Would you hold off to avoid a summer baby after after autumn one?

[Laytwir024]

I have an autumn born ds and we have noticed how much older he is than summer born peers. I'm an ex teacher so well aware of this anyway and have noticed the differences when children start school and how hard it it can be for them to move ability groups once they're set, despite best efforts. We are very aware that you can also do well if summer born. Dh and I both are and have done well in life , but we both felt like we struggled in some areas when young and really couldn't get certain concepts for ages e.g. one of us maths, one of us languages. We went to good schools and had tutoring so all fine in the end, but it is still interesting and notable to think about.

When we want to start ttc it'll be a May baby at the earliest then going all the way through the summer months. I feel like we would be giving our second a disadvantage to our first. Is this completely ridiculous? It would be different if we'd been trying for ages but would you deliberately hold off to at least try another autumn/winter baby? If our first child was also summer if might not feel so bad, but I feel like as a direct comparison we'd noticed how disadvantaged they'd be.

I did this, skipped 3months TTC to avoid summer baby, had DC2 in Early October. DC1 is May born and definitely disadvantaged because of it in primary - it's not the academics, it's more the confidence, ability to do things - sport/games etc which has an impact and causes an academic impact as well as a result. There is a reason scores are weighted by birth month until 11+.

I do think it can make a big difference. But you already know this!

My son is summer born he is better academically than his friend born in november , they are just different children
I know they say summer born perform worse etc but there is probably a lot more to it than that and how old are these studies, s many children are in nursery full time a lot younger these days

I have
A September born: quite emotionally/ socially immature compared to his peers, top set academically but not ahead.
A June born: very mature/ sensible, top set, gifted level IQ, dyslexic
An August born: had speech delay which impacted phonics, learnt to read in y3 so would’ve been behind even in a lower year! Now (Y4) on target so caught up very quickly. Very mature for his age.
A March born: exceeding targets

So, no pattern with my dc in terms of maturity or academic ability relative to peers related to birth month. They are who they are. I wouldn’t try to control birthdates.
Incidentally my September born and August born shared a due date: one was 3 weeks early, the other 2 late

I'm summer-born and always felt lucky to be 'ahead of the game'. Having a summer birthday is great too (apart from exam years, when it's rubbish). I always got the highest grades in my primary school class (closest competitor was a July boy). Only time I suffered socially was when they didn't have a teacher for our class, so split it in half and I went down a year whereas all the other girls went up. But that's a pretty unusual situation and could easily have cut the other way.

I have a March and September-born kids. I wouldn't say there's any difference in how school-ready etc they were. They have differing skills and abilities, but the September ones haven't found things any easier than the March.

The thing is, you will get lots of anecdotes like mine, but the research does suggest you're better off being one of the eldest in your peer group. I wouldn't personally have planned things around it (the September births were based on when we could do IVF, so I'm in the 'crack on because you don't know how easy it'll be' camp), but I don't think it's a crazy thing to do either.