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Original poster

Summer born babies - am I wrong?

749 replies

Sunflowermuma · 08/01/2019 12:31

Hi all, I'm probably BU particularly as my friends plans don't actually have any impact on me but

I have 2DD D1 is 3 and May Born. DD2 is 6m July Born

My friend has 3 kids. DS aged 7Sept, DD 3Aug and DS 5mAug

Our two daughters are both due to start school in September at different schools, my friend told me this week how she is in contact with the school to have her daughter start Sept 2020 instead as she's summer born. I asked why as her daughter is already in nursery 5 days, has no health issues and certainly isn't behind on development. Her reasoning? She just doesn't want a child to be youngest in the year.

Her son is very bright and doing really well at school and she puts that down to his sept birthday.

I queried her and said someone has to be the youngest and surely if she doesn't have any developmental issues the school will just say no. She replied saying that she'll make something up as she'll do what she can to get her DD ahead. Again this made no sense to me as surely having another year at nursery won't be good for her and she may get picked on once the other kids realise? She got a bit snappy with me and told me to mind my own so I now feel bad for questioning her, I was polite and tbh just trying to understand her thinking

Do people really do this? I understand delaying for developmental reasons but just to make your child the oldest instead of youngest?

OP posts:
PinkAvocado · 10/01/2019 15:24

The British are really weird this way. I think that a lot of parents like to make up reasons why their kids aren’t doing well (obviously they can’t admit to a lack of parental input or a child just being a bit stupid) so these kinds of myths are born

Are you saying that the stats are myths?

Angela712 · 10/01/2019 15:25

@racscardriver

So the researchers just made up the statistics and didn't actually look at millions of results across several years? They just ... made it up to make parebts of summerborns happy??

MrsKoala · 10/01/2019 15:26

You mean lazy parents of thick summerborns Angela don't you?

Angela712 · 10/01/2019 15:28

Sorry @mrskoala ... yes, yes I do 😘

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 15:36

Our LEA used the (entirely mythical) threat of missing year 7 to try to "test" our resolve. I didn't bat an eyelid as frankly we had bigger issues at that point.
To be fair to them, I think they were a bit sick of getting enquiries from parents who "just" wanted their child to get ahead and so they were using this threat to sort the wheat from the chaff.

My favourite momemnt was when they pointed out that Ds2 "wouldn't be able to take the 11plus". We aren't in a grammar area! But it does go to show the sort of non-problem that LEAs are being bothered by...

budgiegirl · 10/01/2019 15:37

or a child just being a bit stupid
Wow, what a charmer!!

so these kinds of myths are born
It’s not a myth though, there’s plenty of evidence to show simmer born children are at a disadvantage both academically and at sport. Or do you just not believe the evidence?

If it’s just a myth, can you explain to me why, at my DCs primary, the ‘top table’ was always comprised of children born in the first three months of the academic year? This continued pretty much throughout the whole of primary school.

Can you also explain why , when my DCs took the 11+, extra marks were awarded according to their birth month?

tubspreciousthings · 10/01/2019 15:37

This thread just sums up the Internet for me.

Coldilox · 10/01/2019 15:40

Love it when people put forward such a strong opinion about something they know nothing about Hmm

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 15:41

Just to add to the discussion about secondary entry here:

  • if your school is LEA controlled, check out its official policy (nothing else will do) as at the date your child was year-deferred.
  • if your school is an academy, it may deviate from this (but ours followed the LEA Policy still despite being an academy)
  • if your school is a free school, I don't know.
  • if your chosen school is a grammar school, you've got an issue because other parents may have reasonable objections to an older child sitting the exam for a later year. (though I do wonder if you really needed to defer in the first place in this situation)
tubspreciousthings · 10/01/2019 15:50

@nojellybabies - re grammar schools - the trouble is, we have no idea if our child will be able enough to attend grammar school in 8 years time. All we know is that now he's at leat a year behind developmentally, which is made worse by him being end of August birthday.

Oliversmumsarmy · 10/01/2019 15:51

The British are really weird this way. I think that a lot of parents like to make up reasons why their kids aren’t doing well (obviously they can’t admit to a lack of parental input or a child just being a bit stupid) so these kinds of myths are born

I want to know if in ds’s case he was supposed to be able to read by year 2 this meant that some had to be able to read by the time they turned 7 but in ds’s case he had to learn by the time he turned 6.

He couldn’t so got left behind.

Us British have a fucked up education system. Teaching has gone out of the window and everything is designed to put obstacles in our children’s way.

If your children are not average and don’t want to work in an office then UK schooling isn’t got them

If your child has missed out on a years schooling because of when they were born then tough

If going down a year would make everything ok then are children are not thick, they are just young

3out · 10/01/2019 15:58

I was 6 months younger than every other child in the class. Because Mum was English she didn’t know the Scottish system and that you could defer. My age was never discussed at home regarding school, there was no subtle psychology that I knew I was at a disadvantage. I never thought my age was anything to do with it, I just thought I mustn’t be trying hard enough.
I’m not sure why you’re so insistent that these huge studies are fake. I’m not sure why you think there’s a detrimental effect to starting school at 5 rather than 4. The only detrimental impact I am aware of is with children who insist on leaving school at 16. Potentially, they could leave school before sitting exams and leave with nothing. That is an extremely small minority though.
I don’t think giving children the chance to thrive is mollycoddling them.

Sunshine6 · 10/01/2019 16:04

@Oliversmumsarmy spot on! 👋

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 16:08

"All we know is that now he's at leat a year behind developmentally, which is made worse by him being end of August birthday"

I understand. We were in that position.

If you can possibly defer, and if there is a realistic possibility of him catching up through the benefit of more time in nursery/with younger peers, then I would do fight for it.

tubspreciousthings · 10/01/2019 16:11

Thank you, we will.

Sunshine6 · 10/01/2019 16:15

Phew! Has the uninformed, I’ll argue about all things I know nothing about finally left? 😂 I have to say I’ll quite happily take the label of ‘mollycoddling’ if by that it means educating myself on the legalities of CSA, researching the education statistics in this country, understanding what our schools can & cant cater for and knowing and understanding my children well enough to know what will & won’t enhance their long years in school rather than just following the herd and accepting whatever happens just because that’s the way it’s always been.

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 16:47

we did tubs.

I can say hand on heart that it would still have been the right decision even if the result was a grammar-school-ready child having to go to a secondary modern. Honestly I can say that xx

When they make these "threats" and your reaction is to laugh in their face, you know you've got it right.

Angela712 · 10/01/2019 16:49

@3out Yes!!! And Govt are changing school leaving age to 18 can't remember when but soon!

@oliversmumsarmy 👍

@sunsine6 unashamed mollycoddler here too 🤣

@Nojellybabies checked with DfE & County council & grammsr schools - 11+ no issue you just don't get summerborn weighting x

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 16:50

oh that's great Angela.sorry if I misinformed.

nojellybabies · 10/01/2019 16:51

sunshine - yep, a few labels thrown at us are a very small price to pay.

people used to love to tell me that they were "relaxed" about their own child....

Heatherjayne1972 · 10/01/2019 16:57

My daughters is end of July birthday
So a little one
It all evens out in the end. She’s fine wasn’t behind at all

Besides the teachers do know that some of them are a lot younger and accommodate that

tubspreciousthings · 10/01/2019 17:02

Sigh

Angela712 · 10/01/2019 17:13

@heatherjayne1972

I'm going to take a wild stab in tbe dark here and guess you've not read through tje full thread ...

Angela712 · 10/01/2019 17:14

@Nojellybabies not in our area but tbf i didn't call every grammar school in the country!!! 😘

PeachyPeachTrees · 10/01/2019 17:27

My DS2 is August born and doing amazing at school, above target in everything. He has children 11 months and 2 weeks older than him who are not doing as well. Every child is an individual and maybe he is lucky?

My DS1 who is March born is struggling at everything and has extra help to get him better. The only thing he excels in is sport. Soon I think his younger brother will be level with him and his self esteem will be low. This is the DS I am worried about.

My cousin had cancer and missed 2 full years of school and lots of days off for next couple of years after. She did great in GCSE and she's July born!

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