Sorry about the technical difficulties this week. Basically, Typepad hates my Mac. I’ll download a new browser and see if it works later tonight. In the meantime, I’m pounding away on Steve’s PC, which is also less than perfect, because he’s set up all sorts of anti-popup controls on his computer, so I can’t upload pictures here. Sigh. How many hours of my life have I wasted sorting out computer quirks?
Aside from the hiccups on the computer, life has also been full of hiccups this week throwing me off schedule with paper writing, blogging, exercising, and all things healthy. Burnt out and disgusted, I cocooned myself in front of the DVD player and watched six episodes of Prison Break yesterday afternoon. Sorry, if I haven’t had a chance to reply to your e-mail.
Some unbloggable stuff at school, which I believe has sorted itself out. And then there’s the hiccups with Ian’s placement for next year. Administrators are trying to shuttle Ian into a "special" school, which they promise us is only temporary. They would rather ease him into a regular school. We want to push him into the deep end. We’ve got an appointment to see this Warehouse for Unruly Children tomorrow. Really not pleased at all.
The school worries that he isn’t ready for a day long program of coloring squares and sitting quietly in circle group. His speech is becoming less of an issue. Listening attentively in big groups of kids is becoming a bigger issue. He’s rather wiggly. So, he’ll need an aide to shadow him and keep him on task in a regular classroom. We suspect that dollars are a factor here, too. I think we have the upper hand here, but things might get a bit messy.
Sitting still all day is hard for most kids, especially immature boys, when they start Kindergarten. More and more parents are holding back their wiggly kids (another option for us). Sunday’s magazine article discusses the latest studies that show that kids with the January birthdays do much better than the October birthdays in school and their early successes carry through into later grades. One buddy of mine is ticked off, because in her upper income town, nearly half of all parents were holding their kids back just to give them an edge on standardized tests. Her daughter with an August birthday could be a 1-1/2 years younger than many of the other kids in her class.
High stakes testing has resulted in the greying of Kindergarten. I suppose it’s a good thing. It’s a self-correcting mechanism to counteract the new pressures on the wee kids.
Apt. 11d 
It’s a very good thing!
The school age should be six or even seven for boys, I think. (And the child care system should adjust to cope with that; yeah, I can dream, can’t I? ) We have longer life spans now than when the current school starting age was introduced and it’s stupid to send these babies off to school to be made to sit still when it’s still developmentally inappropriate.
However, the education, employment and childcare/welfare/kindergarten systems are still relentlessly geared to starting at 5 or even 4. (I’m in Australia, but it’s relatively comparable.)
My son was a March baby, the equivalent of an October baby in the US. I knew he wasn’t ready for school. I asked the school if he could repeat Prep (first grade, I think, in the US?) No dice. Then in Grade 1, with great pomp and ceremony, they arranged a meeting with me and partner to tell us they were wanting to repeat grade 1. They were surprised that I was taking it so, um, well, if that’s the word. “That’s what I asked for in the first place!!!”
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I applaud your efforts to get an appropriate placement for Ian. However, I doubt the parents at the “special” school would appreciate your “warehouse of unruly children” title. That school can be both “potentially not the right school for Ian” and “a really good school for some other kid” at the same time.
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Kindergarten is harder and longer than it used to be. However, given the appearance of pre-K in some areas, and the practice of redshirting, doesn’t it all cancel out?
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Here is something I learned from years of struggle against various school officials: for them, it is always about the money. Make your best decision about what is most appropriate for your kid and stick to it. They will sweet talk you, invoke all sorts of expert-ese, but don’t believe any of it. What they care about most is their budget, and “controlling costs” of “expensive special education” programs.
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I’ll point out that I have a november birthday 3.5 year old son, who would be strongly disserved by being required to be 6 or 7 years old when he went to kindergarten. He’s not especially wiggly, and perfectly capable of sitting in a circle for extended periods of time and listening to instructions.
The key, I think, is that we have to look at the child, not the age. There is a wide variety of developmenal stages during these early years. Allowing parents to “redshirt” is a recogntion of that developmental variability, and of the fact that parents are good at determining their own children’s developmental stages and needs.
But, we have chaos, when competitive (or misguided) parents use this knowledge to infantalize their children or hold them back to gain advantage.
I wonder how you guys would feel about independent assessment requirements for both holding back and advancing kids who are near the age cutoff border? Right now, many schools require evaluation for late summer early fall birtdays (our cutoff for public school is Oct 30, but, kids between August 30 and Oct 30 have to be evaluated to allow entry into public school). How about if the same process was offerred to kids who want to stay back but have birthdays from June to August. The teeth would be that if you held back a child who was judged developmentally ready by evaluators, they would have to start 1st grade, not kindergarten. That rule already applies in our district for kids with birthdays before the cutoff range.
Good luck with finding the right placement for your children.
bj
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