Parents of August borns! Any regrets about not deferring?

[PuffinsRocks]

Did you regret sending your August baby to school two minutes after they turned 4? We haven't deferred as we can't afford the extra year of childcare and I'm worrying about September already!

31st august here and they are smashing it, even with all the covid disruptions

I have two summer borns... one would have benefitted but not the other one.

DD now early 20s was diagnosed ASD and dyslexic in her teens. We suspect that if we had deferred entry to Reception these thing would have been picked up younger and she might have had an easier time at school socially and academically. They just put a lot of things down to her being one of the young ones. Delayed entry wasn't a done thing when she was younger and we'd have ended up skipping Reception and going straight to Y1 which would have been worse.

DS was so unbelievably ready for school at just turned 4 that it would have been very unfair to have held him back. He was top table/set all the way through school and is predicted great GCSEs this year.

Only you knows your child well enough to know if it would be the right thing to do

None at all.
Dd is exactly where she should be and excelling in some areas. This was with her being in reception at the start of the pandemic, so she missed most of that year and year 1 was very disrupted too.

Something to consider re deferring- if your child is sporty then they will end up in the “wrong” team for their cohort. Can’t be in the under 9s football teams if they are actually 10 for example. Not the end of the world but complicated for school teams as they can’t be seen to have older children in a team for younger children. The whole system is set up for the cutoff being 31sf august.

wrt to potty training you do need to sort that out. With both of my sons they were 3 and a bit but in both cases “clicked” very quickly when the time came.

I dont have regrets because my child was big for his age so fitted in physically much better with his actual year group.

Academically he did find it a bit hard and was at the bottom end of the class until around year 4. But luckily it didnt make him give up or assume he was no good at things. He just learned to work hard at stuff. Some of the children who found things easy at a younger age really floundered when they couldnt do something at secondary. Its just a personality thing.

There have been some social things, like his friends from school age out of cubs, scouts etc before he did and we are getting to learning to drive, alcohol etc and work experience being different.

The other good thing is you get til you are 19 at college so he has a year to do the wrong course and switch without much implication.

DS, August born. Reception was a bit tricky, socially and academically. By mid year 1 he was absolutely fine on both, though maybe still behind on sport/physical coordination, and his handwriting remained dreadful. Didn't bother him.
He was lucky to be in a school that was understanding and warm.
We did think about deferring, but in the end we worried it would cause him problems later on - with sports teams, with the 11+ if we wanted a private school, etc, and he didn't seem so far behind that we needed to.

This sounds like my DD5 who is early August. Tall and lanky. 🤣

My son is end of summer born and while it has not made a huge difference to him academically, there is definitely a difference between him and his older classmates in terms of emotional maturity and also in his sporting ability. The boys who are a year older have simply had the benefit of an extra year to mature physically. Not being as good at sports has also had a knock-on effect socially. There is always someone who will say that being a summer born has not made any difference for them, and they have thrived regardless, but for my child it has been an issue. In his time, there was no option to defer.

Personally no. For the sake of one month of age I'd rather they went into education and socialised with their peers earlier rather then later.

It's not one month it's up to 12.

No regrets here. My DS confidence grew when he started school. He is behind academically but that is due to dyslexia rather than being a summer baby

I was all set to defer but at the last minute, a place became available at a sought after school, which was unlikely to be available the following year. I sent my child and she was fine. I've seen a mix of August borns who are fine or have to retake the year. It seems to only be at Reception though, not later.

Not at all. DS was a little slower than some others in reception and Y1, but he's in Y3 now and thriving academically, above target in some areas. I think he would be very bored if he was in Y2 now

I did at first, my son is an august baby and has speech and very slight developmental delay. I’m glad I didn’t now though as the pre school year below him seem so much younger, despite everything.

Worth adding though, my children are in private school which has given him lots of extra support, but on the contrary he has to reach the level of where they want him to be (and the bar is very high) and he is now doing that.

It depends on the child also - my eldest would have been absolute fine starting a couple of weeks after her 4th birthday I wouldn’t have worried at all.

I'm in an odd position that I didn't defer my DC then we moved to Scotland where she technically deferred to start school again. Deferring in England would have been wrong for her - most of her friends are in the age bracket for the English year she'd have been in, albeit primarily the spring/summer birthdays rather than the Autumn birthdays. Academically she's working with the year ahead of her age (so her English year plus 6 months).

She's also tall for her class (although she wasn't at 3) and is athletic.

DS is right on the cusp of deferring being an option in Scotland (November) and won't be deferred because he's big and confident even in comparison with kids over a year older than he is...

I meant in terms of one month of age, not one month of school

I am not entirely convinced by the argument that Summer borns would be bored if deferred- not in the majority of cases anyway. Of course if you took an able child out of their already established year group at school and put them in the year below they would be unhappy, but had they started in the younger year group things would most likely have been different.
Every class will have children born in early September. Some of them will be very bright children born in September. They may only be weeks, days or even hours younger than the youngest children in the year above. They don't get offered the option to start early do they? And are they all "bored out of their brains?" The odd one of course, you could get that with any birth date, but as a group, Autumn born children are not failing at school because of boredom. On the contrary, this group tends towards higher achievement. If children just one side of an arbitrarily drawn line are not, on the whole, bored, why would those just the other side of the line be? It's not logical.
My youngest had a due date of 31st August so one way or another he was going to be at the extreme end of a school year. To complicate matters, I had the choice of a planned section or a vbac, so added to the medical decisions I had to factor in the knowledge that my decision may well determine his school year. A surprising number of people encouraged me to have the section on the grounds that it would guarantee him an August birthday and get him into school a year sooner, citing that he was bound to be bright (not a given, but likely from the genetic point of view) and that I would be "holding him back" if he couldn't go to school for another year.
Well I am a scientist and I like data, so I looked for some, and found the evidence in favour of being old for the year to be pretty compelling. Obviously population statistics do what they say on the tin, describe populations, and they can't predict individual outcomes, but all the same, there is little doubt that as a group the oldest children fare better than the youngest and that difference is demonstrable into secondary school.
Obviously not every Summer born needs to or can defer, or another group would be the youngest and then they'd have the same issues. There has to be a line somewhere and that inevitably works in favour of some children and against others, that can't be avoided. Every parent just has to make the best judgement for their own child based on their individual circumstances. And we probably never really know if we made the best choice anyway, as we don't know what the alternative outcomes would have been. We can only do our best. But those who choose to defer shouldn't be made to feel that they are stunting their child's development or holding then back in some way - it's a perfectly reasonable choice.

I'm looking forward to the data about whether august borns who deferred out perform august borns who didn't, but that is a long time off coming out as deferring was discouraged not very long ago.

It will also have difficulties around the impact of financial background as wrap around care at school can be cheaper than nursery so poorer people may struggle to defer and we already know income and attainment are linked. I also think children struggling most are probably more likely to be deferred. So it will be a fun bit of data.

I’m the parent of an August born boy who did start reception at Compulsory School Age. We have no regrets at all. He’s definitely where he should be, in a class with a large number of Autumn borns. He’s bright so would have probably managed in the year above, but his maturity stands out and he’s confident and happy and loves school.

As previous posters have mentioned, there’s lots of anecdotal evidence about summer borns but the research shows the true impact.

I don't think I had the option. How long ago are we talking?

Is DC a girl or a boy? This is certainly a factor to consider as girls tend to mature faster anyway.

I deferred my son (August born) when he was 4. He is in Year 9 and is full confidence and top of his class, so no regrets here.

I honestly don't know how things would've turned out had we not deferred him. He was an extremely active (restless) boy back then and he had started speaking when he was 3 (we are a bilingual home). All these facts influenced our decision to hold him.

My second son is a July baby and we didn't hold him. He is in Year 7 now and has always done well in school. He spoke when he was just over one year old and was very calm and well behaved when he was 4. So very different story. He is not as confident as his older brother I must say but that could be just a personality factor.