past third grade. In other words, in the long run there is no academic difference between a child that was held back and put in Pre-K and a child that was put in Kindergarten (but could have been held back because of age).

This, of course, raised a red flag with me because in order to do well in school you not only have to have good academics but you have to be mature and socially well-adjusted. Where were the studies that were measuring these? And what have other states that have adopted the earlier start date discovered that we Michiganders are not getting? I wasn't getting a clear answer even from the school system!

Meanwhile, Nicholas was really progressing in his preschool program. He had greatly improved socially and academically, recognizing buzz words, counting (in english and spanish), and sounding out words. My husband and I began to wonder if perhaps he would be ready for kindergarten after all.

The Lake Orion School's Early Childhood program offered kindergarten readiness screenings in which a qualified evaluator performs a range of "tests" to evaluate a child's physical, social, academic, and life skills, so I signed Nicholas up, eager to see where he fell in the scheme of things. Some of the tasks Nicholas was asked to do during the screening included counting to ten (he counted to 39), cutting pre-printed lines on paper (he was only successful with the straight line), hopping on one foot (he was mildly successful with this), and drawing a picture (comparable to what a child the age of 3 should be able to do). Meanwhile I filled out a lengthy questionnaire to rate how I, as a parent, would view Nicholas's abilities.

When all was said and done, Nicholas rated right on the edge of what they consider an acceptable score for kindergarten readiness. He scored high on language and rhyming but low on fine motor and gross motor. However, my concerns about his lack of motivation (he could get himself dressed but rarely did because he wanted me to do it for him), his willingness to follow through with a task, and lack of fine motor skills prompted the evaluator to recommend that he be put into a pre-kindergarten program.

Then I asked his preschool teacher to re-evaluate Nicholas: after looking at the kindergarten readiness evaluation results would she change her mind about her recommendation to send him to kindergarten? She told me that if she were just looking at Nicholas's progress reports and his performance in the classroom that she would still recommend him to go to kindergarten. That being said, she mentioned that Nicholas still had a hard time paying attention during circle time, that he would rather socialize and talk with the other children, and that a gift of an extra year of growth and development would certainly not harm him.


And so here we were at the end of the school year with a final decision to make. We knew that based on his intelligence and ability to learn quickly Nicholas would probably do ok if we sent him to kindergarten. However, if we looked at maturity and fine motor skills and ability to stay on task, I feared that he would fall far behind his peers. The research I had uncovered hadn't led me to a clear choice as I had hoped.The issue was incredibly gray.
 
So, because no one truly knows a child like his parent, I went with the feeling in my gut. And it was telling me to put him into the pre-kindergarten program and wait another year for kindergarten. My husband agreed. I don't think we'll be sorry. I haven't heard many parents regret holding their children back but I have heard some regret that they sent them too early. 


Since we made our decision Nicholas has decided to write with both his left and right hands (before it was just the left hand). That alone makes me feel confident that we made the right decision as I can imagine how hard kindergarten would be if he couldn't figure out which hand to choose. Now he has a whole extra year to figure it out.


At the pre-k orientation today Nicholas was pretty shy and quiet and reluctant to leave my side. Later, when I asked him if he was excited to go to pre-k, Nicholas said that he wasn't going to go to school. I told him that he had to go to school. 

"Oh no I don't," he replied. "I can go to homeschool."
 
"What's homeschool?" I asked as (I'm sure that) the color drained from my face.

"It's where the kids stay home and their moms teach them," he said smugly.

I'm going to strangle the child who told my school-hating son about the loophole of homeschooling, I thought to myself.

"Now where did you learn about that?" I asked.


"From my cousin Victoria," he replied.


Ah, the things they learn from the kids in the older grades. Lucky for me I have an extra year to prepare!