It's that time of year again. Kindergarten readiness jitters season. Is your child ready for kindergarten or would he benefit from another year of pre-kindergarten? This excerpt from my book CAN I HAVE A CELL PHONE FOR HANUKKAH? (Broadway Books, 2007) will help you answer this increasingly common question.
EXCERPTED FROM CAN I HAVE A CELL PHONE FOR HANUKKAH (Broadway Books, 2007) by Sharon Duke Estroff
To those unfamiliar with the Kindergarten Readiness Shpilkes, you may be wondering why on earth anyone would waste time worrying about whether or not their kid is ready for kindergarten. I mean it’s kindergarten for heaven’s sake! But if you are a parent, you probably know what I’m talking about. The story goes something like this…
Once upon a time there was a whimsical land of make-believe, dress-up and fingerpainting. A magical place where “work” was a four letter word, “elemenopee” was still one letter and you couldn’t spot a math fact for miles. They called it Kindergarten.
One dark day (after the royal superintendent concluded that Kindergarten’s whimsical ways were partially to blame for the kingdom’s lackluster standardized test scores) everything changed. Stuffed animals and dollhouses were replaced with math manipulatives and spelling tests. Wooden blocks and Play-Doh gave way to rigorous core curriculums and palace mandated standards.
Once word got out about Kindergarten’s abrupt metamorphosis, the parents of the kingdom started to worry that it would take more than five candles on a birthday cake to prepare their children to enter this playroom turned pressure cooker. In fact some decided it would take at least six candles!
Now the royal superintendent had a whole new problem on his hands - with so many children entering Kindergarten at age six, he needed to up the difficulty level. So he did. Now the parents were even more worried, especially in the case of boys whose birthdays fell precariously close to the cut-off date. And that’s how the kindergarten readiness shpilkes came to be.
(By the way, if you’re wondering what happened to that once carefree land of dress-up and make-believe, it now has a new name. They call it preschool.)
Having managed to deliver all four of my kids a stone’s throw from the illustrious school cut-off date, I’m a member in good standing of the “Late Birthday” Parents Club. So you know I speak from experience when I tell you that the worrying kicks in the instant the ultrasound technician assigns our baby a due date between Passover and Rosh Hashanah (or Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah depending on your local kindergarten entry cut-off date). Double the worry if the ultrasound technician also reveals our baby to be a boy. We then proceed to fret for the next five years. One minute we are all but certain our kid will be able to handle the demands of the modern kindergarten curriculum (a.k.a. the former first grade curriculum) despite being a “young” five; and the next we are convinced that if we don’t give him the “gift” of an extra year we’ll hopelessly doom his academic career. But even a final verdict can’t free us from our misery, as every academic or social glitch our child experiences over the next twelve years will leave us wondering whether it could have been prevented had we only made a different choice about kindergarten.
The Real Scoop on Retention
So you’re ready for the bottom line, huh? You want to know if it’s better to delay or not to delay kindergarten entry for late birthday children. Unfortunately, as of press time, it still has no answer.
And it’s certainly not for lack of trying. Mounds of research have been collected in hopes of revealing the real scoop on retention, only to conclude that there is no scoop. Dr. Lorrie Shepard, for example, a professor of research methodology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, reviewed sixteen studies on the long-term effects of delaying kindergarten and found there to be no significant difference between kids who had been retained and those who hadn’t.
In fact, just about the only decisive result that’s emerged from the retention research at all, is that roughly15% of children entering kindergarten nationwide have been held back. And that the vast majority of these late starters are Caucasian, male, born in the second half of the year, and come from rather affluent homes (Zill, Spencer-Loomis, & West, 1997, West et al, 2000).
The lack of conclusive evidence, however, hardly implies kids can’t profoundly benefit from an extra year. (Many do.) Or be hindered by one. (Some are.) In fact the ambiguous evidence likely results from a relatively even matching between the pros and cons of delaying kindergarten. Take the example of Ben and Josh, two boys I taught as second graders, who had exactly the same birthday (August 15); had been retained for presumably the same reason (poor fine motor skills); yet saw very different outcomes from their extra year.
By the time Ben arrived in my class at the age of seven (his birthday was the first day of school), he was at the top of his game. That extra year of Pre-K had been just what the doctor ordered. Ben had kicked off kindergarten cutting and coloring with the best of them; hardly struggling writing in his daily journal or doing other seatwork. Ben emerged from kindergarten confident, proud and positive about school and remained on that track for the long haul.
Josh was a different story, as round two of Pre-K scarcely made a dent in his list of fine motor issues. Josh, it turns out, would need far more than 365 extra days to clean up his coloring act – he would need years of occupational therapy (only complicated by his being shut out of a prime early intervention window while his parents and teachers eagerly waited for that extra year to work its “magic”). Making matters worse, Josh had been intellectually ready for kindergarten at age five. He was an introspective child who lapped up learning. Because the repetition of the Pre-K curriculum left Josh bored and frustrated, he started acting out in class – ultimately being labeled as a behavior problem. By the time I met Josh in second grade, he’d already decided he hated school.
What we learn from Ben and Josh is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all answer to the kindergarten dilemma. We owe it to our kids to shy away from blanket assumptions about age, gender and readiness. To take the time to make a careful, thoughtful choice based on their individual academic, social and emotional profiles in combination with the pace, expectations and philosophy of the school they will be attending. Don’t try to make this decision alone. Consultation with teachers and pediatricians, as well as private educational testing, can help you determine whether retention is a good choice for your child.
In the end what matters most is that you believe in the direction you’ve chosen for your child and remain strong enough in your resolve not to second guess your decision. Sure you’ll encounter some rough spots along the way, but chances are that your child will be just fine – retention or not - as long as you and the school are there to guide and support him throughout his journey.
Sharon Duke Estroff is a nationally syndicated parenting columnist, award winning educator and author of Can I Have a Cell Phone for Hanukkah (Broadway Books, 2007). Visit her website at www.21st-Century-Kids.com
