How long can you use the age compared to classmates as an excuse?

[Fusegettingshorter]

Please don't tell me for the duration of the school career, as I may have to intervene with who my dc is friends with, as the parents are driving me mad.

My ds' birthday is March, nice and easy smack bang in the middle of the year.

He is in a class of 14 - 1 child is August of year above and held back a year, 2 children are in the autumn term, 4 children are in the spring term, 5 children are in the summer term, 2 children are in the summer holidays, 1 child is december of the year below and is a year ahead of themselves.

My ds' friends are the eldest, the autumn term birthdays, and 3 of the summer term.

Now his 3 friends in summer term parents bitterly complained that the younger child was put into the class, as it was unfair on their less developed children, who are struggling as they are summer born. But really missed the point that this child although winter born is still 6 months younger than their children.

This has been the case since they started reception. We are now in year 2, and every conversation it results in 'it's because they are up to a year younger than other children in their class'. I've now turned it into a game of bingo and play mental bets with myself as to how long it'll be until it's said. Sometimes I think the conversation will finish without it being said, and just when I feel disappointed not to have scored bingo, the parent will say it.

How many years will this go on for?

I'm giving it until the end of this year, then they are in the juniors and if the parents say it then, I'm not interacting with these parents at all, and all friendship will remain within the playground.

bunmaker I wasn't suggesting that it was the case for everyone. My dh was VERY young in his year, went to uni at 16, now has a phd etc - no problems. What I was suggesting was that for a very large number it continues to influence their performance throughout their school career, as my experience teaching teenagers has, statistically, proven. Clearly there will be some in the top set who are younger than everyone else, but ON THE WHOLE this is the case. (This said by the mother of a child young in his year who is brighter than average)

Age-related 'performance' one of those things that's hard to measure though. Is a child who is great at sports and maths doing better than one who is rubbish at sports but great at reading and geography? Or one who is socially confident 'better' than the less confident quieter ones? Each child is going to have their individual strengths and weaknesses whatever.

It does totally make sense though that the bigger autumn/winter born children will have an advantage at sport, and the smaller younger ones are more likely to 'learn to fail'.

However, in my DC's class, reading ability for example is MUCH more highly correlated with how much support they get at home than how old they are.

Why would you end a friendship over that?

And FWIW I think that it can, amongst other factors, make a big difference. And why does it bother you? Would you rather the parents just said "My kids are thick as shit and really badly-behaved!" ?

I'm with someone above - if you are truly fed up, point out that perhaps it would have been best to avoid having summer children, if it worries them so much. And before someone says "no one actually does that", they do, including me, with an October (just opened the "season") and a January (last try before closing for spring!). A less ballistic approach would be to continually and admiringly point out how well the year-up child is doing "Oh, and he's MORE than a year younger than some of the children....)

The effect can trail on for a bit, but I'm with you - by year 3 the other factors should be overtaking age spread.

Are their children actually struggling? If they are, it may be (at least partly) due to their age and some sympathy could be in order. Others have quoted the research that summer-born children may continue to be at a disadvantage.

However, if the parents in question are just whinging and using their children's birthdays as an excuse to let them be the babies of the year, then I can see how irritating that can be.

FWIW I have two summer born children who are both flying high academically, but really suffer when it comes to PE. They are short, and young, and will probably never be able to keep up with a game of rugby!

Cory, has just written my post for me.
However teachers group and mix children they know from very young who the most and least able are.
So while bright confident young DC do well, the shyer less confident ones see the others racing ahead.
Success breeds success and these early patterns can be very hard to break.
I don't doubt for a moment that, although clever and comparative, DD2 has been helped by not thinking of herself as one of the young ones. Her birthday is in Feb and then there are no girls birthdays for 6 or 8 weeks after that. These younger girls are still, in Y6, less likely to be chosen for things than DD and the two autumn born girls.

There's evidence that summer-born children are more likely to be classified as special needs throughout their school career, and that they are less likely to go to university. So it does make a difference for a lot of dcs.

Why are you comparing your dcs' results anyway - you actually don't need to be having this conversation. I know one dc's results - the other mother spoke to me about them because she knew my dd was roughly the same level and wanted to check something out.

"However, in my DC's class, reading ability for example is MUCH more highly correlated with how much support they get at home than how old they are."

My experience bears this out too. But perhaps it also has something to do with how little reading goes on at DD's school! I'm sure some schools support literacy much better than others.

It does depend on the child. In dd1's class the top groups were all except one child summer (and later summer at that) birthdays by year 1. In dd2's class they could have almost done the groups by birthday.

I think the "he's a year young" is actually misleading. Like it or not they have to compete in that year. Anyway they're not a year young, perhaps 6 months younger than the average would be a better way of saying it.

Dd2 could happily have gone a year early to school in all aspects. She's a winter birthday and she was ready for school the year before. Ds otoh is a summer birthday and needed really an extra year at preschool. He's coping academically fine, but could do with just playing for another year. But I think that's personality mostly. Neither of the dd's would have found it a fun thing to do rolling on the floor giggling about poo... he's just naturally much less mature for his age. Hopefully when he's 16 he won't still find it funny as long as he doen't look too closely at bil

Your friends do sound rather irritating, OP, but then so do you!

I have an Autumn born DS, and an August born one, and I would sayon average it doesn't really even out until they reach Secondary school.

I am probably guilty of referencing August DS's birth month too often sometimes, but it's because it really DOES make a substantial difference in some things. Although he is above average height, he does not have the physical strength, stamina, or maturity to do as well as his classmates in many sports. His attention span and behaviour is closer to the year below him in many ways.

His personal self-esteem is a constant challenge for us, and we have to try to get him to benchmark himself against his 'personal best' rather than his classmates. Unhelpful 'friends' have teased him about being the baby of the class. He is sometimes excluded from doing things (e.g. at parties) as it requires a minimum age of 8/9 whatever, and he doesn't reach this until the very end of the summer holidays.

The problem with people saying "oh well, I was an August born, and I went to Uni" is that it doesn't really prove anything... it's the exception rather than the rule. As other posters have said, there are countless studies which have highlighted the relative underachievement of summer-born children (mostly boys).

Until recently, I felt exhausted with what felt like a constant battle to 'shore up' DS's confidence. I used to dread him coming out of school with the latest example of something he couldn't do as well as his (older) classmates. Other parents with older summer borns would say things like 'don't give up' 'hang on in there' 'he'll get there' and thank god he now, finally, in Year 5, is beginning to. But if I think I hadn't kept reminding myself that there were normal, age-related developmental issues at work, then I would have convinced myself he was a lost cause .

Comparing children will lead to no good. . I think we should gauge our children on their own personal best. My DS is doing better at school than his friend due a mixture of his current strengths and the fact that we do 30 minutes of 'homework' everyday. IMHO this is why they perform differently rather than the four months difference in age.

It is easy to get sucked into continuing baby olympics. At my DS's school parents seem to concentrate on how the children are doing with regards to reading and writing; more visible and easier than in other areas. There is so much more about their development. I have decided to look at my child and can somewhat chart his progress using EYFS characteristics.

Being academically gifted, clever or good at something can mean very different things and the measurements used are very broad. My own child doesn't march along making progress in a steady way and instead seems to leap ahead every so often. I think that age maybe does have an impact on the experience of some children at school. I do think it is also used by parents to put assuage their own concerns. I may suggest that few parents that constantly trot out the 'well Eggsboy is a year older than theirsummerbaby', should think about holding their children back a year.

I have three August born children.
Now they are older they moan at me for not holding on till September!
All their friends were 16 / 18 before them so they couldn't go out to celebrate / go clubbing as they were still underage.
I will never be forgiven for my bad baby planning

DingDong wait until they are 29 I was talking to an old school friend, and she and I were 2 of the youngest in the year, and agreed that now we are 29, it's great to see all the older ones hitting 30 before us small pleasures, mind...

I was never academically disadvantaged (that I can see) by being one of the class babies, but was very emotionally immature. However, all of my siblings were too, so it may be a genetic more than age thing. I'm not sure it can be used s an excuse forever, but there are times when it will be obvious that there is a difference due to age (like, I said, emotionally in my case, but physically in some smaller children, I'd imagine, and academically too). Sadly there's bugger all to be done about it

But you can't hold your child back a year in state primaries - yes you can choose to skip Reception in some cases but then they have to go straight into Year 1, and then are disadvantaged as they haven't had the year in Reception.

And actually - although I was initially horrified at my summer-born PFB having to go to school so young - I have come round to the idea that it makes sense now. Yes she is one of the youngest and smallest, but there are enough others like her so that she doesn't feel different. And there has to be a cut-off point somewhere.

She is doing fine with reading, writing and numbers - as I said before, in this respect, how they do seems to be much more to do with support at home than how old they are. The ones in the higher sets do tend to be the ones with older, more involved parents .

Surely people who can do the puzzles in 11+ go to grammar school! Not the ones who were born in early autumn

I went to school when I was 3 and had my 4th birthday in September and it never did me any harm .

I think that now you do just skip reception if defer for a late school start - not sure what the point of that is though.

My view is similar to Whippet. Both my DSs are summer born (well done CBA ). DS1 is now yr4 and things are beginning to even out but confidence was and is a big issue. Luckily he is tall so he doesn't look like the baby of the class.

The teachers said that they can see a difference at least until the age of 7 in the boys. The DSs are in a private boys school and part of the reason for that is that I thought they would benefit from the smaller classes and more one on one attention due to their August birthdays. Additionally, the school only has one intake for YR in Sept so they didn't miss half / two thirds of the reception year.

All the anecdotes about August borns doing well are great (I'm another one) but there are a number of large scale surveys that do suggest, on average, date of birth matters in educational attainment.

However, I have never commented on DOB to my children. I might mention it to the teachers if I think it is relevant but I don't say anything in front of the boys. I did take their age into account when looking at their school reports / relative position in the class.

I can't understand the sportsmen suggestion either. Sports people are a mixture of ages. The younger you are the more differences are likely to show physically. But Tom Daley is a lot younger than people he's competing against, isn't he? Doesn't seem to be doing him any harm.

learnandsay the older children in the class tend to get picked for the sports teams initially because the are a bit bigger, more coordinated etc. Because they are picked for the teams they have extra practice at the sport in question and become more skilled. As these older children are now more practiced at the sport it becomes even more difficult for the younger children to compete against them because they haven't had the same opportunities for additional practice because they didn't get picked for the team in the first place.

Holy cow, does any of this stuff really matter? Those poor kids!! I think it´s all about confidence and a wee bit about personality. My sister was the youngest in her year even in secondary school but the brightest. She´s driven, neurotic and super competitive. I was an april dreamer, lazy and cocky and that trait followed me to (a crap) uni...but career-wise have done far far better. You can measure success by many different criteria - but confidence is far and away more important for me. I have stacks of it, my sister doesn´t.

I really hope that I will be oblivious to all this when my son reaches school !!

On the Tom Daley point - diving is a technical sport that requires a certain degree of physical fitness. Rugby is a physical sport that requires a certain degree of technical ability.

Tom Daley has excellent technical ability and sufficient physical fitness to compete at a very high level. It would be a lot less likely that a 15 year old whould have sufficient physical development to compete in international rugby no matter how good their technical skills.

whould would

hmm, one of the youngest kids in my year was the best footballer. He was tiny! But always scored loads of goals. But I take one half of your point. I don't remember seeing him on our rugby pitch.

learnandsay - the sport thing matters massively while they are at school and every single sport is 'Under 9' or 'Under 10' and done by school year group.

Some of the local football/rugby/cricket etc clubs don't let them join until they have reached a certain age, so some of DSs classmates have played an extra season of a sport (which might be 25% more if you're 9 !)

Of course by the time you're Olympic standard it doesn't matter but the point is that few summer borns ever get to that level because their confidence is so crushed and they are 'written off' at an early stage.

From the stuff I've heard and read on the matter, while there is a disadvantage of being summer born for a few years, any "lasting effects" are due to attitudes not age difference.

If kids get disheartened in the first years, and lose motivation because their consistently at the bottom end of the class, this is what affects them. It will be harder but in most cases it can be worked through.
It may be the case (not saying it is) that these mum's kids just happen to be the less bright ones in the class, and they're using age to try and convince themselves otherwise. In any case the best thing can do for their children is to support them and not blame stuff just on their age - especially taking it to the extreme like they are. The play thing just sounds like attention seeking.

In DD's year 8 class her best friend born late august is top of the class. As it happens she struggled in reception and year 1, but her mum worked with her, never used her age purposefully as an excuse and built up her confidence a bit - look where she is now.
All kids develop at different rates, some are late bloomers, and often positions change in the class for the first few years. Their attitude to learning and school is probably going to have the biggest effect on how the child turns out. I feel sorry for those summer-borns in your son's class, their mums are doing them no favours at all with their negative attitudes.