10 ms·

Study: Kids whose parents hold them back from school a year have advantages

128 points by dsr12 10y ago

psyc 10y ago
My parents sent me to school 1.5, really 2, years early. I can confirm I'm not particularly successful. The factors in Malcolm Gladwell's hockey story apply to everything, not just sports.
- varenc 10y ago
  need more data points!
  - z3t4 10y ago
    when looking at sports. those that are almost one year older perform better. ex someone born 1 january vs someone born 31 december competing against each other because they are born on the same year. you see this high up in ages. it would suprise me if one year of extra development wouldnt affect academic performance too. i know all kids are different but on avarega just a few month can make a difference, especially at young age
- snowpanda 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat, sent 2 years early, school was terrible. I'm doing ok now but school was a nightmare.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  I'm so glad my parents decided to send me to school (a lackluster public high school in the rural midwest with asbestos and underqualified teachers that hated their jobs) a year later, I _hated_ school, and enjoying one more year of a normal childhood was all the more valuable. When I finally got to school, I was bored out of my mind though. I taught myself how to read, and my classmates were still sounding out words at a painfully slow pace. I could solve addition problems mentally, and my classmates were counting with their fingers. I finished the worksheets right away (within 30 seconds), and my classmates couldn't tell basic shapes apart in the fifteen minutes of time they had to do the worksheet. My IQ was tested at above the 0.1% percentile, and the school refused to identify me as academically gifted so that they wouldn't have to spend the money (as obligated by the state for "gifted students") on enriching me, so the administration "trained" the teachers to say that I was bright but not gifted. It eventually came down to my parents having to threaten them with a (no contest) lawsuit because there was such a disparity in the results of the IQ test that my school gave me and the IQ test that a local, nationally renowned psychologist gave me. Of course, I had to sit around and wait for my classmates to "catch up," and the teachers wouldn't even let me read other books or get ahead. Some of the stories we read had Spanish translations, so I learned the Spanish. I'd literally just tap my foot and watch the clock go from 8 AM to 3 PM every day. Terrible. They wouldn't even give me more books to read (how hard is it to just toss six year-old me a book and let me go "off task"?).
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    What a sad story. Schools excel at pulling the highs down to average and fail at pulling the lows up to average. I've seen so many examples of this by now I'm happily surprised every time there is a contrary one.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      What sticks out to me from all these stories, and ones I've heard before, is that maybe 20-35 kids to a class and annual changes to curriculum aren't necessarily the optimal learning environment. There's nothing special about a year for human development, it's just a common long-term time measurement. If instead of measuring academic achievement by years we measured it in 90 day periods (quarters), would that not possibly solve a lot of the problems presented here? You wouldn't have to worry about getting your child into school early or waiting for the next year, and possibly paying thousands of more dollars for daycare or preschool where it's not subsidized (and that does factor into a great many people's decision making process), and if your child got held back, they wouldn't be a full year behind everyone else. It seems odd that we still let nature dictate the schedule to this degree, and that so little thought seems to go into why.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        This is something I wonder about in a much more general way. So many things we take for granted are dependent on planetary orbits and lunar cycles that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Our whole sense of time is so steeped in accident and tradition that hardly anybody ever stops to ask questions such as 'why is it that we get paid per week or per month' and 'why is it that the earth revolving around the sun once' makes X, Y or Z happen which is not related at all? The degree to which accidental items shape our economies and perceptions is odd, to say the least.
  - aianus 10y ago
    Just FYI, percentile is the percentage of people lower than you not higher. So someone really smart would be in the 99th percentile of IQ and someone really stupid would be in the 1st percentile.
rhapsodic 10y ago
For two of my children, my spouse and I decided to send them early because they missed the cutoff by a few months. Our reasoning was, we could either give them an extra year of preschool childhood, or post-school adulthood, and we decided the latter was more valuable. From an academic standpoint, both children were able to excel. There was no question they were smart enough to start school. But one child was shy, and not socially adept. And I think we made a mistake with that one. That child is the smarter of the two, but is not doing so great as an adult. The other was both socially and intellectually gifted as a preschool child. That child is still in high school, and is thriving both academically and socially, and has very specific, ambitious goals for college and career. Gender indicators in this post have been left out deliberately. I realize they could be germane to the discussion, but I left them out for the sake of privacy.
- nemonemo 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing your story. Last year, I and my wife deliberately decided to minimize applications to schools with my kid who seems to have similar social/academic tendency as your first one. We applied one school where such kids could also be thriving, and ended up not getting accepted. She would need to go to a school this year, and within a year, my kid became much more mature than a year before, and we & people around her think the delay was probably good for her. Just wanted to add my anecdote.
- barking 10y ago
  I think that the fact that one of your children was naturally shy is the real issue. Shy people tend to have difficulties that non-shy people don't have. I could be wrong of course, but that's what I believe, as a shy person who on account of my birthday started school about a later than average. I also have siblings who are utterly different to me and who are high achievers etc.
  - ErrantX 10y ago
    I think its more nuanced than that. I am very shy, but I think have done okay largely through being ambitious, which cut through shyness at key times. A lot of people I work with are the same story I think
mkagenius 10y ago
How about a hack -- start the KG late, but later skip the 7th grade?
anothercomment 10y ago
I seem to remember reading that while the younger kids were disadvantaged during school, they made up for it later and overtook their peers. Presumably because they were used to working harder.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  Unless they become accustomed to doing poorly and internalize failure.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    Sure, it seems a lot could go wrong. Unfortunately I could not readily find the article in question again (damn you, Firefox bookmarks manager). Instead I found one in German that said kids who are schooled at a younger age have a significantly higher rate of ADD diagnoses, suggesting they are being misdiagnosed because of their younger age.
cmrdporcupine 10y ago
Biggest mistake I made as a parent was sending my late-birthday (October) daughter to all day junior kindergarten here in Ontario before she was 4. The gov't has switched the program here to all day, and Ontario has an unusually early start for kindergarten (3.5-4). She was intellectually way beyond her peers (reading at 3) but emotionally and physically unable to handle the no-naps, no-hugs, lining-up, sitting-still atmosphere of a public school. She would have been better off with another year of her daycare centre.
- kbenson 10y ago
  That interesting, in Northern California where I am it seems like preschool is not much different than daycare, other than they also try to do some educational segments. For example, my children went to a daycare and preschool combination school, where they moved them to a different "class" each year (much less formal, named dragonfly, butterfly and firefly classes), and the closer they got to kindergarten, the more education material they would include (usually just letter/number recognition). That said, it was still a very relaxed, environment, and they still took naps, got hugs, etc.
  - cmrdporcupine 10y ago
    Yeah this is a full public school kindergarten, inside a public school. It's not a preschool, but a school. I'm not a fan of it, but for lower income families it may actually be a god-send.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      My mistake, I misread it as preschool. Yes, kindergarten here is more structured and in the public system (and is what preschool is supposed to ease them into). For my youngest, we were lucky to get in on a pilot program to pre-kindergarten (transitional kindergarten), which they offered for children that missed the age cutoff by 3-4 months. It was still offered by the public school, but was in-between preschool and kindergarten in activities. The length is still short though, as is normal kindergarten, so they're only at school for about 5 hours.
rlkf 10y ago
These kind of studies tend to be riddled with methological errors. For instance, one of them found (as usual) that autumn-borns had lower grades than spring-borns. However, once adjusting for the parent's education level, the results were opposite.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  This is for me, the big issue and the reason why these kinds of studies have begun to just fly under my radar. When a couple of decades of "research" in various fields adds up to, "Flip a coin, any coin..." something is off. Mind you, any attempt to bring this up to people involved is met with more than just hostility, and usually a mixture of exasperated condescension and and accusations of unfair standards. If you press, it usually comes down to, "Doing the best we can," which is nice for gymnastics, but less so for published research.
  - prolly_a_moron 10y ago
    >If you press, it usually comes down to, "Doing the best we can," which is nice for gymnastics, but less so for published research. If "doing the best we can" is too low of a standard for research, then it's all garbage. Yes, there are many problems with some of the research out there, but you deal with it, not ignore it all. The purpose is to reduce uncertainty, not "get the right answer".
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      You're absolutely preaching to the choir here, but I don't know how to communicate that sentiment to people for whom it isn't gospel, without them getting really huffy about it. Being gentle doesn't help, they're too defensive most of the time.
    - im3w1l 10y ago
      Doing-the-best-we-can science is valuable. But we should be careful about turning it into policy. I'd rather stick with tradition than very uncertain science.
coss 10y ago
not surprising, very similar to Gladwell's hypothesis about star hockey players being born in the months of January - February. Students a year older than other students have a huge competitive advantage.
- watwut 10y ago
  It would be interesting to see whether the advantage of being 12 months older is higher in sport then in grades or vice versa.
- prolly_a_moron 10y ago
  Especially in the early years of life, when the 11 month difference between a January baby and December baby in a class might be 1/5 to 1/10 of the child's life. That's a huge advantage, physically, intellectually and socially, for the older child.
nhumrich 10y ago
Personally, I am glad I went a year early. It means I started college a year early, and was ahead of all my peers by that point in time. I pushed hard in school, and I finished and entered the work force really early, jump-starting my career. All that even with taking two years off in the middle of my college years.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  What is the benefit of starting your career "early"? What happens in the "end"?
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    If skip enough years of school, you can graduate college early and start your career at only 20, and then you don't have to go to happy hour with your colleagues.
  - joefourier 10y ago
    In general, programmers (and similar individuals) do not have the best experiences during elementary and high school. Why wouldn't you want to get to the stage where you have freedom to make your own decisions, to control how you spend your time, to earn and spend your own income, as quickly as possible?
- prolly_a_moron 10y ago
  >All that even with taking two years off in the middle of my college years. How has any of this made you better off? You make it sound as if "taking two years off" in your late teens/early twenties is a major issue. Personally, I wish I would have seen more of the world after high school and before college.
rednerrus 10y ago
Won't the advantage be gone once everyone is doing this?
- gist 10y ago
  It will. Probably what will happen then is people trying to game the birth month to have the oldest child in a particular year. By 'game' I simply mean planning the birth in a way that attempts to get it at the right time, if possible.
- giarc 10y ago
  It's like what Malcolm Gladwell said about hockey. A lot of good players are born earlier in the year. When they start playing, they are the oldest and the biggest of the group, and therefore can excel. Same with school, the Jan-Apr babies are just that much more ahead and it continues throughout school. If everyone pushed back a year, those same early babies would still have the same advantage.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  The advantage may not be entirely relative. Some may be absolute. If everybody starts school at six instead of five, nobody will have an "advantage" but everybody will do better.
  - sitkack 10y ago
    So you are saying we could be starting school too soon. Or maybe school crushes the soul before it has had a chance to form.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  Yeah, the end game is to have our kids start kindergarten at age 23. Imagine the head start! They'll just dominate the other toddlers! (See Kramer in Dojo as the obligatory Seinfeld reference)
- icc97 10y ago
  Yes, but your kids get the advantage until everyone else does the same
ThomPete 10y ago
There are no rules, there isnt even a proper definition of being successful.
Spooky23 10y ago
I always thought it would be interesting to look at birthdate and correlate against other items. Based on news stories and personal observation in various datasets, there is a lot more sex going on in the holiday season and dead of winter, as births spike July-September. Late night activity starts slowing down in February. I've always been curious if kids born in these peaks get less attention, are more likely to be unplanned, less likely to breastfeed, are more miserable in the heat, etc. Birthdate heatmap: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145471/How-common-birthday-Chart-reveals-date-rates.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145471/How-common...
wordpressdev 10y ago
When I started schooling, parents used to send kids to school at around 4 years. Now, kids see teachers as early as 1 and half years of age. This is ridiculous. We did an experiment and sent our youngest to school when she was 5 years old. She was home schooled using some apps and books - in her own time and depending on her mood. Now, her teacher says she's one of the brightest in the class, a quick learner filled with creativity.
- mistermann 10y ago
  Can you recommend any good apps/books/websites for home schooling? I'd very much like to find a (paid, preferably) website that has excellent video presentations followed by exercises and tests.
  - wordpressdev 10y ago
    I used a number of free apps for pre-schoolers available on Google Play Store to teach basic English skills (words, rhymes, counting) and simple maths. Haven't bought anything fancy.
joveian 10y ago
See also When Less Is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/wh...
- dboreham 10y ago
  Worth noting that TFA does not actually say what the headline says. Rather it talks about teaching less _Arithmetic_. This is something I've thought would be a good plan throughout my kids progress through the elementary and middle school phases. I'd try teaching algebra much earlier, in place of all the Arithmetic that can be done with a computer, and needs some knowledge of algebra to understand anyway.
artur_makly 10y ago
our toddler is in Montessori 3hrs a day. mixed with kids that are 1yr younger and 1 yr older. its the sweetest spot.
uptownfunk 10y ago
As someone about to have a kid this is quite interesting. My personal experience - I took a break from college for a few years (well, five) and when I came back I felt more emotionally and socially mature than I was when I first joined. I was also older than all the kids using college as their first out-of-house explore-the-world experience. It made my whole experience that much more rich and enjoyable and worthwhile. I think it's important for kids to learn the fundamentals in school correctly. If delaying my kid a year helps them feel and be more mature and adept to handle school, I'm for it, and maybe I'll also give them that gap year or two after high school to see the world and explore it a bit before they get ready to tackle the books in college. I think another dimension of this whole thing does boil down to the natural nature and tendencies of the child. Would also recommend everyone to watch "The Beginning of Life" on Netflix if you haven't already, a very eye-opening perspective on kids, education, and how living situations differ for kids around the world, very eye-opening.
commieneko 10y ago
I seem to fall into both categories. I started kindergarten at age 4 and went three years; my mother used a private kindergarten as a kind of daycare. I started first grade at age 7. I learned to read in first grade almost instantly and was reading children's novels, not picture books, in just a few months. My brother, by contrast, who followed the same academic path, taught himself to read around age 4 by looking at comic books that I was buying. (This was all in the early '60s.) Academically I did so-so. Less of a problem with ability than boredom. I got into a good college solely on my standardized test scores. In college I had a B average. One advantage that I remember from being a year older than my classmates was that I was considerably larger. I was large for my age, and a year older to boot. Despite being bookish and a nerd, before that was considered a good thing, no one would mess with me. Plus I went to kindergarten with, and was friends with kids that were up to two years older. A lot of that faded away as we all got older and the differences evened out. But the main advantage, in retrospect is that I always considered my self an outlier. I didn't need peer support to be interested in things and didn't really care much about what everyone around me was doing. I expected to do the unexpected. I got into computers and computer graphics in the late '70s when no one had even heard of such a thing. I was playing with the internet long before it became a thing, or was even very useful. I started my own business a year out of school was doing entrepreneur type things until I hit forty. (A downside is that I would often get bored with something _before_ it became a thing, and would have moved on to the new shiny before something got viable.) These days I'm involved in education, university level and adult education, and it's interesting to see the mix in student's ages at the other end of the education cycle. Older students, especially those that have been out of school for a while, are much more motivated and serious about their subjects. I suspect there is quite a bit of selection bias here, as those not serious aren't likely to try and get more education. But I also see some younger students who are delighted to suddenly be in a place where they can take their education seriously and stretch their abilities.
icc97 10y ago
Reminds me of the 90s UK sci-fi comedy series "Red Dwarf" and the bitter cowardly Rimmer whose alternate reality self was held back a year in school and now is a daring, heroic test-pilot [0]. [0]: http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Ace_Rimmer
- aaron695 10y ago
  Very off topic, but it's still coming out. The was a season released late last year.
pagnol 10y ago
> They taught multiplication, but none of them knew that multiplication is used to find the area of a rectangle. Their most common guess was that you add the length and the width to get the area. Am I the only one reminded of fizz-buzz by this sentence?
faragon 10y ago
Advantages, and... disadvantages? I would like to know if there are disadvantages as well, e.g. less social skills, etc.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
The huge elephant in the room is the our education system isn't built or designed to be in the best interest of children. School does a few things very well - it frees parents from needing to be available for their children during working hours, it conditions students to accept obedience-based hierarchies, and it makes it much easier for bureaucracies to interact with the public as a whole. None of these are central needs of children. If holding your children back for one year is good, how about twelve?
- tmsldd 10y ago
  Totally agree... there is a misunderstanding about the problem. In fact, the education system is not flexible enough to adapt to the children's mental age. And, therefore the education system as it is designed is causing damage to a group of students. A solution might be delay 1 year to enroll the children. Another solution is to subdivide the admission to 2 or 4 times per year or ideally grouping students by maturity level and personalized education.. but I guess the cost might be prohibitive.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Why are we age segregating in the first place? Most of what that does is make it easier to administer a classroom, manage the teacher responsible for it, and develop a standard syllabus for it.
    - tmsldd 10y ago
      Indeed, a better solution ;)
- UweSchmidt 10y ago
  Most people are in no position to teach their kids appropriately. If you have a highly motivated, well educated stay-at-home parent it can work great of course. Otherwise, yes, there is incredible untapped human potential wasted in today's schools, unfortunately.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
They had my interest until they quoted the Gladwell Hockey spec. Maturity and age are correlated but not causal. I could easily believe that success in school is strongly correlated with maturity (I have observed that students that are less mature than their peers are disciplined more often and teased by their peers, both have a strong correlation with poor scholastic achievement) and that children whose maturity is lagging their peers, will do better if they are only started in school when their maturity supports it, however I have also observed that children seem to be maturing at later and later ages. Given the preponderance of evidence of children in the 19th and 20th century demonstrating much higher levels of responsibility and maturity at a younger age[1] it seems that there is more at work here than just 'age.' Finally, in the study[2] doesn't break it down across socio-economic groups rather, from their abstract : " We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size = -0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement" I'm going to guess that the physical number of years a person has at the start of their school career is not as big an impact on whether or not they have self control issues as the parenting impact on the first 5 - 6 years of their life. [1] It is also possible that immature children in the 19th and early 20th century simply died early. [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610
anotheryou 10y ago
I whished I would have been with older classmates, I connected much better with those a year ahead. I also was boored from the 2nd year of elemantary school onwards. However I don't remember the extra kindergarden year and how nice it probably was compared to school. I'd guess this was more important, but I'm not sure. After all it's 1 year (an important year though, becuase childhood is so very important), against 13 years that might have been better. Finishing school a year earlier I don't see as a benefit. It took me extra year after school to really know what to do further anyways.
glangdale 10y ago
Ugh. We have lots of people in our area into the whole red-shirting thing, where parents send their kids later and later, then bitch about kindergarten not being 'academic' enough for their enormous child who is 1-2 years older than the other kids. I seem to recall that most studies show the advantage of this practice fades over the years. As the article suggests, class is heavily correlated here with the practice (more likely to be able to afford another year of childcare).
pfarnsworth 10y ago
Both my wife and I skipped a grade in elementary school. Neither of us had any issues and were both successful academically as well as in our careers. I was both the class clown and a frequent bully (not something I'm proud of) so being a year younger than everyone didn't make me less social or vocal. I met someone who was the youngest in his grade and he wished he was held back. I think it definitely depends on the individual.
dba7dba 10y ago
Read an article about NHL players with late birthdays few years ago. Majority of NHL players have late birthdays. It means kids that are just slightly older than teammates by just a few months have advantage over early birthday team mates. This advantage helps them advance over younger ones (just by a few months) through their young hockey career and eventually to NHL career.
- ec109685 10y ago
  Or athletically minded parents tend to have children on certain months. Correlation is not causation.
  - npunt 10y ago
    Both arguments are not equally plausible though. The argument for the compounding effects of physical advantage relative to peers is a lot stronger than the supposition that parents would happen to have children on certain months.
    - ec109685 10y ago
      Unless you conduct a study where you divide peer groups blindly and send some early and send some later, it is just a (educated) guess this is the reason. Otherwise, you can just walk trough data sets until you find one that meets your conclusion.
  - dba7dba 10y ago
    Here's the article about higher percentage of NHL players having earlier birthdays. https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favour-of-players-born-earlier-in-the-year/c-657724 https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favo...
dragonwriter 10y ago
How much of this is being held back a year, and how much is “parents who actively make a non-default education choice are, on average, more engaged overall in their child's education, providing advantages”?
tvanantwerp 10y ago
My mother taught 1st grade for 30 years. I had a late birthday, and she made sure I waited a year. Her anecdotal experience from teaching was that the late-birthday kids who came in early weren't ready for school and often did worse / behaved worse.
bahmboo 10y ago
It could also be an indicator of the parents inability to discern what is best for the child. It can be a tough call but it should be a decision based on the characteristics of the child. I would never fault any reasonable parent on the choice. Statistics and all, it's 20/20 hindsight.
mattbgates 10y ago
My mom held me back in kindergarten. I don't remember, but she says the school told her I wasn't "mentally" at the educational level that the other children were at. I could be upset about it, but I don't think it ruined my life or anything. Graduated high school at age 18.

128 points by dsr12 10y ago

psyc 10y ago

My parents sent me to school 1.5, really 2, years early. I can confirm I'm not particularly successful. The factors in Malcolm Gladwell's hockey story apply to everything, not just sports.

varenc 10y ago
need more data points!
- z3t4 10y ago
  when looking at sports. those that are almost one year older perform better. ex someone born 1 january vs someone born 31 december competing against each other because they are born on the same year. you see this high up in ages. it would suprise me if one year of extra development wouldnt affect academic performance too. i know all kids are different but on avarega just a few month can make a difference, especially at young age
snowpanda 10y ago
I'm in the same boat, sent 2 years early, school was terrible. I'm doing ok now but school was a nightmare.
Hydraulix989 10y ago
I'm so glad my parents decided to send me to school (a lackluster public high school in the rural midwest with asbestos and underqualified teachers that hated their jobs) a year later, I _hated_ school, and enjoying one more year of a normal childhood was all the more valuable. When I finally got to school, I was bored out of my mind though. I taught myself how to read, and my classmates were still sounding out words at a painfully slow pace. I could solve addition problems mentally, and my classmates were counting with their fingers. I finished the worksheets right away (within 30 seconds), and my classmates couldn't tell basic shapes apart in the fifteen minutes of time they had to do the worksheet. My IQ was tested at above the 0.1% percentile, and the school refused to identify me as academically gifted so that they wouldn't have to spend the money (as obligated by the state for "gifted students") on enriching me, so the administration "trained" the teachers to say that I was bright but not gifted. It eventually came down to my parents having to threaten them with a (no contest) lawsuit because there was such a disparity in the results of the IQ test that my school gave me and the IQ test that a local, nationally renowned psychologist gave me. Of course, I had to sit around and wait for my classmates to "catch up," and the teachers wouldn't even let me read other books or get ahead. Some of the stories we read had Spanish translations, so I learned the Spanish. I'd literally just tap my foot and watch the clock go from 8 AM to 3 PM every day. Terrible. They wouldn't even give me more books to read (how hard is it to just toss six year-old me a book and let me go "off task"?).
- jacquesm 10y ago
  What a sad story. Schools excel at pulling the highs down to average and fail at pulling the lows up to average. I've seen so many examples of this by now I'm happily surprised every time there is a contrary one.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    What sticks out to me from all these stories, and ones I've heard before, is that maybe 20-35 kids to a class and annual changes to curriculum aren't necessarily the optimal learning environment. There's nothing special about a year for human development, it's just a common long-term time measurement. If instead of measuring academic achievement by years we measured it in 90 day periods (quarters), would that not possibly solve a lot of the problems presented here? You wouldn't have to worry about getting your child into school early or waiting for the next year, and possibly paying thousands of more dollars for daycare or preschool where it's not subsidized (and that does factor into a great many people's decision making process), and if your child got held back, they wouldn't be a full year behind everyone else. It seems odd that we still let nature dictate the schedule to this degree, and that so little thought seems to go into why.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      This is something I wonder about in a much more general way. So many things we take for granted are dependent on planetary orbits and lunar cycles that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Our whole sense of time is so steeped in accident and tradition that hardly anybody ever stops to ask questions such as 'why is it that we get paid per week or per month' and 'why is it that the earth revolving around the sun once' makes X, Y or Z happen which is not related at all? The degree to which accidental items shape our economies and perceptions is odd, to say the least.
- aianus 10y ago
  Just FYI, percentile is the percentage of people lower than you not higher. So someone really smart would be in the 99th percentile of IQ and someone really stupid would be in the 1st percentile.

rhapsodic 10y ago

For two of my children, my spouse and I decided to send them early because they missed the cutoff by a few months. Our reasoning was, we could either give them an extra year of preschool childhood, or post-school adulthood, and we decided the latter was more valuable. From an academic standpoint, both children were able to excel. There was no question they were smart enough to start school. But one child was shy, and not socially adept. And I think we made a mistake with that one. That child is the smarter of the two, but is not doing so great as an adult. The other was both socially and intellectually gifted as a preschool child. That child is still in high school, and is thriving both academically and socially, and has very specific, ambitious goals for college and career. Gender indicators in this post have been left out deliberately. I realize they could be germane to the discussion, but I left them out for the sake of privacy.

nemonemo 10y ago
Thank you for sharing your story. Last year, I and my wife deliberately decided to minimize applications to schools with my kid who seems to have similar social/academic tendency as your first one. We applied one school where such kids could also be thriving, and ended up not getting accepted. She would need to go to a school this year, and within a year, my kid became much more mature than a year before, and we & people around her think the delay was probably good for her. Just wanted to add my anecdote.
barking 10y ago
I think that the fact that one of your children was naturally shy is the real issue. Shy people tend to have difficulties that non-shy people don't have. I could be wrong of course, but that's what I believe, as a shy person who on account of my birthday started school about a later than average. I also have siblings who are utterly different to me and who are high achievers etc.
- ErrantX 10y ago
  I think its more nuanced than that. I am very shy, but I think have done okay largely through being ambitious, which cut through shyness at key times. A lot of people I work with are the same story I think

mkagenius 10y ago

How about a hack -- start the KG late, but later skip the 7th grade?

anothercomment 10y ago

I seem to remember reading that while the younger kids were disadvantaged during school, they made up for it later and overtook their peers. Presumably because they were used to working harder.

tedunangst 10y ago
Unless they become accustomed to doing poorly and internalize failure.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  Sure, it seems a lot could go wrong. Unfortunately I could not readily find the article in question again (damn you, Firefox bookmarks manager). Instead I found one in German that said kids who are schooled at a younger age have a significantly higher rate of ADD diagnoses, suggesting they are being misdiagnosed because of their younger age.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago

Biggest mistake I made as a parent was sending my late-birthday (October) daughter to all day junior kindergarten here in Ontario before she was 4. The gov't has switched the program here to all day, and Ontario has an unusually early start for kindergarten (3.5-4). She was intellectually way beyond her peers (reading at 3) but emotionally and physically unable to handle the no-naps, no-hugs, lining-up, sitting-still atmosphere of a public school. She would have been better off with another year of her daycare centre.

kbenson 10y ago
That interesting, in Northern California where I am it seems like preschool is not much different than daycare, other than they also try to do some educational segments. For example, my children went to a daycare and preschool combination school, where they moved them to a different "class" each year (much less formal, named dragonfly, butterfly and firefly classes), and the closer they got to kindergarten, the more education material they would include (usually just letter/number recognition). That said, it was still a very relaxed, environment, and they still took naps, got hugs, etc.
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  Yeah this is a full public school kindergarten, inside a public school. It's not a preschool, but a school. I'm not a fan of it, but for lower income families it may actually be a god-send.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    My mistake, I misread it as preschool. Yes, kindergarten here is more structured and in the public system (and is what preschool is supposed to ease them into). For my youngest, we were lucky to get in on a pilot program to pre-kindergarten (transitional kindergarten), which they offered for children that missed the age cutoff by 3-4 months. It was still offered by the public school, but was in-between preschool and kindergarten in activities. The length is still short though, as is normal kindergarten, so they're only at school for about 5 hours.

rlkf 10y ago

These kind of studies tend to be riddled with methological errors. For instance, one of them found (as usual) that autumn-borns had lower grades than spring-borns. However, once adjusting for the parent's education level, the results were opposite.

M_Grey 10y ago
This is for me, the big issue and the reason why these kinds of studies have begun to just fly under my radar. When a couple of decades of "research" in various fields adds up to, "Flip a coin, any coin..." something is off. Mind you, any attempt to bring this up to people involved is met with more than just hostility, and usually a mixture of exasperated condescension and and accusations of unfair standards. If you press, it usually comes down to, "Doing the best we can," which is nice for gymnastics, but less so for published research.
- prolly_a_moron 10y ago
  >If you press, it usually comes down to, "Doing the best we can," which is nice for gymnastics, but less so for published research. If "doing the best we can" is too low of a standard for research, then it's all garbage. Yes, there are many problems with some of the research out there, but you deal with it, not ignore it all. The purpose is to reduce uncertainty, not "get the right answer".
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    You're absolutely preaching to the choir here, but I don't know how to communicate that sentiment to people for whom it isn't gospel, without them getting really huffy about it. Being gentle doesn't help, they're too defensive most of the time.
  - im3w1l 10y ago
    Doing-the-best-we-can science is valuable. But we should be careful about turning it into policy. I'd rather stick with tradition than very uncertain science.

coss 10y ago

not surprising, very similar to Gladwell's hypothesis about star hockey players being born in the months of January - February. Students a year older than other students have a huge competitive advantage.

watwut 10y ago
It would be interesting to see whether the advantage of being 12 months older is higher in sport then in grades or vice versa.
prolly_a_moron 10y ago
Especially in the early years of life, when the 11 month difference between a January baby and December baby in a class might be 1/5 to 1/10 of the child's life. That's a huge advantage, physically, intellectually and socially, for the older child.

nhumrich 10y ago

Personally, I am glad I went a year early. It means I started college a year early, and was ahead of all my peers by that point in time. I pushed hard in school, and I finished and entered the work force really early, jump-starting my career. All that even with taking two years off in the middle of my college years.

startupdiscuss 10y ago
What is the benefit of starting your career "early"? What happens in the "end"?
- tedunangst 10y ago
  If skip enough years of school, you can graduate college early and start your career at only 20, and then you don't have to go to happy hour with your colleagues.
- joefourier 10y ago
  In general, programmers (and similar individuals) do not have the best experiences during elementary and high school. Why wouldn't you want to get to the stage where you have freedom to make your own decisions, to control how you spend your time, to earn and spend your own income, as quickly as possible?
prolly_a_moron 10y ago
>All that even with taking two years off in the middle of my college years. How has any of this made you better off? You make it sound as if "taking two years off" in your late teens/early twenties is a major issue. Personally, I wish I would have seen more of the world after high school and before college.

rednerrus 10y ago

Won't the advantage be gone once everyone is doing this?

gist 10y ago
It will. Probably what will happen then is people trying to game the birth month to have the oldest child in a particular year. By 'game' I simply mean planning the birth in a way that attempts to get it at the right time, if possible.
giarc 10y ago
It's like what Malcolm Gladwell said about hockey. A lot of good players are born earlier in the year. When they start playing, they are the oldest and the biggest of the group, and therefore can excel. Same with school, the Jan-Apr babies are just that much more ahead and it continues throughout school. If everyone pushed back a year, those same early babies would still have the same advantage.
tedunangst 10y ago
The advantage may not be entirely relative. Some may be absolute. If everybody starts school at six instead of five, nobody will have an "advantage" but everybody will do better.
- sitkack 10y ago
  So you are saying we could be starting school too soon. Or maybe school crushes the soul before it has had a chance to form.
startupdiscuss 10y ago
Yeah, the end game is to have our kids start kindergarten at age 23. Imagine the head start! They'll just dominate the other toddlers! (See Kramer in Dojo as the obligatory Seinfeld reference)
icc97 10y ago
Yes, but your kids get the advantage until everyone else does the same

ThomPete 10y ago

There are no rules, there isnt even a proper definition of being successful.

Spooky23 10y ago

I always thought it would be interesting to look at birthdate and correlate against other items. Based on news stories and personal observation in various datasets, there is a lot more sex going on in the holiday season and dead of winter, as births spike July-September. Late night activity starts slowing down in February. I've always been curious if kids born in these peaks get less attention, are more likely to be unplanned, less likely to breastfeed, are more miserable in the heat, etc. Birthdate heatmap: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145471/How-common-birthday-Chart-reveals-date-rates.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145471/How-common...

wordpressdev 10y ago

When I started schooling, parents used to send kids to school at around 4 years. Now, kids see teachers as early as 1 and half years of age. This is ridiculous. We did an experiment and sent our youngest to school when she was 5 years old. She was home schooled using some apps and books - in her own time and depending on her mood. Now, her teacher says she's one of the brightest in the class, a quick learner filled with creativity.

mistermann 10y ago
Can you recommend any good apps/books/websites for home schooling? I'd very much like to find a (paid, preferably) website that has excellent video presentations followed by exercises and tests.
- wordpressdev 10y ago
  I used a number of free apps for pre-schoolers available on Google Play Store to teach basic English skills (words, rhymes, counting) and simple maths. Haven't bought anything fancy.

joveian 10y ago

See also When Less Is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/wh...

dboreham 10y ago
Worth noting that TFA does not actually say what the headline says. Rather it talks about teaching less _Arithmetic_. This is something I've thought would be a good plan throughout my kids progress through the elementary and middle school phases. I'd try teaching algebra much earlier, in place of all the Arithmetic that can be done with a computer, and needs some knowledge of algebra to understand anyway.

artur_makly 10y ago

our toddler is in Montessori 3hrs a day. mixed with kids that are 1yr younger and 1 yr older. its the sweetest spot.

uptownfunk 10y ago

As someone about to have a kid this is quite interesting. My personal experience - I took a break from college for a few years (well, five) and when I came back I felt more emotionally and socially mature than I was when I first joined. I was also older than all the kids using college as their first out-of-house explore-the-world experience. It made my whole experience that much more rich and enjoyable and worthwhile. I think it's important for kids to learn the fundamentals in school correctly. If delaying my kid a year helps them feel and be more mature and adept to handle school, I'm for it, and maybe I'll also give them that gap year or two after high school to see the world and explore it a bit before they get ready to tackle the books in college. I think another dimension of this whole thing does boil down to the natural nature and tendencies of the child. Would also recommend everyone to watch "The Beginning of Life" on Netflix if you haven't already, a very eye-opening perspective on kids, education, and how living situations differ for kids around the world, very eye-opening.

commieneko 10y ago

I seem to fall into both categories. I started kindergarten at age 4 and went three years; my mother used a private kindergarten as a kind of daycare. I started first grade at age 7. I learned to read in first grade almost instantly and was reading children's novels, not picture books, in just a few months. My brother, by contrast, who followed the same academic path, taught himself to read around age 4 by looking at comic books that I was buying. (This was all in the early '60s.) Academically I did so-so. Less of a problem with ability than boredom. I got into a good college solely on my standardized test scores. In college I had a B average. One advantage that I remember from being a year older than my classmates was that I was considerably larger. I was large for my age, and a year older to boot. Despite being bookish and a nerd, before that was considered a good thing, no one would mess with me. Plus I went to kindergarten with, and was friends with kids that were up to two years older. A lot of that faded away as we all got older and the differences evened out. But the main advantage, in retrospect is that I always considered my self an outlier. I didn't need peer support to be interested in things and didn't really care much about what everyone around me was doing. I expected to do the unexpected. I got into computers and computer graphics in the late '70s when no one had even heard of such a thing. I was playing with the internet long before it became a thing, or was even very useful. I started my own business a year out of school was doing entrepreneur type things until I hit forty. (A downside is that I would often get bored with something _before_ it became a thing, and would have moved on to the new shiny before something got viable.) These days I'm involved in education, university level and adult education, and it's interesting to see the mix in student's ages at the other end of the education cycle. Older students, especially those that have been out of school for a while, are much more motivated and serious about their subjects. I suspect there is quite a bit of selection bias here, as those not serious aren't likely to try and get more education. But I also see some younger students who are delighted to suddenly be in a place where they can take their education seriously and stretch their abilities.

icc97 10y ago

Reminds me of the 90s UK sci-fi comedy series "Red Dwarf" and the bitter cowardly Rimmer whose alternate reality self was held back a year in school and now is a daring, heroic test-pilot [0]. [0]: http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Ace_Rimmer

aaron695 10y ago
Very off topic, but it's still coming out. The was a season released late last year.

pagnol 10y ago

> They taught multiplication, but none of them knew that multiplication is used to find the area of a rectangle. Their most common guess was that you add the length and the width to get the area. Am I the only one reminded of fizz-buzz by this sentence?

faragon 10y ago

Advantages, and... disadvantages? I would like to know if there are disadvantages as well, e.g. less social skills, etc.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

The huge elephant in the room is the our education system isn't built or designed to be in the best interest of children. School does a few things very well - it frees parents from needing to be available for their children during working hours, it conditions students to accept obedience-based hierarchies, and it makes it much easier for bureaucracies to interact with the public as a whole. None of these are central needs of children. If holding your children back for one year is good, how about twelve?

tmsldd 10y ago
Totally agree... there is a misunderstanding about the problem. In fact, the education system is not flexible enough to adapt to the children's mental age. And, therefore the education system as it is designed is causing damage to a group of students. A solution might be delay 1 year to enroll the children. Another solution is to subdivide the admission to 2 or 4 times per year or ideally grouping students by maturity level and personalized education.. but I guess the cost might be prohibitive.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  Why are we age segregating in the first place? Most of what that does is make it easier to administer a classroom, manage the teacher responsible for it, and develop a standard syllabus for it.
  - tmsldd 10y ago
    Indeed, a better solution ;)
UweSchmidt 10y ago
Most people are in no position to teach their kids appropriately. If you have a highly motivated, well educated stay-at-home parent it can work great of course. Otherwise, yes, there is incredible untapped human potential wasted in today's schools, unfortunately.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

They had my interest until they quoted the Gladwell Hockey spec. Maturity and age are correlated but not causal. I could easily believe that success in school is strongly correlated with maturity (I have observed that students that are less mature than their peers are disciplined more often and teased by their peers, both have a strong correlation with poor scholastic achievement) and that children whose maturity is lagging their peers, will do better if they are only started in school when their maturity supports it, however I have also observed that children seem to be maturing at later and later ages. Given the preponderance of evidence of children in the 19th and 20th century demonstrating much higher levels of responsibility and maturity at a younger age[1] it seems that there is more at work here than just 'age.' Finally, in the study[2] doesn't break it down across socio-economic groups rather, from their abstract : " We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size = -0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement" I'm going to guess that the physical number of years a person has at the start of their school career is not as big an impact on whether or not they have self control issues as the parenting impact on the first 5 - 6 years of their life. [1] It is also possible that immature children in the 19th and early 20th century simply died early. [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

anotheryou 10y ago

I whished I would have been with older classmates, I connected much better with those a year ahead. I also was boored from the 2nd year of elemantary school onwards. However I don't remember the extra kindergarden year and how nice it probably was compared to school. I'd guess this was more important, but I'm not sure. After all it's 1 year (an important year though, becuase childhood is so very important), against 13 years that might have been better. Finishing school a year earlier I don't see as a benefit. It took me extra year after school to really know what to do further anyways.

glangdale 10y ago

Ugh. We have lots of people in our area into the whole red-shirting thing, where parents send their kids later and later, then bitch about kindergarten not being 'academic' enough for their enormous child who is 1-2 years older than the other kids. I seem to recall that most studies show the advantage of this practice fades over the years. As the article suggests, class is heavily correlated here with the practice (more likely to be able to afford another year of childcare).

pfarnsworth 10y ago

Both my wife and I skipped a grade in elementary school. Neither of us had any issues and were both successful academically as well as in our careers. I was both the class clown and a frequent bully (not something I'm proud of) so being a year younger than everyone didn't make me less social or vocal. I met someone who was the youngest in his grade and he wished he was held back. I think it definitely depends on the individual.

dba7dba 10y ago

Read an article about NHL players with late birthdays few years ago. Majority of NHL players have late birthdays. It means kids that are just slightly older than teammates by just a few months have advantage over early birthday team mates. This advantage helps them advance over younger ones (just by a few months) through their young hockey career and eventually to NHL career.

ec109685 10y ago
Or athletically minded parents tend to have children on certain months. Correlation is not causation.
- npunt 10y ago
  Both arguments are not equally plausible though. The argument for the compounding effects of physical advantage relative to peers is a lot stronger than the supposition that parents would happen to have children on certain months.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    Unless you conduct a study where you divide peer groups blindly and send some early and send some later, it is just a (educated) guess this is the reason. Otherwise, you can just walk trough data sets until you find one that meets your conclusion.
- dba7dba 10y ago
  Here's the article about higher percentage of NHL players having earlier birthdays. https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favour-of-players-born-earlier-in-the-year/c-657724 https://www.nhl.com/news/study-suggests-nhl-has-bias-in-favo...

dragonwriter 10y ago

How much of this is being held back a year, and how much is “parents who actively make a non-default education choice are, on average, more engaged overall in their child's education, providing advantages”?

tvanantwerp 10y ago

My mother taught 1st grade for 30 years. I had a late birthday, and she made sure I waited a year. Her anecdotal experience from teaching was that the late-birthday kids who came in early weren't ready for school and often did worse / behaved worse.

bahmboo 10y ago

It could also be an indicator of the parents inability to discern what is best for the child. It can be a tough call but it should be a decision based on the characteristics of the child. I would never fault any reasonable parent on the choice. Statistics and all, it's 20/20 hindsight.

mattbgates 10y ago

My mom held me back in kindergarten. I don't remember, but she says the school told her I wasn't "mentally" at the educational level that the other children were at. I could be upset about it, but I don't think it ruined my life or anything. Graduated high school at age 18.