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Ready for Kindergarten, Here I Come - or Not
By Dr. Cathy Moser
Unfortunately, one of the best decision making rules in planning for our children's future is the Hindsight is 20-20 Rule. Fortunately, we can learn from the experiences of others. Most often, by the time I get to see children with academic problems it is by the time they've hit Grades Three to Twelve or beyond. Many times their parents tell me that they had a gut instinct that their child was not ready for Kindergarten when they were four or five. This is mostly the case with boys, as they mature slower than girls in the early years. The frequency is even higher for boys or girls who were born in December or November. If a child is immature and born in the later part of the year, they can be developmentally behind some of their January birthday classmates by almost a year. Outside of academic skill development, the gap of almost a year can present other challenges: the ability to relate on the same playing field as their older peers; self-esteem issues that result if your child compares themselves to their peers; and, the tendency to progressively fall farther and farther behind the grade if your child is slower to develop early academic skills. In the United States, parents in some regions frequently hold their children back so that they will be more mature and competitive when it comes to sports, or the marks necessary for acceptance at University. In Winnipeg, this is thankfully not the case. Parents are much more sensible. However, even if the instinct is to hold back, we are often encouraged to place children in Kindergarten, even if they do not seem ready. Just remember, if you push for having your child stay back, you can usually delay entry the year.
If I could convey one thing and one thing only about your role as a parent, it is this. Ultimately, you are the case manager of your child's life - whether it be academic, medical, or otherwise. Teachers and Physicians have thousands of patients; you have only one or two or three (or even a few more) children. You have your children for the rest of your life; your child's teacher has them for one year. So it is up to you to be their advocate, and to try to make the decisions that are right for your child. How can you make informed decisions if you are not an educator? Well, you have to take the advice of the experts -.and then, make the decision that you feel is best for your child. I liken this process to other areas of our lives - we rely on our Physicians, Accountants, etc. to make good decisions for us, because we haven't gone to school for years to study those areas. We try to choose professionals that we feel are competent, and to then follow their advice. However, at the end of the day - we are ultimately responsible for making the decisions and living with the consequences. If our accountant makes a mistake in our tax return, Revenue Canada doesn't go after them for money. If our Physician makes an error in diagnosis, they do not wind up getting sick - we do. So, we must try to become educated consumers and ask the right questions. And, if we trust our professionals and they have answered our questions, then the best that we can do is to accept the path they recommend - until experience proves us wrong. And then, we start the process over again - until we get it right.
To translate the philosophy I just espoused to the process of deciding whether your child is ready for Kindergarten - it would be like this. I will give you some guidelines about what you might want to consider if your gut instinct tells you that your child may not be ready. You will consult with the teachers, and if your gut is still queasy, you will want to consult with another type of professional (e.g., a Pediatrician; daycare workers if your child goes to a daycare, a Psychologist, or an Educational Consultant). You will then base your decision on the information you obtain from the professionals. If your child goes through Kindergarten and it is painfully obvious that you should have waited the extra year, you have a back-up plan. You can advocate for retention in Kindergarten. Research has shown that Kindergarten is one of the only years that retention is a good choice. However, retention in Kindergarten is not as good a decision as holding your child back from school entry because of the self-esteem consequences of retention. So let's walk through the decision tree that we should be considering.
First, if your child is on par with their peers in areas of physical maturity, social and emotional maturity, and academic development (cutting, color naming, letter recognition), go no farther - they are likely ready. Even if they do not have all of the Kindergarten Readiness skills, they will probably develop them over the course of the next few years. Remember, most boys develop more slowly than girls, and there are some long term disadvantages to holding children back that must be weighed against the benefits. For example, if your child is bright and develops quickly once they are at school, they may become bored. When they start to play sports, they will be placed with children in the grade level above them. This will mean that they will not be on teams with their peers, and the questions asked by their peers about why this is so might have some self-esteem consequences.
On the either side of the decision tree branch are the options to consider if your child is not physically, academically, socially, or emotionally mature. Some of the academic skills that you should look at include: speaking in complete sentences of five to six words; recognition of some letters; the ability to pay attention for at least ten minutes and to follow short directions; and, color recognition (although if your child is a boy and someone on mom's side is color blind, your child might very well be color blind). Some of the social factors include cooperation with adult authority figures, the ability to get along with peers, and the beginnings of interactive play. Some of the emotional factors include the ability to separate from parents (while some crying can be expected with some children, crying throughout the morning is not a good sign); emotional regulation and the ability to limit meltdowns and to control tantrums.
If your child does not have many of the above skills, and is a December baby, I would suggest that you consider holding your child back the year. The decision is important enough to consult with at least one professional. Now is the time to start the process. Even if you still decide to put your child in Kindergarten, you can be assured that you have made the best choice that you can make based on the information available to you. And that, my friend, is the best that we can do as parents who do not own the instruction manual for the unique child that we have been entrusted to care for.
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Ready for Kindergarten, Here I Come - or Not
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