"Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance." - W Durant

Daddy's Boy
Originally uploaded by anastasiav

Last night I was talking with another mom, whose children are currently in our city's public schools. To make a long story short, she was advising me heavily to decline to enroll E in Kindergarten this year (he'll turn 5 in July), but instead take the option to let him sit out this year and instead enroll in the fall of 2012 (when he'll be 6).

One thing she said to me is that as as one of the youngest kids in his class, I would be dooming him to "being a mediocre student instead of letting him be the bright kid he is." That is now rattling around in my brain.

My own birthday is in October, and I began Kindergarten as an already-able-to-read 4 year old. A few weeks (maybe a couple months?) after I started in K my mother chose to have me advanced to the 1st grade class - and therefore doomed me to a) be unable to grasp basic math concepts (I missed that part), and b) be the most socially inept kid in the class, largely because I was so much younger than everyone else.

E will not be younger than everyone else, but he'll be on the younger-rather-than older end of the spectrum, and his behavior (including his attention span, or lack thereof) is basically age appropriate. So, waiting a year would enable him to better navigate the "sit down and be quiet" demands of public school. On the other hand, he can read, and he loves to do math. He has pretty much already mastered the basic reading and math concepts that are the Kindergarten evaluation benchmarks. (Yes, I looked them up.)

So, now I feel like either way he's doomed. Either I enroll him now and he forever becomes "a smart kid with behavior issues" or I enroll him in a year and he is the biggest kid in his class who is bored by this stuff already.