I need a safe place to grieve and to rage for our summer-born children.

[lingle]

According to the press, Sir Jim Rose has thrown away the Government's suggestion that allowing immature summer-born children to defer their entry into reception for a year should become the norm in England as it is in Scotland.

Although DS2 is now "safe", because I have Bradford LEA's confirmation in writing that we can year-defer and start reception at 5, I am genuinely grief-stricken by this. I have campaigned for this for some time and have become every more convinced that parents need this option.

We have had contact with four health professionals in relation to DS2 now. Whatever I think of them in other respects, all four, plus the two teachers at school, have expressed strong and immediate confirmation that deferring DS2's formal education until he is 5 will fundamentally change his life chances for the better. In my view, this simple act of waiting for the child to be as ready as he can will be more valuable and save the taxpayer more money than any assessment, intervention or therapy.

As if I needed any more confirmation, the specialist early years support teacher who looks after DS2 has confirmed that her pupils consist completely disproportionately of summer-borns.

I suppose the July-August borns with mums who have followed the debate will at least benefit from understanding parents who know it is the system, not the child, that is awry, and who will shield them and remind their teachers of the issue. But the parents who don't know that 4.0 is absurdly early for so many little ones to be sitting concentrating and learning to read, write and add up will be told their child is "behind" or "struggling", if not in reception, where they can soften the blow, then in Year 1 or Year 2. From the statistics about diagnoses of ADHD, etc, it seems that there are many false positive diagnoses in summer-borns.

I feel quite sickened by this wasted opportunity. I feel angry. I feel I should have done more. I need a thread where no one says "Well mine started school at 4.0 and it's wonderful so therefore every child ought to start at 4.0". I feel safer on the SN board.

Lingle-has your son had the ADOS test? I think this is an extremely good test to distinguish between language delay and ASD. We were quite amazed by it actually- the behaviours it picked up in ds.

I think the reliability of dx varies very much across the country. It takes a very experienced professional to dx the preschoolers and you are very lucky if such a person exists in your area.

But it was a misleading title, whether or not intentionally so. "our summer born children" indicated that summer born children are in themselves a SN category. The OP then goes on to state that it is THAT which is the issue, not language delay. Coupled with the idea that it is an August birthday that leads to autism dx rather than autism, and you can see the reason for offence being taken.

Lou - agreed, it was an emotive and possibly misleading title and it's led to a rather uncomfortable discussion and unfortunately some ill feeling which I don't think anyone intended.
I think it's a real shame that there are many valid points in here which have been overshadowed. And now I think I'll just hide this thread and go off and finish my ironing!

Tclanger thanks for that
Cos mine are so comfy!!

None of us have comfy shoes!

But while what is a big issue and grief-making or whatever to one person might not be seen in the same way by someone else, that doesn't mean that their feelings aren't valid or that they need putting down.

J has autism and ADHD and a summer birthday. Had he been allowed to go to school with the children born a week after him, the social difficulties would be easier to cope with. As it is, his social difficulties are compounded by the fact that he is also the youngest and most immature pupil chronologically.

I have taught hundreds of secondary children and I can safely say that summer born boys are the ones who are disproportionately permanently excluded and into drugs. They underachieve massively, regardless of innate intelligence.

So I think it is a big issue, and, more importantly, think it should be allowed to be a big issue for someone without being put back in their place for 'only' being worried or upset about that.

You could say that we should all shut up and quit whinging because our children are not dying of starvation tonight like they are elsewhere in the world. But then nobody would ever be allowed to say a problem.

The OP may have got a bit emotive with her vocabulary but isn't this about support, not nit-picking at words?

oh I give up. you want it both ways and it is silly imo. you have adig at me for "judging" and then do it your self.
re rread the op ffs.

I didn't have a go at you for judging. Where did I do that?

I thought the title was ill-advised.
To be honest I didn't really understand the OP and what it is she is raging and grieving about. You don't have to send your child to school at 4 or ever if you don't want to.

I can see where lingle is coming from however I think the language used is a little extreme. I was about to post and say that my 11 yr ds1 b'day is also 21 aug, and started school around 4 sept at 4yrs old, and it has done her no harm whatsoever. She is extremely bright and usually top of the class, HOWEVER, 30 minutes ago I aked her to pour 2 kettles full of water into a pan for pasta (which she is eminently capable of!) and she poured them into the bolognese sauce!!!! "Its a bit full" she said! Maybe it did her more harm than I realised??(She is not SN and this was told tongue in cheek so please dont rant at me for being innappropriate!)

monstermansmum you could be talking about most teens there

Monstermansmum That is funny lol

so is your name, you wish people a mitchel christmas, divorce, stabbings and prople run over

lingle - when you have campaigned for something to no avail it's extemly frstrtrating.

If I hadn't been so upset and hasty I'm sure I would have come up with a better title and post. A case of write in haste, repent at leisure. Also, if something bad of this nature had happened in relation to my own child then I would have had my "other people have bigger problems" antennae out. It was, ironically, because I was thinking of what I consider a disastrous failure to help the country's other children who have problems similar to those of mine, rather than of my own children themselves, that I was so free with my language. I'm so sad to have made other people sad. It's ironic that people are very patient when I witter on about my own minor problems but that I caused huge offence on the sole occasion when my motives were selfless. "No good deed goes unpunished" as the saying goes. I will take more care in future.

I don't judge anyone else's case in any way but I happen to agree my problems are insignificant in comparison to those of mums whose kids have severe special needs. This is simple common sense to me.

So please don't analyse the original post any more everyone - it's not a learned essay, it's words written in haste that should have been accompanied by words signifying the appropriate audience or rewritten so as to be more appropriate for the larger audience it unfortunately went to. It doesn't bear the weight of the learned disquisitions that are being published and so long as no one dares suggest I had dark motives I'd like to stay on this board. There seem to be a few people who find my interminable ramblings helpful so it would be a shame to have to leave.

2shoes, I was so mortified that I made a bad day worse for you. All I wanted to say to you is that I wish the things that kept you awake were resolved, and I hope you can see a way forward soon. I felt like a rabbit frozen in the headlights yesterday and couldn't say it. I hope you slept better last night.

Maddeningly, I was so obsessed with my mortification over the damned thread yesterday that I forgot it was the 6th birthday of my friend's dead child. I went round with a card today but how the heck could I explain what was on my mind instead? Utterly, utterly ridiculous. I hope you all agree that analysing my poor thread title choice is a poor way to spend our time. There is a lot to learn about the relationship between birth date and SEN diagnosis and it would be great to talk about that instead.

Lastly, if anyone knows whether mumsnet can change the thread title, perhaps they could say so.

lingle you are a sweetie. People make mistakes on thread titile all the time, i did it once and the fall out was horrendous. it was the comments from others that pissed me off.
so don't worry about it.

I think there is a lot of flexibility for children with SN though.

DS1 started reception when he was 4.5 but for the first term he went twice a week for 2 hours. His entire reception year he did part time school and part time nursery (it was an utter PITA tbh). This was at mainstream, but the SLD/PMLD school he's in now takes children only part time for the reception year (they take them from age 3- but until the term after they're 5 they're part time). In fact all the children I can think of with significant SN went part time throughout reception (and most parents end up complaining about it tbh- it generates a lot of running around).

lingle, i heard about jim rose's decision on the radio and thought about your campaign and how disappointed and utterly frustrated you must feel.

it seems so odd that here in scotland there is really no problem with deferment. my ds's salt said without hesitiation that she would support his deferment request IF that is what we choose. he would then start school at 5.8 rather than 4.8. i'm not very au fait with the difference between reception year in england and p1 in scotland, i just know that i am very relieved to have the opportunity to choose when he is ready.

i don't think it is a case of wrapping a child in cotton wool or whatever, i think that if the extra year and added maturity allows a child to settle without a great deal of distress, then it is an option worth having. i stress that it should be optional since, as many have pointed out, some children benefit from an earlier start.

Thanks Ragged!! I've never seen any posts criticising or challenging the Scottish system. I think very very few people have any idea that the English system is completely out of kilter with most of the civilised world.

For kids like ours, just keeping them away from situations that are too challenging for a wee bit longer is an "early intervention". For my child, it's the very best one, I'm convinced. He's picking up vocabulary on his own now, though there are still bizarre gaps (I realised last night that he didn't understand "show me", for instance).

I'm sure little Kettle will do great - but how many little ones like Kettle junior have got mums like Kettle and schools like Kettle's school?

I don't think part-time is the answer. As Jimjams has pointed out, most parents will find it very very hard to work around a 12pm or 1pm finish so only the mums who are at home (and the tiny minority who do jobs like mine) will be able to take that up. Better to be in a quality nursery setting for another year.

My nursery manager says she thinks it's all down to funding and is very about it as she is scared that Bradford will now change its policy. She says the only silver lining is that Year 1 and Year 2 are likely to become more play-based. This should help some of the kids at least. But not the most vulnerable.

I don't understand why you can't repeat a year either. There's a little boy in our town with very significant (severe I suspect but I don't know) epilepsy and other related problems. His mum wanted him to repeat reception at mainstream but they said no and forced him into Year 1.

I've stayed away from this thread, but the English system is shocking beyond words. 4 is way too young, and I don't see the point of reception if you can elect to put your DC straight into grade 1. Surely that puts the kids who didn't do Reception at a huge disadvantage, and also the kids who did "well" in Reception (who may be bored).

I don't understand either how a child who does "badly" in a year is forced to go up a year. That does not make sense at all. When I was at school (in Australia, in my day, we started the year we turned 5), if you weren't up to it, you were "kept down".

If they did introduce some flexibility I am sure there would be a couple of disrupted years in terms of maybe not enough kids in one year, too many in another, but it would sort itself out overtime.

Lingle I am glad that your area has seen some sense for your son, just a shame it can't be nation-wide (for all children, not just those with SN).

This thread has been a real eye opener for me. (I come from abroad and don't know much about the english schooling system).
givemesleeporgivemechoc your post was very interesting.

Why on earth do schools force a child to move up a year if the child is not coping? Surely if the child doesn't have proper foundations there will not suddenly catch up in following years.

Where I come from you have tests three times a year and if you don't get a certain overall grade you have to repeat the year (all subjects not only the one you failed), regardless of your age.

sorry for the terrible typos