Is a summer due date a good idea?

[bexboz]

We are deciding when the best time to TTC for baby number 2. For a lot of logistical reasons it looks like we would be TTC in September 2024. Obviously we have very little control over when I'd actually get pregnant but it would mean we could have babies due in June, July and August...

There is a lot of dyslexia in my family and family members who struggled in school as kids. They all turned out fine and achieved whatever they wanted but had a tough time at school and low confidence as a result. A lot of them were also summer babies and so they were young for their year.

I'd like to hear from adults with summer birthdays and parents of school aged kids born in summer... do you think they are more likely to struggle?

I don't THINK this sort of thing would really change our plans as I'm super keen for number 2 and don't want to wait any longer than necessary. It's just been on my mind and I would like other's opinions. Thanks!

Ps I'm less worried about the heat, we live in a cool climate!

Yes, there have been plenty of academic studies in to this. Statistically, being summer born continues to disadvantage pupils right up to GCSE level, with summer born children doing marginally worse than autumn born. More summer born children also appear on the SEN register than autumn born.

these threads are always full of people with anecdotes about summer born children who have done well (of course these exist) and autumn born who have done badly (again, of course these exist), but statistically, at a population level, being autumn born is an advantage over summer born.

Not sure whether it is important enough to change your attempt at TTC though. I’m a teacher with 2 children with late spring/early summer birthdays so I clearly wasn’t too bothered despite knowing the data (and my early summer born 4 year old is doing well so far, so yet another anecdote which goes against the data 😂)

@modgepodge but is it a self fulfilling prophecy? Parents don't push because they are summer born, everyone makes excuses for them because it is just a known fact they are the youngest in the year. Society is telling the child and the parent that they won't do as well academically as their peers because they are a few months younger. I have seen it myself with friends saying well she is a July baby so of course she is behind; they just accept it. With Ds1 we did not, he was average in primary but chose not to be in secondary and with our backing excelled.

I think we should adopt the Scottish system of a 1st March cut off so that they are 4.6 years when they start school. What do you think?

2 of my dc are summer born (and dyslexic!).
One struggled, but this was due to dyslexia rather than birthday- he couldn’t read until just before his 8th birthday. He’d have been significantly behind whether in that school year or the one below. He was, and remains, supremely confident regardless, very hardworking and despite an average IQ (measured in dyslexia testing) scored above average in SATS.
The other didn’t struggle at all and was consistently average in primary school, above in secondary and college (predicted As, possibly A*). Other than summer birthdays and dyslexia, what they both had in common was their work ethic.
My other dc, who had an august due date but an early September birthday is the least academic of the 3, as he never developed the motivation to study- he is confident in his innate abilities, though these don’t seem to serve him as well S he expects!

Posted too soon-
I have wondered if needing to work harder helped create the work ethic my 2 summer born dc have, and if not having to try harder early on let my September born down?
I also have one born at the end of February (so halfway through the academic year) who falls halfway between both ends of the scale!

I'm a June baby and did fine at school. Also have the best birthdays as there is much more to do than winter.

My DS is an August baby and I had concerns about him being the youngest in the year which it is noticeable at the moment (he's in reception) but he will catch up soon enough and I'm surprised by the amount he's learns in 4 months.

No , it all evens out eventually. You’ll get academic sept babies and academic Aug babies.

i personally don’t get the obsession people have wirh the need for their kids to be wildly academic. There is so much more important factors to life than academic achievement. Happiness, stable mental health, confidence etc. also EQ is showing itself to be critical in success for life.

His dad is 6ft5 and is broad and his son is a carbon copy of him 98+ percentile for weight and height. The issue is the child doesn't yet realise his own size and strength so inadvertently injuries other children which is where the parents complaints are. Most of the issues are coming from playing football. In a few years with when he has more personal awareness the issue will hopefully resolve itself but right now my cousin is having a very hard time from mum's of 7 year olds that can't cope with playing with a very big 8year old.

Everyone is different.

Personally we didn’t wait.

Yes, there are certainly theories that parents’ and teachers’ expectations may influence achievement in these groups. Obviously you can mitigate your own expectations but not that of teachers unfortunately (though I’ve never known a teacher write a child off due to their birthday!)

if the cut off was march first, it would just shift the problem so children born in Jan/Feb would be the youngest and would presumably struggle in the same way. I haven’t looked in to it in enough detail to know if this is the case in Scotland.

As to whether 4.0 is too young to start school - at least now there is the option to defer children to start at 5.0 instead if parents feel it is best. This has only really been an option for a few years so I don’t think there will be enough data to show the impact.

planning TTC is ridiculous and hilarious. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow let alone Sept 2024..!!! And I’ve been TTC 1 year with 1 MC. We discussed trying and started trying the same day 😂

Its not random expectations. If this were height would there be this argument?
Obviously its logical that the youngest are the smallest. Now its also not true that you can line 30 random kids up by height and that also be age. Because the top 2 5th and bottom 25th will be a year older/younger heightwise.
But overall aug will be smaller than sept. (I think actually summer borns do end uo taller but the difference wouldnt be enough to make them tallest.)
But it is ridiculous to complain oh this deferred aug is huge - when some kids are so many years ahead size wise. My dd 11yo is size of a 13yo but was previuosly average. But girls at school will range from size of 8yo to 5ft7. So a better complaint would be for very tall kids to play up a year..

DD is late august and due to start this coming September but we are hoping to defer.

I’m not hugely bothered about the academic side but the social. She’s a young 3yo, in that she hasn’t mastered poos in a toilet, she struggled making friends at preschool and only really started making them when the autumn born kids started coming up. I also don’t love the idea of her being at school at 3y 53w - I think we go too early in the uk, and the idea of her not being able to have a legal drink in a pub one week and then being at uni a week later makes me feel very not ok! Plus there’s being able to go to a 15 film at the summer when all her friends can, etc etc.

It’s a personal decision but one we’re happy with. I agree that a lot of academic success is based on the steps MC parents take to help their kids but now given the option to defer, for me that’s another MC advantage. It’s one of those things where, if it weren’t available to us then I’d have to suck it up, but since it is I will 100% take it. I’ve read the research and tbh my view on what we should do societally isn’t going to feed into decisions I make for my own child - eg my baby needs an operation, I’m against private health in general but he’s having it next week in a private hospital because we have coverage through work and I’m not willing to wait for the NHS to get its shit together when the wait time would otherwise be 3 months.

FWIW we started trying when we would have had a September 2019 baby and we got an August 2020 so life really doesn’t go to plan! We thought about skipping that month but as a PP says, at that stage I’d take any baby! And she’s amazing, I wouldn’t trade her for anything.

Sure but that doesn’t add much to the debate.

It’s a fact that on a population level it’s a disadvantage being the youngest in the school year.

Not everyone has the luxury of time but it seems that the OP is actually planning this well in advance so in that case it’s worth weighing up the factors that are known (which include the statistical impact on summer born kids I mention above, plus her own previous fertility history and age, the reality of paying for childcare for an extra year and the fact that dyslexia is in her family etc).

There’s not much point including unknowns in the decision (like unexpected secondary infertility which is rare) as you can’t do anything about those things anyway. That’s if you approach it logically of course, which not everyone does.

I’m summer born and achieved straight A*s in everything, got into Camb. Earn six figures and am generally the highest achiever of my cohort. State educated, actually from poverty too.

However DH and I run an education consultancy that statistically analyses the amount of score adjustment that should be added in exams for Summer children (mainly 11+). There is A LOT of statistical evidence that September children perform far better than August. However, we were ttc and my baby is due Aug. I’m not worried. Plus the smartest kids we have come across lately were July and August born - genius children. But each child is different. Life is weird. Just go with it and let it be :)

My DS has a very late August birthday (he was 4 weeks early so would have been the oldest in the year below) and the youngest in the year. He is in year 1 and thriving. His reading and phonics now is where it is expected to be at Easter 2024. I have zero problems with him in regards to school.

Part of the issue is the sats while useful to bring up school results rather pigeonhole kids.
At ks1 there were 7 low attainers - did any of them get met at ks2 -- no...
I dont know their age in year. Another 2 werent included in the data one jan the other sep but had lived abroad.

At ks2 the general data shows 4 points diff from top to bottom. So when set for ks3 that may have made a diff for my dc. Or at least there maybe some winter born kids who actually arent that good at maths.
The top 1-5% will be so far ahead anyway it wouldnt matter. So oxbridge parent kids would likely be fine

You could plan this to the nth degree and baby could be several weeks early. I did worry a bit with my July born DS but actually when it came to it he was fine and good to go to school with all his friends. I actually couldn't imagine him doing a whole extra year at nursery.

My youngest has had a really rocky start healthwise and has an August birthday but I'll defer him if I feel I need to.

The fact you're even worrying about this is probably a protective factor because you care about baby's education. I think crack on.