Any one delayed their child starting school ?

[mummydear]

DS2 will be 4 in August and then starts school September albeit half days until January.

Unlike his older brither who is a winter baby and started reception last year he is nowhere as ready.

DS2 is also at moment undergoing speech therapy which is not going very well, but thats another story.

MIL has suggested that we hold him back from school until Easter and let him contiue at his playgroup up until then. I feel that he will miss out on alot and not actaully benefit from this . I realise that he may be behind for a while but eveutally will catch up.

Anyone had experence of delaying the start of school , pros and cons please .

Right that's it. I'm keeping my legs crossed till September 1st!

I remember when dd's reception did some very very informal tests to see where the kids were up to. One Mum was totally against it and she had found out (as she's a teacher herself) that her dd was the bottom! (They didn't give out results to kids or Parents this was just a computer thingy to see which kids were doing what). She explained to me that her dd was nearly a whole year younger than the rest of the class and that's what i'm now afraid of!

mummydear, fwiw, if i am in the same boat and baby comes before September then i think i would put him straight in, if nothing else just so he doesn't stand out iyswim.

Gem13, are you talking about reception or year 1?

what did they expect angeliz! I imagine most children who had only turned 4 would not be as capable as those who had turned 5 (of course, there are exceptions)

all the SATS and that are age adjusted at school anyway (something I never realised till I saw someone post about it on mumsnet!)

Angeliz - When I write starting school I mean Reception.

DS1 is an August birthday and struggled all through primary school, as did a lot of boys in similar circumstances. One of the things that I am most angry about is the fact that I was constantly fobbed off with the "he's Summer born, he'll catch up" argument so he wasn't diagnosed as dyslexic until year 6 when I did it privately. (The Summer born girls all did ok by the way). I sent him to school for all the reasons outlined above - otherwise he'd go straight into year 1 etc. - and to be honest although I hate what happened I'm not sure that I could have made any other decision. DH's birthday is 31st August and he insists that although early education was difficult it was a real advantage later in life - often being the youngest person to achieve things - and he is extremely successful (take heart Angeliz ) The key thing in my opinion is the teacher - I have seen too many (female) primary teachers who just don't understand the intrinsic energy of boys and label them as naughty just because they won't sit quietly on the carpet for half an hour at a time! If you are confident in your choice of school and you are there to support him, hopefully your son will be fine.

Good point about dyslexia sunnydelight - my dd1 had problems - she got some extra help at school but i felt she was already disadvantaged enough being a summer bday that I did a coaching book called Toe by Toe with her (google it if interested) and she leapt ahead in year 5 especially. Birth date can be used as an excuse by the school/teacher. My neighbour is head of a small primary school and she told me recently that if a child is not showing signs of understanding/catching on to reading in reception, or at a push, early in year 1, then current opinion has it that they ARE likely to have some kind of dyslexic problem. There is a sliding scale to dyslexia which makes it easier for teachers to fob you off and say "don't worry it will come" and again these probs are accentuated by summer b-days. My daughter just didn't 'get' phonics and we had to do lots of over learning for it to sink in. I think when phonics were covered at school she just wasn't ready AND was unable to process and re-apply this rather abstract concept. My beliefs have been reinforced by watching how dd2 and dd3 learn. Boys in general, with their physical need for movement, never mind the summer born can have it tougher but it depends on the set up at school - and the child.

I'm the mother of 2 August born boys (15th and 31st), and honestly they have been fine. A bit tired to start with, but academically and socially there have been no problems.

In both DSs' classes (Y3 and YR) there is a fairly even mix of birthdays in all the quartiles, academically speaking.

I'm pretty sure DS2 only does about 30 minutes a day of work in total in his 6 hours at school. There is loads of fun to be had in Reception, and they have wonderful outdoor areas now.

Blimey folks lots of responses , many thanks.

I have no doubt that DS2 will be going in Sept in a way he is geared up to it as his older brother started last year. Just a seed of doubt thrown in by MIL, you know what they are like :)

As mentioned in my orginal posting DS2 is having speech therapy that was not going too well, well today he had a hearing test ( privately done , 4 months waiting on NHS) and it indicates that he has glue ear. If we can reslove this by Sept ( no doubt NOT on NHS) will far happier about school .

What makes it worse is different schools have different policies.

My dd has a mid August Birthday, will start Reception in Sept and full time by October. Her friends whose birthdays are all within 1 month of each other will go 2 different schools both start in January and full time by Easter.

The only good things is that dd will go to small village school, class size of 13, whereas her friends are going to a lot larger school, the reception intake is 60 into 2 classes. So I think she will cope in a small class a lot better than a large class. If she was going into a class of 30 I would be a bit more worried.

Another August born DS1 here who is now just finishing reception. It has been tricky at times, but academically and socially he has come along way in the last year. He is definitely not at the top of his class but nor is he at the bottom. The boy over the road, who was 5 in September, had many more problems settling in to school than DS1. So you never can tell.

One thing that you can really do to help is to work on motor skills like getting dressed and undressed. DS1 is a bit of klutz and has only just learnt to zip up his coat, so all last winter he couldn't do his coat up at playtime .