To get annoyed at 'summer baby' used at school

[hufflebottom]

That is it.

Last time I looked children developed at their own pace and whether or not they were the youngest in the class wasn't really a factor.

I'm an August baby, I was the youngest in my school when I was in reception. But my reading/ writing was above some of my classmates who were older.

My brother on the other hand, again an August baby (August is an expensive month for us. My parents must have got really bored in the winter) is the complete opposite.

My dd (5) is on par for doing well she's a March baby. My friends kid is a week older and is just below Dd's reading level.

When did the whole children learn at their own pace get taken over by the 'my child is a summer baby so will struggle'

Am prepared for flaming

But as I said, they come early, they're both prem, and August born so that's that plan fucked.....

What I do find interesting though are the baby booms.
So more babies in Sep-Oct due to run up to Christmas and New Year etc
I also read that there tend to be more babies than usual 9 months after England do well in a tournament and stuff like that...

Sorry, Rocket, I appreciate you tried hard to schedule for Autumn babies and that things don't always go to plan.

I'm in Ireland and here the Department of Education has a guideline that children turn 4 by March 1st of year they are starting school. I think this works really well. There is nothing set in stone - if a child is born around feb, march or april it is up to the parents to decide if they want them to start at 4 or 5.

This means children are generally at least 4 and a half and many will have turned five.

My dd is april born and so she'll start school when she is five and almost a half. I hope that she will be more confident - its not just about the academic side of things. I imagine that a child who has just turned 4 may struggle with the social side of things, undoing coats, scarfs, etc. and even things like properly wiping their bum.

I think that being a little older also stands to a child when they enter secondary school and when they are making big decisions about exam subjects, career, etc.

They are young for such a short time and will have enough years ahead of them in a formal education setting. The difference in twelve months for a young child is massive.

In terms of using "summer born" as an excuse - I think it is a valid reason why a child might be struggling.

I agree with whoever said it's good to be in the middle. Dd is Oct born she went to nursery at 5 months , was toilet trained at 2 and went in to the pre-school room before her third birthday (she was at nursery ft for 2.5. years before school). She then had effectively 3 years to cover the early years curriculum. Unsurprisingly she spent much of year R doing Y1 work ( including the phonics test, which the teacher said she got all right before her 6th birthday) she spent much of yr1 with the yr2s. But because they can't mix key stages had to effectively repeat yr2. Now she is in a mixed 3/4/5 class and is being challenged for the first time since starting school. Being the oldest isn't always great either.

My summer born DS struggled at school, being intellectually immature, though physically and socially mature. At 14 he realised that he didn't have to be the joker in the class and has slowly caught up. At 23 he is studying for a challenging MSc at a very good university but he is still shaky on some of the stuff that he studied at primary school where he was always about 6 months behind the average for the class.
On the other hand, one of his best friends at primary school was born on 31st August and was always top of the class, though small for his age and probably socially immature.
I would have loved DS to have been born in September, but some of us aren't in a position to plan births to the right month!

Thanks Rocket

I was a summer baby, my birthday is in the first week of August and when I went to school (I think it would have been about 1970) I skipped a year so I was moved from Reception (or first year infants as it was known then) to be with a group of older children who I didn't know, friendship groups already established etc with a few catch up lessons to try and bring me up to where they were.

I was always good with reading and spelling etc but I struggled with maths although I now think this is because I have a mild form of Dyscalculia. I don't know if getting the extra year would have made any difference though as schools barely even recognised Dyslexia then!

I don't think all summer born children will necessarily have problems purely for being summer born as presumably progress depends on the individual child but I think from my personal experience being the youngest in the year can exacerbate any problems they might have.

Zucker and Amber - yes, I like the Irish way of deciding school year entry. It's much, much better for kids than the way it is here in England, where school starting age is being pushed earlier and earlier due to local authorities (and sometimes headteachers) deciding to be far more inflexible than they're supposed to be.

Having seen both systems personally in closeup, and read the research and stats, there is no way I would put any child of mine through starting primary school at barely-turned-4 if I had any choice in the matter.

With you there, Geeka, as a parent I think you "know" when your child is ready for school, my dd was more than ready and it felt like a long year up to her starting date!

I have a summer baby and refer to him as such. He struggles at school socially and emotionally. He is almost a year younger than some kids and it shows. He is doing v v well academically.

School completely disregard the age thing - then complain about his behaviour. He was told to "grow up" - in writing - by one member of the management team.

So I don't apologise for using the term. People tend to make assumptions about him based on school year but emotionally he is behind. I feel like having it tattooed on his forehead just so he gets the allowances he needs at times.

And I have lost count of the scientific studies I have read that show summer babies ARE disadvantaged academically.

I'm not saying you weren't able - clearly you are - but there could have been any number of other reasons that you didn't achieve your potential while at school.

I get your point, but I can't really see any other reasons why. My parents were interested in my schooling and did their best to help, the junior school I went to was a reasonably good one at the time. The class sizes were quite small: village school, around 24 children in the class.

But despite this I do feel that at school I was always struggling / running to keep up, but always quite a few steps behind. And blaming myself for not being able to keep up. That feeling became apparent to me in what would be year 2 now. (I can remember snapshots of each class quite well, and the feeling of just not getting it.)

Obviously at school you're building on the bits of knowledge that you've already learnt the day, week or month before. But for me I didn't have a proper grasp of the original knowledge before being expected to build on that. For example I remember being in year 3 and having a class recorder lesson and everyone else seemed to be able to play. I was sitting at my desk thinking it was like I'd been on holiday for a few weeks and missed all the lessons where everyone had actually learnt the notes. Apart from me.... I just didn't get it, and I hadn't been on holiday at all.

And then at some point I got streamed / labelled, and I ended up staying at that level, and truly believing for a long time I was pretty stupid. And by year 8 I just gave up really, decided I was pretty dumb and sought attention in other ways. I totally disengaged from education and got expelled from school at age 16. I never thought that I would ever get to uni by then.

I think in retrospect I was capable of so much more, even back then, if only I had been given the time, and a sympathetic teacher or two to make sure I understood the basics before moving on. I kind of think that if I had been able to get on top of my school work a bit better then I wouldn't have needed to seek attention in other ways.

Obviously I've turned that round for myself now, but I lost about 5 years of my young adult life getting the qualifications that I should really have left school with. But I do feel proud of myself for turning that round. I sometimes meet people these days through my work that were the 'summer borns' and they still think they are 'thick' even years later. But they really really aren't. For some it just becomes ingrained. It took a long time for me to shake that feeling off.

I think I was lucky when I left school in having friends who 'believed' in me and pushed me to give education another try. I don't think I would have done if it wasn't for them. (Thanks Ellie and Paul if you ever stumble across this thread one day and recognize who I am )

Phew, that was a bit of an essay sorry

Shrunken wins the internet for the most crass/insensitive comment on the entire thread.

Aren't people comparing apples and oranges here? A clever August 2009 baby is going to be at a disadvantage compared to a clever September 2008 baby. A clever August 2009 baby might well massively outshine a September 2008 baby of average intelligence.

The book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell suggests that summer babies are hideously under-represented in elite sport, which suggests that the physical differences between children who are almost a year apart count for something - much bigger kids get picked for stuff, titches (like this summer baby who was the second shortest person in their school year) don't.

dancing your post conforms what I felt instinctively about my August twins.

So my approach was simply not to allow anyone to assess them as anything other than Summer babies.

Until they were old enough to properly show their raw abilities I wanted their age taken into account so no one ever underestimated them.

I would encourage any parent to do the same; it has worked ( even if I was a pita).

thesnalyst Stevie G was famously never picked for his school team because he was a small Summet born and PE teachers are notoriously in imaginative.

So my approach was simply not to allow anyone to assess them as anything other than Summer babies.

Absolutely. I wouldn't do it any other way.

I think with both sport and learning the bad start of being tired, smaller etc compounds so youre behind to start,
Not picked for teams
Dont get experience playing in them
Dont play against best players, who get better against each other
The teacher decides you are uncoordinated and useless, never ever picks you for team
Similar for learning
Behind
Naughty
Tired
Labelled not as good
Put in lower sets with less able/ lower concentration kids
Uphill struggle

I think pp who said about tallest in class summer born - could he not have been uncoordinated due to growth spurts- which they will all go through.
Also think for girls its true periods are probably a bit of a leveller as will affect height, maturity etc and they could be 9-15 etc so enough range that not necessarily oldest first and similar for boys.

I also couldnt play recorder, i mimed :) august birthday.
The first yrs are so fundamental for reading which you need to build on and its all about that skill really as languages and maths etc most can cope with. So if you arent good with Englist you are 'stupid' and behind.
Which while important at secondary is only about 50% of subjects (as long as you can read and comprehend) rather than all of it.
I never got much better at English (though strangely good at foreign languages). But was good at maths/science maybe as everyone was on a level playing field of starting again.
Maybe the oldest in year perfect their creative writing in primary.
I was at private school but didnt pass their exam into secondary school, probably due to above English ability. But suspect i would have been fine staying on as secondary is so different. I guess i couldnt keep up with not only being youngest but the selectivity of private school. Though there would be the benefit of not having any really struggling pupils in the class. I went on to different private school and did ok went to uni. Interestingly i think all my friends had burthdays in the school yr.
i wonder if the effect of moving the sports teams so june etc were oldest would give the summer borns confidence that they need, and they could be leaders in something at least

So true about sport Naty. That brought back bad memories of always being the last, or second from last to be picked. And that worthless feeling that goes with that. I'd forgotten all that. I was so much shorter and smaller than the other kids. I'd forgotten how much until an old school friend posted a picture on facebook.

Thenewstatesman, what did I say?! Cheers for the award, but simply agreeing with a previous poster, stating my Autumn baby was planned in light of the evidence that summer babies take longer to catch up, apologising to someone who said they didn't have the luxury of planning her child's birth date....which bit was "crass and insensitive"? Honestly this place makes me laugh, some days you can say whatever you like, tell people to "man up", "get over it", "move on" and others we're all very stepping on eggshells!

I have two September born DDs, and one August born DS. All three have always been well ahead of the expected levels for their year-group.

It took my DS (August born) almost a year to be able to cope with school though. He could have done with another year at pre-school. It really shook his confidence, and he didn't properly find his feet until the end of reception. He was overwhelmed and so tired, much more than the others were, and no wonder!

For the Sept-born DDs, it was a natural progression, they were completely ready, emotionally, socially in terms of independence and every other way.

Even though academically, DS is ahead of some children even 2 years older than himself, I can still see that it would have been more advantageous for him to have been born a couple of days later, and had an additional year at pre-school.

This is a bit of a bone of contention currently in our house.

Ds1 was an August baby and was the youngest in his year at primary school. He still met and - in most cases - exceeded the levels expected of his year group. I think it's because I've always encouraged him and he's a naturally inquisitive kid. Same with Ds2 who was a winter baby and is excelling academically.

Dsd has a July birthday and her mother (also a July baby) has already told her that she doesn't expect her to do really well at school because she's one of the younger kids. Dsd herself told dh this in a very assured manner when he asked her about some of the less positive comments made at parents evening. I think this is bullshit. She rarely does homework when she's at her mums and although she's doing relatively ok, she's not encouraged to tackle the things she struggles with because of this attitude. Dsd is 9 and I think by that age, a couple of months shouldn't be accountable for what she can and can't do. I think, in our case, it's an excuse trotted out because her mum can sometimes be a bit of a lazy parent and doesn't have much in the way of aspirations for any of her children.

I'm not saying it's the same for everyone and I am not taking a cheap shot or trying to demonise Dsd's mum before anyone attempts to flame me. I'm simply giving my opinion that encouragement seems to work and excuses don't.

I think there is considerable evidence that summer borns do less well at school as they start behind and don't really catch up.
Success in school is often done to confidence so I suppose if you start behind you may lack the self belief that September children have.
However, it is only 1 factor in many that affects school progress and many summer borns will not be affected by this.