Savvy Toddler Mom

For all those people that I told about this article and meant to send them the link, here it is.  This fascinating article by Elizabeth Weil from the New York Times, “When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?” about what the kindergarten cut-off date does for older and younger children kept me reading to the very end of page six. 

What a dilemma!  The toot’s birthday falls just a couple of months after Utah’s kindergarten deadline, August 31st.  Even still, it’s a problem that affects everyone, as children share a classroom and their interaction is part of the school experience.

I am of the opinion that Weil states on page 6: “the reality that individual children will always mature at different rates.”  However, it is terrifying to think that sending a younger child to kindergarten too early will doom the rest of their academic years.  Yikes.  They will never catch up, she says.  It’s a problem.

I was especially interested in this topic, not only as a mother with kindergarteners in my future, but also as someone that skipped kindergarten.  I’m not sure of the specifics, but I do remember taking some sort of test and then being escorted to the first grade classroom.  I was five years old and wouldn’t be six for another four months.  I did just fine… at least, I think so.  My biggest complaint was that I couldn’t drive or date until half way through my junior year of high school.  Oh, well.  I survived.  I graduated at 17, went to college, graduated again at 21 (with honors, no less), got a job and got married.

I joke now that since I skipped kindergarten, I’m still trying to catch up on nap time.

So, again, my take on it is that all children are different.  I think it is a heavy responsibility, then, for us to know our children well enough — and be educated enough about what is involved — to make an intelligent decision for them.  It could change their lives forever.

Also, reading to them every day wouldn’t hurt either.