You Might Want to Hold Off on Enrolling in Kindergarten

For parents of preschoolers, making the decision on the perfect year to enroll their children in kindergarten is not an easy one. Parents need to really sort out their thoughts and determine options before automatically enrolling their sons and daughters in kindergarten just because they turned five – the “magical” age when schools say it’s time to enroll. 

A child’s first experience in school is an important step both for the child and his or her parents. It is the beginning of a minimum 13-year experience in a formal, academic setting. Those years will be filled with challenges, successes, failures, and ever-changing friendships. Mom and dad will watch their kiddo change from a small child to a young adult. During these years, their role as a parent will change many times, as will their kid’s needs and interests. Although a parent of a four or five year-old today knows much about their preschooler, it is very difficult to know what that little one will be like a dozen years from now, let alone a dozen months from now. 

The so-called magical age when a child is ready for kindergarten is determined by each state. The majority of states require that a student enrolling in kindergarten be five-years-old on or before September 1. Parents need to realize September is not a charmed month, and the start date for their child to step into a kindergarten classroom must not be determined by the school’s declared month but by their youngster’s unique character, maturity, and development.

In my 40 years as a Catholic school teacher and principal, I gained wisdom on this topic of kindergarten enrollment from witnessing family’s mistakes in starting their child in school too soon. Whether it showed up later in their kindergarten school year or the following years in first and second grade, academic and behavioral issues would time after time arise for the student who began kindergarten when he or she wasn’t ready. Parents would be wise to not only consider how will my young one do this coming year if we enroll him or her in kindergarten but also what might we predict will happen in the future if we start formal schooling when our child will be one of the youngest in the class or if we wait until our child will be one of the oldest. 

Even though they are technically eligible to enroll in kindergarten by turning five by September 1 (or that state’s official start date), more and more children nowadays are held back a year before their parents enroll them in kindergarten. Waiting a year is more likely to happen with boys, as they usually mature less slowly than girls. The trend to hold back students has created classrooms where a number of students end up being older than six on the first day of class. Knowing this, parents need to ask themselves if their tyke will do well with classmates who at least 12 months and possibly 18+ months older. One question is, “Will our child find compatible peers in the class year we are considering enrolling?”

If they want their kindergartener to start in the fall as a young five-year-old with many classmates already six going on seven, parents need to pull out their crystal ball to look a few years into the future. Their child will be exposed at an earlier age to the adolescent issues his or her classmates are experiencing. Mom and dad need to be okay with the fact their child will be hearing about their peers’ interest in the opposite sex and seeing their peers experience puberty a year or so before their own kid is mentally and emotionally ready to deal with these transformations. A similar issue parents need to realize is there will be an impact on future participation in sports with a son or daughter who is a year younger than teammates and thus may be smaller and less physically developed. This might lead to both a lack of success in athletics and also a safety concern. 

Over the years, besides counseling prospective kindergarten parents who were considering enrolling their kids who would be turning five as late as August 31, I also had parents who were petitioning for an early-entrance exception of their young one whose fifth birthday wouldn’t occur until October or later. In both cases – whether a summer or a fall birthday five-year-old – I would ask mom and dad why they were so anxious to start their child in formal schooling, knowing he or she would be the youngest in the class. Some of the unconvincing reasons I was given included:

• “School is cheaper/better than daycare.”
• “My child can read already.”
• “All my peer-friends are starting their kids this fall, and I don’t want to be the odd one out.”

For those parents, the counseling involved getting them to see the advantages of waiting another year before starting kindergarten. However, when parents shared some of the following, more credible and compelling reasons, we often decided together that starting as the youngest or one of the youngest in class has more positives than negatives:

• “My child shows a strong interest in ‘school-like activities’ and already demonstrates strong academic skills such as telling time, performing mental addition and subtraction, and writing sentences.”
• “My child has already developed fine-motor skills such as drawing, coloring, and using scissors with good precision.”
• “My child can read at a first grade level and can predict cause and effect when listening to stories.”
• “My child has been successful in and exhibited positive social skills in group experiences such as gymnastics class and fulltime preschool.”

A boy or girl who will most likely be successful as a younger-enrolling kindergartner is one balanced in all the various areas of development: social-emotional, physical, and intellectual. A young one who has so far only showed success in one area of development but still comes across as lacking in other areas is often not ready for kindergarten. 

One common case is a child who shows intellectual maturity, such as the ability to read or do math, but is immature in social skills and/or motor skill development. This type of youngster will most likely benefit from waiting until age six before formally starting their K-12 career and spending the next 12 months with continuing preschool education, be it in a traditional preschool classroom or with homeschooling lessons.

During this “bonus” year of preschool experiences as a five-year-old, the kid will most likely flourish not just with more practice in preschool education but by participating in group settings like swimming lessons and art classes so to enhance social and motor skills. Most notably, this bonus year of more preschool experiences is giving the child the “gift of time.” God uniquely develops each of his children, and when a youngster’s parents decide to wait a year before kindergarten enrollment, it might just be they listened to God saying, “Give your little one another year of growing and blossoming.”

Finally, parents over the years have sometimes told me they desperately want their too-young or too-immature preschooler to start kindergarten for the sole reason that it will be heart-breaking to have to tell their child they can’t begin that September. These parents have already talked up with their youngster the excitement of starting kindergarten in the fall with their best friend or at the school their older sibling has already been attending. They would rather their young one begin formal schooling when they actually weren’t ready than to have to disappoint their kiddo by declaring one more year of preschool activities. 

Of course, it would have been better in the first place had these parents not discussed specifics of their child’s school entrance date until they were sure of the best placement. However, if the kid was previously told this would be the fall to start and now the parents are having second thoughts and want to wait another year, they need to switch gears and start talking up the fun experiences their son or daughter will have by staying home another year, going to preschool one more year, and/or starting new classes such as gymnastics, swimming, or art. They need to explain the reality that a few children enter kindergarten as mature 4-year-olds and some at age 5, but many begin at 6 years. A youngster cannot be given the “power” to decide if he or she will begin kindergarten. That is the parents’ decision to make, with consultation from the current preschool teacher, the future kindergarten teacher, and the future school’s principal. 

Deciding when to enroll a child in kindergarten is a pivotal decision that should not be based on what peers are doing, daycare costs, or the little guy’s wishes.  Mom and dad must consider their son’s or daughter’s maturity, academic readiness, and future implications, as they decide what is best for their child without simply automatically enrolling because their kid had a birthday just prior to the government-determined, kindergarten cut-off month. Parents need to be open to the possibility that holding back for a year might just be the best choice, offering a gift for their kiddo to have an extra year of “ripening” so that there will be a better chance for success in kindergarten and the school years that follow.