Remind me to write a letter to the authors of What to Expect When You're Expecting. I want to ask them to add another chapter—specifically, one that addresses women who conceived between October and March. Because along with mood swings and food cravings, they can expect the added benefit, four years hence, of crippling anxiety over whether to send their child to kindergarten the year he turns 5 or the year he turns 6.
My son, Eddie, was born August 28. What I initially thought of as a perfect birthday—summer parties!—turned sour as I realized that even though the cutoff for kindergarten in California, where I live, is December 3, the point really isn't to "make" the deadline but to reach the age many, many months before it.
The cutoff date is antiquated, many believe, as kindergarten's curriculum has become so amped up nationwide that it's been dubbed "the new first grade." A Harvard study published this summer in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, which concluded that holding a kid back has no proven long-term benefit, nonetheless noted a trend: In 1968, 96 percent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in first grade or above; today that number has dropped to 84 percent. Kindergarten's not just playtime anymore—it's academic, so your kid had better be ready to take on reading and writing, homework, and standardized testing.
Larry Garf, a professor of childhood development at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California, says the aging of kindergarten needs to happen, given the advancing curriculum. For three years, he's been giving a lecture titled "Hey, Quit Pushing!" in which he states that, though your child may be smart, motivated, and well adjusted, the demanding expectations of public schools may make her feel the opposite. As bright as she is, she may not be ready to do writing drills. Garf is also fond of pointing out that kids in many countries with very high literacy rates—Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway—don't start formal reading till age 7.
More and more parents are subscribing to this theory and "redshirting" their kids (waiting a year to enroll them). Holding back, goes the general wisdom, lets a kid start on top of the heap rather than on the bottom, self-esteem squarely intact, with the social skills, attention span, and height to prove it. But where do I stand? Start Eddie now, when he's likely to be smaller and less mature than many of his classmates, and he may end up with low self-esteem. Redshirt him and he's more likely to be bigger—but also bored by material he's already mastered. I changed my mind every day leading up to decision time.
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