To defer a bright child

[Clairebear231]

My son has always been bright, potty trained early, good speech from a young age etc I have never had any concerns. He is due to start school this September at 4 years and 2 months. All professionals say he is capable and ready....but I've recently found out I can defer him starting until next year when he will 5 years and 2 months giving him a big advantage throughout his school career.
My DH is very against this and feels he will be fine in school but I don't want him to be just fine I'd like him to excel, I'm also worried he will struggle being one of the youngest both academically and socially.
What are your thoughts on this? Has anyone not deferred a bright child and then regretted it or vice versa?

Haven't read all comments but
My son has always been bright, potty trained early,
How are these things correlated?

No idea what "academical" is. 😆 Thanks phone. Obviously should say "academic".

Also @MysteryBelle the point is this is their peer group. The effect of the deferral rules - which have been in place for some time now - is that the peer groups are now 15 months long and overlap, with parental choice for those in the overlap over which the child joins. It's really not that complex. It's a fudge, sure, to fix the problem of the UK system starting too early in the face of all the evidence showing this isn't in children's interests. Better to change the whole system with the earliest entry being aged 6. But at least now there is a way for parents to mitigate the worst impacts of the current system on the very youngest children subjected to it and act in their child's interests if they opt to do so.

I’d say think about the later years (hard to do when they’re four!)

We sent DS at four, could have waited til five. He’s bright and he was a huge child (he’d have been a good head and shoulders above everyone in the year below him which was another reason for sending him, I was worried he’d be six foot at primary). I also had had another baby and his paternal grandparents (both primary teachers) all wanted him sent because they said he’d be bored at home and might become disruptive. Him being younger than his peers started to became a problem at the end of primary/ start of high school - he was behind in terms of puberty and physical development (dudes in his class who were a year older and a foot taller looked like actual men when he was still very much a boy and that’s a bit of a slagging sometimes) and also socially ie. he seemed not very cool and ‘young’ to them. Though he’s academically able I think a year also makes a difference to maturity of outlook and attitude towards exams etc. My friend is a retired secondary teacher and she reckons she could tell which boys (particularly boys, less so with girls) are at the younger end right up until they’re ready to leave. So I’d be tempted to wait if you can keep him challenged and entertained without school for a year, might be of advantage to him ultimately.

I had to write as there are so many misinformed ignorant comments on this thread. I can understand why; if you’re the parent of a summer born and didn’t defer then it can be challenging to hear of the disadvantages etc and if you have an autumn born child you’ll naturally never have had to consider it so the idea will seem unnecessary. You will hear so many anecdotes along the lines of ‘my august born started at 4 and is now a doctor’ and of course there will be some who started as the youngest in their class and went on to do well, but this is the same logic as ‘I drove drunk and didn’t crash’ - the data on summer borns is clear, they are 17% more likely to commit suicide, 72% of SEN statemented kids are summer born, are 20% less likely to get into a top Uni etc etc. and all those who say ‘they soon catch up’ again, no, look at the data, it shows the disadvantage follows people throughout their school career and beyond. Only marginally narrowing the gap. People saying your child will be forced into y1 are wrong, you would apply to get permission first to ensure that a csa reception start is agreed, there are some tricky admissions authorities but the majority now are supportive. And those saying kids are forced to catch up and miss a year later on, again wrong. There is clear guidance they should stay in there adopted cohort. There would have to be v clear evidence it was in their best interests to miss a year which would be extremely hard to prove. Your child would get no more bored than a September born. All the evidence shows that children should play until at least 7 and that earlier formal learning is in fact detrimental longer term. But don’t listen to me either, read the studies ! They are compelling

How can 72% of statemented children be summer born, does being born in August determine whether someone is autistic or dyslexic?

I'd say this was an extremely bad idea.

Why on earth would you want to hold a bright child back to repeat something he's already done?

A bright child will be ahead of his current peers, and likely end up bored rigid if he's not stimulated and encouraged beyond that.

👏👏👏

delayed start isn’t ‘holding back’ or repeating a year thkugh, it’s just giving summer borns the same opportunity for early years exposure that the autumn borns get. They do exactly the same amount of formal education, in fact they’re just not losing the extra year their peers have. If one has a bright child I’d argue even more reason to give them an opportunity to shine rather than be distracted or knocked by the emotional and social issues that younger children can battle with.

Forgive me, it’s actually that August-born 11-year-old girls are 72% more likely to have non-statemented SEN than September-born girls. This is why what people post on a forum isn’t as good as going to the scientific data for oneself.

"Summer" is one quarter of the year, not one month.

Obviously many children with EHCPs will be born in other months, who have autism and other actual conditions. The statistic is indicative that many children are incorrectly diagnosed with unspecified developmental delays and learning difficulties etc when in fact it is rather the impact of them having been placed in an environment with expectations inappropriate for their developmental stage.

Again this black and white thinking and inability to understand statistics. It means that SOME summerborn children are being inappropriately diagnosed with SEN when it is in fact being at school when they should not be that is causing the problem, or exacerbating a minor issue that would fix itself if allowed to start formal learning at an appropriate age (6 or 7, per all the research) a major problem later on because of the detrimental impact of going to school too early. Hence the change in policy to allow parents to avoid such risks. Interestingly it also has a massively detrimental impact on exceptionally able and academic autistic girls, who due to masking often appear extremely confident and sociable aged 5, and aren't even diagnosed until secondary school, by which time the mental health damage is catastrophic. As well as on many children who have no SEN at all and suffer socially/ emotionally later on simply by virtue of being very young to be coping with the demands of secondary school and career choices and complex social dynamics. No matter how intelligent they are. Hence the policy to enable deferral, to mitigate some of this damage.

I hope you aren’t directing your comment at not understanding statistics or black and white thinking at me. It is giving one indicative example of how summer borns can be incorrectly or unfairly labelled as SEN. Agree with your observations re autism in girls.

And yes @Muthaofcats many not getting support for their needs later also, because their potential has not been recognised and parents and teachers assume they are struggling because they are the younger ones. It cuts both ways. Either way it's not good for many, many children, hence the data. It's undeniable, large scale, statistically valid, long-term data across various countries including this one. The mental health impacts persistint through to adulthood even for those with no additional needs identified is eye opening in particular.

People can make their own choices but please can the uninformed posters popping up on any thread about this please stop spreading misinformation about how they will "miss reception", or have been "held back" when what we're talking about is sending kids to school at compulsory school age rather than a year earlier, or that it's going to "make a child bored" to be playing aged 4-5 and starting formal learning later when that is what all credible research on the topic states is age appropriate, or denying the copious evidence from other countries that demonstrates better outcomes from this and starting formal learning later, or saying it's "unfair" when everyone has this option, or saying their second cousin went to school aged 4 and one day and became an astronaut so it will be fiiiiine for most kids despite the proof otherwise, or that you can tell how a child will develop in adolescence from how advanced or confident they seem aged 3 (because you'll be deciding when they are 3, given they'd be starting school the moment they turn 4!). It's tiresome and so irrational and also misleading to people who genuinely want to explore the options and make the best decision for their child based on evidence.

No, I was supporting your comments. One of the few sensible posts on the thread hence I quoted and applauded it.

Your child is of school age so send him to school. Stop stressing about whether he will excel or not and concentrate on what will make him happy.

my son started school at 4 year 4 months and by the end of nursery he was absolutely desperate to leave. They grow out of things and become ready for the next challenge. Put him first and not your desperate needs for him to be top of the class.

Thank you :)

🙄🙄

Perfect example: not read the data or studies, doesn't understand why the policy exists, hasn't even read the thread (or clearly not understood it if so!), but feels qualified to judge the outcome a 4 year old they don't know will have as an adult from being put in an environment that has been proved to be developmentally inappropriate for most children of that age and cause lasting damage througout life, based on some anecdata which apparently overrides all research on the topic and statistical probability of outcomes.

Your post reveals a lot about you :)

She wants her kid to be the best in class, that is the long and short of it.

surely if he is bright he will excel at school and enjoy it? If it were the other way round and she wanted to wait because he wasn’t ready for school then it would be a different matter.

I feel sorry for the child!

Me? I hope it a good way? 😬😆

We have done exactly this. Academic ability has nothing to do with it in my option. It's about emotional maturity. Statistically the evidence is overwhelmingly clear, the oldest in the class do better in many aspects of life.

FWIW if I could have deferred my winterborn child to start at 5.5 instead of 4.5, I'd have done that too! At barely 4 it is a complete no-brainer. Even if you have a genius on your hands, they tend to prefer independent learning and study anyway and hate the rigmarole and stifling structure of school. It's hard to see how it would do any kid many favours to be starting prep for SATs just after their 5th birthday. 😆 But people are of course free to make their own choices. It would be nice, though, if on a topic such as this people could stick to facts and research findings and evidence and not misinformation and anecdata and prejudices, given they presumably do not know the 3 year old in question or have a crystal ball enabling them to predict how they may or may not buck the data trend in 10-15 years time, when even the parents can't claim to be able to do that.

I wouldn’t spend your energy feeling sorry for this child at all - they sound like a bright loved child who has a mother who is focusing on what is best for them rather than ignorant comments and opinions from strangers. If you think people delay start to make sure their child is ‘best in class’ it says more about your outlook and lack of awareness than anyone else’s. Why otherwise would it bother you so much!

I see your point, I meant peer group as the group they’re already in not the one below (younger) which you want to wait and put your child into. I totally get what you’re doing, I know teacher friends (two of them) who did that for their children, even planning when they’d be pregnant, calculating when the birth would fall so their kids would be in that sweet spot of being the older students. With the goal of being academically ahead of the others. It’s not anything new. It is just one part of a ‘strategy’ (also ‘monitoring’ their child and comparing with others in a ‘study’ that included national averages of development etc). I got a lot of insight into a different kind of parenting outlook, things that I had never thought of before 😂

But if your child is already bright, then he’ll be fine. However I also understand that you want him to not just to be fine, you want him to excel. We all want our children to have the opportunity to do their best. So it makes sense.

It won't give him advantage at all. Don't do it. It's pointless