Summer babies - did you delay starting school?

[nonamemummy]

Both my children are summer babies (4 year old born June, 3 year old born August)
The 4 year old is due to start reception in September. I’ve been fine with it until now I’ve been thinking about really how much older the other children will be and how different they will be emotionally, physically and mentally.

Has anyone here been in the same situation and can share your experience of how your summer children have got on in reception being so young compared to the rest of the children, or if you even chose to delay them starting for another year.

My eldest is a June baby. He was absolutely fine. Yes, there is a general correlation that will indicate that a 4 yr old boy - in particular - is going to be less "school ready" than a 5 year old, but school staff know they have a whole range of children and work with them starting at the level they are at. Individually the children will vary.
The biggest influence in their 'school readiness' (special needs and prematurity excepting) is what you have done with them in the first 4+ years of their lives, and then, what you continue to do to support them once they have started school.

My dc3 was born at the start of Sept. When she started, she was friends with a little lad who was born on 31st August. Yes, there was a different then (height, confidence, probably "academic" levels). I saw him a couple of years ago, when they were 17 / 16. He was 6' tall, had a beard and a deep voice. You'd have had no idea that he was that little lad starting Reception as young as young can be. I asked dd this week about various friends and where they were off to for University, or apprenticeships or whatever, and she mentioned him. He is off to a very prestigious university with excellent results.

Unless he has recognised SEND, I wouldn't even think about delaying the start. After all, someone is always going to be the youngest and someone the oldest. It doesn't define them.

My youngest would have been a June baby if he hadn't been prem. We did not delay the start, wasn't so easy in those days and we were worried about not getting a place within walkable distance if we delayed.

I'm sure it would have been fine if he'd been an early developer/"bright", but he wasn't. He got to school and found he couldn't do lots of things the other kids could do: things to do with physical development, but also picking up reading and numbers. The knock to his confidence stayed with him until his late teens: he was always the one who didn't quite get it, couldn't quite do it, wasn't quite there yet.

It wasn't that we hadn't worked on his independence: it was just that his fine motor skills hadn't developed. The more he tried, the more he could see he just couldn't do what the others did.

As an adult he is not at all noticeable slower either physically or on the uptake than other people, so I don't think it was about him as such: it was about trying to keep up with something he wasn't ready for, then gradually internalising that "I'm not very clever", and giving up.

I otoh started school (abroad) half a year younger than most of my classmates and was at the top of the class. Where I grew up, it was common for parents whose children were on the borderline between one year and the next to make that decision based on their knowledge of the child.