August baby at a disadvantage to Sept baby?

[peachytacos]

AIBU to think that having a birthday in spring/summer won’t massively affect how successful your child is in school long term?

I completely understand in the first few years at school the difference is significant, as a year is such a large jump, but surely as they grow older it evens out?
I’m ttc no 2 and was speaking to my close friend about it today who told me its mean to ttc this month in case I end up with an August baby
She’s naturally very blunt and doesn’t mean anything nasty by it but she strongly feels that a baby born in August is at a massive disadvantage throughout. I know it’s highly unlikely to happen anyway but it’s made me think.

Thoughts/opinions please!

There will be lots of successful August-borns coming to share their personal anecdotes, but yes, statistically, it does make a difference.

I have an August born DS and I would say it has significantly affected his development, self-esteem, and therefore his whole life .
He is now 15 and I think he is only now really on a par with his peers emotionally/developmentally etc.
I wish we had had the foresight to keep him back a year when he was younger .

I think it affects boys more than girls though, in my experience.

I have told a few friends to wait until Christmas!!! Maybe I’m your friend!

It's not something that bothers me as I am a July baby (as is DD), I never felt behind at school or anything the only annoying thing for me is that when I was in college all my peers were 18 before me so used to go out drinking

It’s entirely dependant on the child, and the support they get at home. We’ve got 3 dc - one born in January, two born in late August. One of our August born (10) is academic and very sporty, one (7) is more arty and has struggled more academically than either of her brothers, but we support them all with school work, clubs and sports etc and have found that that makes more of a difference than birth month.

I have one of each , whilst my sept baby did seem to be more advanced my august baby didn't seem to be at much of a disadvantage but that may well be because she had two elder brothers quite close in age.

I'm so glad he wasn't born in September, as he would have been bored shitless.

I agree with Dangermouse. My DTDs were born very late August, 12 weeks prem. At first I thought 4 was extremely early to start school, and I worried about them quite a bit, as at that age there is a massive difference between 4 and 5. However, they soon caught up and now, in Y5, are amongst the top of their class. They're tall, intelligent and do well academically and socially. They would've been bored if they had only been in Y4 now.

The only thing they are behind with, and it really gets them down, is sports. They're always the last and slowest at sports day (even though they're very sporty).

In South Africa, where I grew up, the cut-off date was in the middle of the year, so there was only ever a 6 month difference between the oldest and youngest in a class. That was much better than having a whole year in between. There, they also only start school when they're 6. In places like Denmark, they only start school at 7, and it has been statistically proven that children who start school age 6 or 7 do better than kids who start school at 4 or 5.

It's all very well telling someone to wait but when you've been trying for a long time every month counts!

Dd is late July. She is really lucky to be in a class that they are skewed towards the younger end.

My youngest DS was born in September. Currently at University and there is only 1 student in his cohort born in August, most of the others are autumn born. I think the disadvantage lasts a long time, however there are always exceptions,

I think it depends on the child. But for those who went down the route of actively avoiding it, how many months did you not try for? A September baby born early and a July baby born late would also be at a similar disadvantage so do you just not ttc for 3 months of the year?

August babies are indeed at a disadvantage. There is plenty of evidence for this. DS's birthday is at re end of august - I had been hoping to keep him on until September for this reason! Having said that, he's in year 2 now and academically at the top of his class. The time of year they are born is one of only many factors determining how well they do.

There is a lot of evidence for it. A fair amount of academic research, for instance:
psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-04640-022
and more at (semi random search, but a start)
scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=related:OsdxaTaumcwJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0
That recent Whodunit radio 4 program was just so bloody slow...
Outliers by M. Gladwell deals a lot with this. It's an interesting read anyway.

I've always watched this research with interest, as I have an august born dd. She goes against some of the findings of the research, doing well academically, but she has never been on a sports team.

I was thinking about this today and I think if your child is four in the last quarter of the actual year they have to do an extra year in school as they leave in the school year they are 18. I'm not 100% sure I'm right .

My second was born in August and it hasn't held them back at all as they have natural intelligence and were very mature for the emotional side. My other two were born in spring and summer and so far doing well.

I was always the youngest in class and never suffered as a result. Straight As through school and university. Don't worry.

Ours was an August baby. It never occurred to us about the timing of his birth as at the time we were grateful to have a baby. It was only when he started school that we realized about the potential disadvantage of being born at the end of August.
As it turned out out of a class of 30 he was one of 26 boys with 18 of them being born from the beginning of May he fitted in and his results were good.
DS is now 21. He is in a very good job, did well with his exams. He had no interest in sport while he was at school despite encouragement but now plays cricket, ice hockey (depending on the season) as well as being a keen rock climber and MTBer.

DS2 is an October baby. His three friends are late summer babies.
All did well with their GCSEs and got A and Bs.All participate in sport. Even when they were very young ( from 6 years) they didn't seem that different except mine was a lot taller. They have all ended up being between 5ft 11 and 6ft 1

Those of you saying that when you delay a child they go into year one, not reception.

This is incorrect. If you want to know the legal requirements and how to go about starting your child the term after they turn five (so the following year for summer borns) this Facebook group is incredibly useful and supportive.

Our DS is a summerborn and we are delaying his entry. The evidence suggesting that summerborns are academically disadvantaged is overwhelming.

m.facebook.com/groups/1870741483141813

There's so many things which can disadvantage a child. I really wouldn't try to control things to that extent. My Nov born son is much further behind than his August born cousin. That's just the way it is. There's more to life than education!

My son was born in late July and when I was pregnant there were lots of comments about how he would be worse off right up to retirement. I think that it is statistically signaficant but to me this is likely to be massively shaped by socio economic position. My brother is an August baby and a hospital consultant. My son is doing very well academically and is very popular with his peers (this is not a boast just trying to slightly discourage the narrative that all summer born children are destined to failure).

So what about the mediocre autumn born children? What’s their excuse?

DS is a late-July baby and he was socially and emotionally quite behind the other children when he started Reception. Now he's in Y4 and I feel that the differences have evened out, although his teachers (at Y2 and Y3) have sometimes commented that he's dreamy and 'acts young' in class. I'm not particularly bothered, he IS young! Academically he's doing fine and he enjoys school and gets along with his classmates. In fact sometimes he tells me he feels special because he's the youngest in class!

I have a late June child and an October one. Our school system is slightly different in that the cut off for the age is very early July and there’s no staggered start to school - so my eldest started nursery school when she was 3 years and 2 months and then went into primary school in September when she was 4 years and 2 months. She’s now in her second year at post primary and is still the youngest in her class. To be honest on a purely personal level, (you can’t argue with statistics ) I found absolutely no difference in her level of maturity and ability both educationally and socially and that of my second child who is one of the older ones in her class.

My other DS is Nov born and very academic. Throughout his secondary school life his group of friends have been all the academic scholars/ A* types, and every single one of them is born before Christmas

I don't know if it's still the case, but summer borns used to start school later, or just for half days until the term in which they turned 5 in our area.
As a result, DS2 didn't learn to read much in Reception as he was only there fulltime from Easter (and he was so young he used to fall asleep at school anyway!)
As he didn't read well he didn't get many chances to read in e.g.school assemblies, as in Year 1/2 that was done by the 'good' (i.e. older) children. The older children tended to be the ones given the 'responsibilities' (collect the books, take the register to the office etc) and before you know it, you're into a Catch 22 situation.
At an early stage he had decided he wasn't 'one of the clever' ones, which we had to constantly try to convince him wasn't the case.
Similarly in sport he hadn't developed the skill and co-ordination of some of the boys who were older, taller, stronger than him.
So he was never chosen for the football team etc. We did persevere with trying football, rugby, cricket etc but when standing on the side of the pitch it was easy to work out the Autumn vs the Summer borns.
Nobody in the U9s tended to have a birthday after February, and the gap just continued to widen. Perhaps he was just not destined to be a sportsman anyway, but the fact is that it is very hard for summer borns to be the 'best' at anything in the early years, as they are constantly just 'catching up'.
Funnily enough DS2 got into drama and that is one area where there seems to be a disproportionate number of summer borns. Why?
Perhaps because it doesn't rely on significant physical skills at school age, or perhaps the summer borns are seen to be lacking in confidence and their parents enrol them into drama schools to improve it?!

I did some statistical analysis a number of years ago, on a particular GCSE cohort in a school, looking at a number of different elements. There was no significant differences in outcome for summer borns v Autumn borns.

Anecdotally, I have a DC who is the youngest in the year but managed to get into an academically selective school without tutoring and is holding their own. Pot luck probably. The one thing that I know helped is that they went to a 2 form entry primary school where, for the first 3 years, the autumn winter children were in one class and the spring summer in the other. DC is average at this stage but by no means academically held back by their summer birthday. Again, it was evident at a young age but same school system.