ds start school in september, getting worried

[ruty]

Ds turns 5 in September, so he'll be one of the oldest in his class. Thing is, they've scrapped the half day only for a term that they have done until this year, and ds has never really been to nursery. he did go for a little bit, but I had dd and he wanted to stay with us and i let him. The other thing is that he is quite old for his age in terms of vocabulary and interaction, but has very high emotions and sometimes finds them hard to cope with. I'm trying to get him some playschool/nursery places for this term, though everything is absurdly booked round here, but getting increasingly worried that he won't be able to cope with a nine till three day, it will be a big shock to his system. Is there anything I can do? I'd really like to part HE him for a year though I'm not sure any school will allow that. Would the school allow him only to do half days for a term? Not sure they would make a special exception. Is there anyway of part HE ing and part schooling?

Some schools will allow you to make an arrangement to take children out for an afternoon or so a week when they are in reception. Have you asked them?

I have to say, my initial thought would be that taking him out on a frequent basis might be unsettling for him.

I also think he might cope better than you could imagine. Ds is 5 and in Yr 1. He was very articulate but volatile when he started school. He has adapted beautifully and is a much happier child for it.

Have you thought of making plans for what you will do if school is too much but just trying it out for a term to see how ds copes?

well if he hates it we'll have to try HE I suppose. He has a friend in the school in the year above, whom he loves, but he doesn't realise he won't get to see him, they do everything separately, even playtimes. The children in his year he really refuses to play with, which is embarrassing, i think it is because they seem a lot younger than him in size and in verbal skills, but I keep encouraging him to interact with them in the playground, he just wants to play with older children.

In theory, schools can do something called flexi-schooling, where the child is at school for part of the week and HE for the rest, but I think it is very rare in practice and is totally up to the headteacher to allow it.

Are you keen on the idea of HE in a general sense, or is it just this worry about him settling in? If it's just the initial settling that worries you, I think you'd do best to let him try the full normal timetable but speak to his teacher if you think he's having problems. You may find that he gets used to their way of doing things quite quickly. Anything you try to do differently in trying to help may just make him feel more disrupted and set him apart from the rest of his class, which will only slow down the settling process.

i am keen on HE and have been considering it, because he is [PFB alert] very intelligent, he is reading and his imagination and vocabulary are so good - I mean he is not a prodigy or anything but being the oldest in his class and being pretty bright I am worried that he is going to feel set apart from the other children. He certainly does not want to play with them in the playground, he wants to play with older children and this worries me. It is a very big school, and I would ideally love to send him to a small private school but we can't afford that.

flexi schooling would be great, but I can't imagine the head allowing that. I could ask I suppose, she'll probably think I'm a nutter.

See your issues. Do you think that he would enjoy HE?

Well, if he enjoys playing with older children, you might well find that HE groups would suit him, since they will always have a mix of ages. And you can go at his pace, rather than him have to wait till the others catch up, so HE has a lot of positives, as long as it's something you feel would be a positive choice for him (and you) rather than just being a reaction to the possible negatives of school.

problem with HE is that we have to go out a lot as if we are at home he constantly asks for TV at certain times. And we have met up with the HEers around him a couple of times and the children seem much older, 8 or 9 ish, so it will be an effort to find the right age children. I am worried about getting enough sociable stuff for him to do.

You may find when he reaches "school age" there will be other "after-school" groups - cubs, sports clubs, that kind of thing - which give him a suitable age-range to mix with, and he may (or may not) be the type of boy who thrives on having some structured activities with a common goal which sports can provide. But I'm not well-placed to advise you about social stuff for that age-range as we've only HEd since ds was much older and the social side is different for a teen!

he already does karate and choir and seems to really enjoy them. Where i live they will all think we're barmy if we HE, we're already looked at in disbelief when we say he doesn't go to nursery. And I will find it hard to prevent TV and get him to do other stuff at home - going out is fine though. And have a baby so she takes some of my attention. Feel so torn.

ruty, my dd2 is a summer born child, currently in reception. it sounds as if your ds will be absolutely fine in terms of his development- he sounds as ready as any other 4 yo to start school! i would, however, persevere with trying to get him into a preschool/ nursery for a couple of sessions a week so that school is not too much of a shock to the system.

Ruty, one possible solution to the TV dilemma is not to limit it at all. Then he can drink his fill of it (might take a few months) and after that no longer be keen to watch it all the time.

Another related solution is to get rid of TV from the house and have just DVDs - so the child doesn't get sucked into the next show all the time. I'd also recommend doing that without limitations and letting the glut period take its course.

[and yes, I've BTDT with the 8 hours of DVDs a day period, and come out the other side, where DVDs are fun but days might go by where very few are watched at all. And also have seen how rich a resource DVDs and the associated games and books and toys can be]

really ommm? Wow I've never heard of that approach! Does it work for chocolate too?
I let him have an hour in the morning whie I faff with baby and a hour before bedtime and that already feels like too much. I'm a bit scared to try that approach!

chocolate - yes. BTDT too

IME, a child rarely has more than a day or two where they eat nothing but chocolate - they quickly learn how icky that makes them feel.

It's all about trust. You might like exploring here about food (and there's all sort of education related stuff on that site too).

Ruty
You may well find that there are other September-born children and other particularly advanced children in the class...

IME, there are usually about 2 or 3, and its very very hard to tell them apart from the children in the academic year above them - physically, socially or academically. After all, in many cases they are born only a matter of days or weeks apart.

I'd say (but don't quote me on it!) that the school would argue that with your son being autumn-born, he would be more than able to cope with a full day at school etc. They'll point to other autumn-born children being in the class etc.

Unfortunately, he will have to stay with his cohort because of his birth date. There is little flexibility to move years etc. I really do think more should be done to look at how autumn born children fare in schools.

thanks critter. Yes, I wish it was thought about more - he is so much more comfortable with the children in the year above, though he is obviously the youngest of that group.

Ruty
There's an interesting article around this subject in the Guardian Education section today.[[http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/apr/21/early-years-education

My son was 5 in October last year and I felt like this about him starting school. After quite a lot of agonising I ended up home educating him and we're really loving it so far. Not to say that if he'd started school he wouldn't have coped, because I think he would, at least on the surface - his friends seem to have. But I'm still happy about our decision.

thanks lilyfire. Do you find he gets enough interaction with other children his age? Do you have the Cbeebies problem?

Ruty - does your child use the CBeebies, Pbskids, Nickjunior etc etc websites? Sometimes lots of time on those, which are so CLEARLY interactive, makes watching the shows themselves much less thrilling for a child.

we have not tried Nick Junior. He loves the cbeebies website. He is obsessed by Ben 10 at present though!

I have the opposite problem - DS2 is only going to be 4 in August and will then start school full time in September. Your son sounds much more ready for school than DS2! My other 2 children are September birthdays and fit in just fine at school - DS1 found reception a bit dull as he didn't want to play all day but has loved school since year 1 became more structured, and DD who is very old for her age has always loved school and been fine. She did play with some friends in the year above for a while cos she knew them from playgroup but that soon wore off

ds was 5 last month and I've let him watch as much tv as he wants. He got sick of cbeebies because it repeated. He started on cbbc and discovered there were programmes he loved and programmes he disliked so only watched the ones he liked. However, when it came to whatever channel Ben 10 is on I restricted television because I didn't like what he was picking up from the adverts. But he can watch dvd's all the time. I've also let him have unlimited gamecube time.

What I've found is that after an initial obsession, which can be one or two weeks, he ends up self-regulating. As a result the computer, gamecube and tv are really nothing special. It's nerve wracking though, goes against all mainstream wisdom, but it's worked out exactly as I'd read it would. Of course a person should always do what suits their family though!

At home ed group he plays with children of all ages. He's had an 11 year old teach him how to play Pokemon, he's played ball games with a 1 year old and a 3 year old. He often play fights with the 7, 8 and 9 year olds. As well as play with the only other child his age. I think he gets a lot out of playing with children who are a variety of ages.

Home ed is fab!

Thanks Summat. How much TV do you think your ds watches, on average, a day? ds is also pretty good at self regulating, but will happily watch an hour in morning and hour in afternoon. I worry this is a bit too much, though some of that may be on cbeebies website which i prefer. He has also recently discovered CBBC and loves BlastLab! We don't have cartoon network thankfully, he has ben 10 on DVD.

We were both a bit shy on the one HE thing we went to around here,[just an outdoor play session] and felt nobody really took the time to say hello to us, children or adults, and we felt a bit awkward. I did try to talk to a few adults but the children were very involved in their own games and ds was not involved. Perhaps that would get better if we kept going, I don't know, but it kind of worried me a bit.

ruty, my DS is 5 in December, and definitely watches too much TV.

I find a good solution is to have DVDs which you "approve of" and let him watch those.

It can be quite educational actually. My son watched The Lion King a lot and listened to it on CD and it sparked so many interesting questions from him - about all sorts of things. We talked together a lot about it - it did spark the conversation about death, but in a very controlled way for me, which was particularly great.

At the moment, he is watching Happy Feet, which I also think is a very thought-provoking film. Lots of questions about that too.

I wouldn't worry about too much TV though. The way I see it is my boys do loads of other stuff as well - we go out to things all the time, go on a walk every day with our dog, older one goes to the school nursery, and we read a lot of books together. So I think it's more about balance, than how much TV they watch. The problem would be if they only watched TV and did nothing else.

Ruty - I'm really sorry about your HE group experience. The first group we went to was lovely and everyone was really friendly and we felt included from the start. It made such a difference when it came to making the decision to refuse the offer of a school place, as we had somewhere else we felt supported. We go to three or four groups a week and then also meet up with other HE families as well and, to be honest, the problem is finding time to ourselves to be at home for projects. People told me it would be like this and I didn't believe them. Most groups have been welcoming from the start. One of the ones we went to/go to, has been more tricky. I felt like you describe for weeks and stood there feeling miserable thinking it was all my fault for being shy. But in all the other groups people made a real effort to make us feel welcome. It might be worth your perservering with the group, as we've found that, as new people have joined, we have more people to play with/chat to and it's now usually fun. Otherwise look for something else. I emailed local education otherwise members and went on our local yahoo/google groups. Do carry on trying to find somewhere you feel comfortable as it makes such a difference.
re Cbeebies - yes, I do worry about it. He has some in the morning while I shower tidy up and then more in the evening. I do use dvd's - we got some Blue Planet ones and some French ones, so I can feel they're 'educational'. Although actually most of Cbeebies is pretty informative. He's actually more interested in my laptop now and would happily spend hours on Club Penguin/Ben 10 website. I don't know how much time is right for him really. I generally find that we're out a lot during the day and he's v active, so maybe not terrible for him to use it to relax after a full day. I remember watching TV from about 3.45 to 6pm most evenings after school, but was also a nerdy bookworm, so don't think it damaged me.