Youngest in year and small for age

[ohinvertedworld]

My son is just turning 3 and so will start school next September when he has just turned 4. I’m worrying a lot about him starting school. I know a lot changes in a year but I just can’t imagine such a tiny kid going to school. He is also small for his age (7% on the growth curve chart) so I’m thinking that he’s already smaller than 93% of boys and then he’s going to be in a class with kids 11 months old than him too!

I have been researching and considering holding him back a year (I know there are options to both start 1 year late straight into Y1 which I absolutely don’t see the point of, or delay reception start to compulsory school age).

But honestly I think he’ll be bored academically being held back and I also know there can be issues later when he moves to secondary school and they can demand he skips a year back up to his correct year group. I asked in some Facebook groups for summer borns but their opinion seemed to be to hold back kids in all scenarios because they all did it (no judgement, just wanted some more balanced views).

He is very bright (great speech, knows numbers, simple addition, sounds of letters, starting to tell the time) and very physically active and capable despite his size. He’s potty trained but rarely has accidents when playing and forgets to go. He has been to nursery since 1 year old so he understands routine. When I see him play with his friends at the park or at birthday parties he has a good imagination and can be quite bossy (in a good way!). I feel like I’m projecting fears onto him of being vulnerable to being teased or bullied when maybe that’s not the case?

Does anyone have any experience of smaller than average kids being also youngest in year and how they found school?

My DD is an August born and she is about to go into yr1 in September. I don’t think she’s particularly small for her age but she looks tiny next to the others in her class. She has coped with school really well and is on track in all areas. She’s reading and writing now and the progress she’s made in her first year is amazing. There are a few other summer-born children in her class which I do feel has helped.

Honestly if he already knows all those things and has been at nursery in a structured environment for years I think you would be doing him a disservice by holding him back. He won't be the only summer born child in the class and even if he is small, logically someone has to be the smallest.

I would apply for a school place for next year and be positive in your approach to him. You really don't want him picking up on the idea that being small is a negative or something he should worry about.

What's wrong with him being small and who would care? Someone has to be the biggest (imo worse) and someone has to be the smallest. What are his friendships like now? If he's clever I wouldn't hold him back

Dd is by no means the youngest, but is the smallest by a half a head now (she's just finished reception). Absolutely no issues and her friends help if she needs fi (eg she had a party at an inflatable centre yesterday and they all gave her a leg up when needed). They all cheer each other at sports day too.

I've got a tiny August-born and she went to reception at just turned four and thrived both socially and academically. Like yours, her speech is excellent and she's pretty bossy! If you think he'll be fine then I'm sure he will be.

My youngest started school 2 weeks after turning 4, she’s the youngest in her class. She’s not the smallest (99th centile baby!) but honestly no one notices height and by year 2/3 they’re all so similar. My DD was similar to your DS in that she’d been at nursery, was able
to write her name and knew the basics. She’s just finished reception and got 38/40 in the phonics screening and is more than ready for year 1. Her best friend in the class is an October born so a big age difference but honestly no one would know.

It’s individual, you have to do what you think is right for your child and circumstances.

I deferred DD. She is going into reception in September aged 5 years 6 weeks. She was not ready last year. She is also small (16th percentile) and a mum a few weeks ago thought she was just turning 4 and when I said no 5, she is a deferral, she said gosh isn’t she a tiny dot. Meant kindly of course. She has a summer born who is going into reception at the same time and is nearly a year younger as we deferred, but to look at them
you would think they were the same age (barely 4).

DD is bright, but hasn’t done loads of academic learning. Started pre school Feb this year and enjoys the learning and is very interested in it all. I am confident she will enjoy elements of school from the off now, whereas I think everything would have been a struggle last year and she’d have felt ‘behind’ too. Everything I read says the age a child starts school isn’t important for how well they do, it’s how ready they are to learn. Some countries don’t start school until 6.

I am very comfortable with deferring DD, I think you need to have conviction with whatever you decide, as people can have strong opinions and you, as always, have to be assertive for your own child (including if it’s school saying they’re ‘behind’ when in reality, everything is benchmarked on the average child, and a summer born is that much younger and won’t always reach the required level when other children do, and that’s OK).

Thanks all. Re. The comment about “who would care” if he’s small. I think I’d be naive to think a very small boy is not somewhat a target for being picked on physically? Unless school has changed massively since I was a kid. Maybe not quite at the age of 4 but certainly a couple of years later.

I absolutely agree with the idea that I need to make sure I don’t let him pick up on my worry though!

My daughter has just finished reception. She's August born is 2nd percentile for height! She's only just made it to 100cm in the last month!
She's the smallest in the class but there are 4-5 other students that are within a few cm of her so she doesn't stand out as the smallest. Her best friend is a 90+th percentile boy that had his placement deferred. He is over a year older than her and is something like 25cm taller than her!
I asked all the schools how they support the smallest and the youngest pupil and went with the school that gave the most child focussed response most gave a generic "kids come in all shapes and sizes" response. She couldn't get on the toilet at after school club so they bought her a step after her first day. The school said they would ensure that she could reach all the appropriate play equipment and if not arrange adjustments.

The hardest bit was the uniform. At the start of the summer she was still in 18-24 month clothes and the smallest school uniform was 2-3! Same with school shoes she was a size 5.5 and most started at size 7-8. Thankfully she had a growth spurt in the summer and made it into the 2-3 uniform although it was quite big on her and size 6 shoe which gave us a couple of options.

I have a summer born who has thrived at school. Perhaps a touch behind on some points in reception but never a worry and caught up by Y1. No issues physically or socially.

I also have a small middle child who for years has been the smallest in her year. She’s never once had any issues, she’s in the top sports team, wins races, has no problems whatsoever based on her height. Someone has to be smallest.

My son’s best friend is also quite small (made more obvious by my son’s height) and I’ve never heard of any issues at all for him. He’s keeping up physically and plays roles that suit his physicality strengths (eg on rugby teams he’s given an appropriate spot)

It’s normal to be a bit anxious when your first goes to school, but you’ll see that in all likelihood all will go well. And if there are problems you can deal with them as needed, worrying now isn’t going to yield anything positive.

Yes - prem twins born 30 August. One twin is not so small but one is. She’s now 13 (almost 14 and about to go into year 10). She’s been in a drama show dancing and adults keep grouping her with the 8-10 year olds, which is annoying. However, she’s confident and holds her own. You don’t know until years later if it’s right to not hold back or hold back but for us, keeping her in the right year group was right for her.

We did have an issue in secondary school that the pe shorts didn’t come small enough so I had to but non logo ones and email the pe teachers. In year 7 she was wearing age 7-8 clothing. Friends are lovely (but tower over her - on her birthday they all came over and she looked like the younger cousin/sibling in the group too dh and I 🤣 - but her friends treated her equally).

i have just remembered that at primary a couple of girls had to be told to stop picking dd up and treating her like a doll 🙈

I would not, and did not, hold back a year due to size. My child is the very eldest in the year but absolutely the smallest by a mile. She is on 0.4 centile. Her size does not hold her back!

My DS was 4 and 2 weeks when he started school. He was 9th percentile. Your DS sounds very similar. He was independent, academically bright and the key for me was to make sure he could do everything he needed practically. So he could get his clothes on and off, do up his coat and shoes, open his lunch box, get the straw off a juice carton etc its these things that help them the most. Even many almost 5 years olds cant do these things when they start!
He never struggled with bullying. If your DS has self confidence (which it sounds like he does) he is likely to be fine.
My DS was born early and was supposed to be the year below if born on due date. I still maintain he came early on purpose as he would have been bored with another year at home.

We have delayed entry till CSA for our August born child, so you might think I'm biased, but I'll give you my two pennies worth anyway 😉

One of our motivations (well, my husband's) was his own experience of being bumped up a year at school as he was bright. I think he was 18 months younger than the oldest children. He did fantastically well academically but struggled a lot socially. Always the smallest, hitting puberty long after than the rest etc etc. I think it really affected his confidence for quite a long time. Whether that would be the case for your son who will only be 12 months younger I don't know.

It's worth considering which schools you will likely send him to. One of our other motivations was that our local primary school is very academically pushy. They get them sitting at desks from reception and like to boast that the year 6s are working "two years ahead" 🤔 If our local school was more play based we might have made a different decision.

To be honest I think it's a mistake to assume that there is a "right" or a "wrong" answer. I totally get what you mean about opinions on that Facebook group (I'm guessing that's where you've looked!) - of course they all very strongly believe you should delay! Most children will be fine either way, they'll just have a different experience with different positives and negatives.

Our daughter is having a great time in her adopted year - it's given her loads of confidence and she really gets on with the younger kids (her best friend is over a year younger than her!). She's a bright kid and I think she'd have been fine in the year above, but I still think we made the right decision.

Edited for typos

There's a billion reasons a child could be the target of someone's unkindness though.

I have a son who is short and there's literally nothing I can do to change that. Therefore I instill in him that there is nothing wrong with being shorter than his peers. Keeping him out of school for another year would probably have made the height difference less noticeable but equally I would have been holding him back academically and he would have been beyond bored.

I haven’t seen the small ones being picked on, and we’ve had three children at a few different schools. It tends to be the ones with less good social skills.

Go by ability and not size. My dd is summer born and small for her age. She was bored by the end of pre school and very ready for school. She has thrived in reception and is in the top third of her class academically, and loves it. She’s made some great friends, both boys and girls who are all taller than her but it hasn’t been an issue at all.

School has massively changed since you were a child. Negative comments about appearance whether height, hair colour, wearing glasses etc is dealt with. I worked in a school for over a decade. Only nice things were permitted, nice headband, cool water bottle, lovely ponytail today etc.

Some parents are just short, so in turn, some children are short. The reverse is also true. My female friend is 6ft and her husband is 6'3" she describes birthing her first child as giving birth to an eel as she said her body felt like it went on forever Her DD was incredibly tall and looked like she should be in year 3 in reception. Height is something that you have no control over.

I think when they are young they just feel so small. Look back at where they start being born, where they are at a year old, 2 years old and 3 years old. The development is huge. It is another year before your child starts school. I have summer borns, I too am a summer born and I went to school at 4yr 2 months. Both my children are through school now, excelled academically and socially. Even winter borns have speech issues, social issues and can be short. A lot plays into a child's experience of school, order in which they are born in the family, socio-economic status, parental involvement, friendship groups etc.

My son was the smallest in his year through all of Primary school by quite a significant difference. They had to bring a stool in so he could reach the appropriately child sized art benches etc. He was never bullied for his size and it didn't cause him any issues. At 15 he has finally reached slightly on the small size of average height.

My very tall for his age older DS was the one picked on for his size.

Son turns 17 next week, he was dinky, and has been pretty much until the last 6 months or so. He’s very popular and has mates in his year and the year above. He did struggle academically- he’s dyslexic - but socially no problems.

Should add he also started primary and secondary school knowing nobody due to logistics and when he started college in September after GCSEs he didn’t know anyone on his course, and has been fine every time. And I was worried for both secondary and college that being small would be a thing, but it wasn’t.

My August-born son was tiny, smallest in the year group all through primary school and at secondary. No problems with bullying - was very popular.
At 15, suddenly shot up to 6ft tall! We definitely didn't see that coming.

I deferred my premature Summer born DS, so he’s the eldest, but still one of the small ones.

Kids do notice height, especially on photo day where the smaller ones have to sit down at the front. Also on Sports Day, where the tall ones have an advantage. Apart from that, his height has not been an issue as of yet. If he had been in his correct year group, it probably would not have been great for his self esteem in terms of being the shortest and lightest boy, but he would’ve been fine I reckon.

You are right about those that deferred though. If I had the choice, I would have deferred my other DC.

My 4 year old is turning 5 next week, he will be starting yr 1 and has thrived in reception. I asked the teacher at the end of reception if she thought we'd made the right choice not deferring and she gave an immediate definitely. He would have been bored at home. He's hard enough to keep stimulated over the holidays! He's on the 25th for his hight and while at the lower end is not the shortest in his small class. Both his parents are short so it's to be expected.

So much will change in a year! Mine are not summer born, but at 3, I couldn’t imagine them starting school either.

Fwiw, I was also the youngest in my year and oddly, the tallest, which made me a bit of a freak on multiple accounts. I finished secondary school top in my class and did very well academically and socially. Never felt disadvantaged because of my age.

I think the key is a really nurturing supportive environment. I went to one really lovely play-based school with small class sizes and one really academic competitive school, which was awful, for primary. And then another lovely nurturing supportive school for secondary. The school environment was what really made the difference for me.

I'm a y1 TA. The smallest (also summer born) in our most recent class is also working towards expected levels of learning and development, but he's absolutely fine. Work/expectations tailored to where he is, confident, popular with other children and staff and comes in happy every morning.

Your son sounds acedemically more than capable of holding his own going to school next year. Mine is summer born too, I know it feels almost like being cheated out of time having them go so young, but from what you have said I wouldn't hold him back.