”It can’t hurt, right?”
That’s what I hear most parents say when faced with the difficult decision of sending their child to "begindergarten" — our district’s term for a pre-kindergarten for children who are considered not quite ready for a regular kindergarten class. Other schools might call it a "young fives" program."
The class runs five days a week, three hours a day. It’s just like kindergarten, except there is more play time and the emphasis is on getting ready for kindergarten.
Usually the issue is raised because the child has a birthday that is close to the “cutoff date” and would be a young kindergartner. Many teachers and principals assume that this will be a disadvantage for the child. Maybe the child is struggling socially, emotionally or academically in preschool, hinting that he's not ready to jump right into kindergarten.
Our district, like many others, uses the Gesell test to measure a child’s readiness for school. Parents must consent to the test. The results of the test, along with observation by the tester and the child’s preschool teacher, determine whether or not the child will be recommended for begindergarten, or developmental kindergarten.
The choice is ultimately ours as parents. After all, we know our own child’s capabilities better than anyone else does. Many people don’t even enroll their children in nursery or preschool programs before kindergarten. As a matter of fact, kindergarten isn’t even mandatory in Michigan.
I feel very strongly about this subject, since both of my children have late September birthdays. I did consider the program when my daughter was recommended a couple of years ago. I passed on the program and I am so glad I did. I feel my husband and I made the right decision for her.
She took the Gesell test and performed well. She wasn’t struggling in any certain area. She was right where she should be in the class. The question was raised because she would turn 5 one month after school started that fall. Teachers were concerned that she could have future struggles. I didn’t expect problems, and neither did my husband.
I went in the following day after the recommendation and told the preschool teacher we would be passing on begindergarten. The teacher told me I was making a huge mistake and that my daughter was a prime example of a child who belongs in begindergarten. She was very offended and so was I.
I cried all the way home that day and couldn’t sleep for several nights rethinking and wondering what to do.
My husband and I talked it through and I said, “It can’t hurt, right?” That moment, we realized that maybe it could hurt! At this age, children are absorbing knowledge like sponges; you hear that all the time. We felt that by putting her into begindergarten, it could be stunting her growth academically.
Now that she’s in first grade, I can’t even fathom the thought of her being in kindergarten another year. She would lack a tremendous amount of fuel for learning. She is currently 6 and doing well in first grade.
Her kindergarten teacher told me she had not seen any reason for her to be placed in the retention program. It was a relief to hear that because I worried all the time that I had made the wrong choice.
My daughter is reading, writing, adding, subtracting, working with money and learning Spanish this year. I believe this is much more stimulation than another year of kindergarten would have given her. I truly believe it could have hindered her in some way.
Perhaps she would have been bored, lost confidence, taken a harsh blow to her self-esteem or regressed instead of progressed. We can’t think for a second that she wouldn’t have noticed that the other children her age were moving on, and she wasn’t.
I feel a strong need to do what I think is right for my children without pressures of what everybody else thinks. Having conversations with people I considered “the opposing team” was stressful, but they forced me to consider several key factors in this issue. If you face the same dilemma here are some things to consider:
- The age of the child. All children develop at different rates, emotionally, socially and academically. If you see your child struggling in any of these areas, you may want to consider another year of a pre-K program.
- Tests are imperfect tools. The Gesell is only one tool and it isn’t perfect. If your child did not fare well on it and there are no other indications of struggle, then use your own judgment. The child could have had a bad day, had trouble paying attention or she simply was in a hurry to go play. Four-year-olds have very short attention spans. In most cases, she will have five or six months to grow and develop between the time she takes the test until she starts school.
- Being under-stimulated and under-challenged can be as damaging to a child as starting school too soon. Research shows that children most often rise to the levels of expectation placed upon them.
- The recent trend among educators is to place growing numbers of children in developmental kindergartens. Yet research by Nancy Karweit, a developmental psychologist at John Hopkins University, shows these kindergarten retention and transition rooms to be increasingly ineffective.
- The costs of an extra school year can become high to the community and to your child. As these programs become more popular, children attend high school through age 19 or 20, resulting in more classrooms, more teachers andmore funding for schools. The cost to taxpayers is money; the cost to the child is priceless.
The bottom line is: Be your own judge; trust your instincts.
Susan Walter is a freelance writer.