starting prep early

[faroutbrusselsprout]

I know you asked for opinions on who had started their child early but in Victoria I think you will be very very hard pressed to find someone that has a child born after April who started 4 turning 5.
The 130iq thing is only basic guideline, but it's so much more than that. My parents are both teachers (my step dad a principal for over 20 years) and he has seen 2 children in that entire time start early (ie birthdays after april) in very extraordinary cases.
It just doesn't happen.
I suggest you look into starting your child in Prep and then letting the teachers dictact whether or not they are ready to skip a grade or just be involve in gifted programs.
There is so much more to prep than just letters and numbers.

[mysonroger]

well I guess I can respond to this because my DD1 is 2 days before the cut off and another girl is one day before the cut off. So for me, it was more a wonder whether to hold her back than keep her in the year she was meant for. But its the same in the sense of being the absolute youngest in the class. It's weird when my DD1 turned 6, many of her class mates turned 7 a few days later. I have found that the younger girls in the class mainly stick together, and have formed good relationships with each other, however DD1 is mingling far more now she is in Year 1, but her core group of friends are still the younger girls. She has kept up very easily with literacy, and is performing stronger than expected. Her maths is terrible, but i reckon this is the teacher and i'm having a meeting about it on monday afternoon. It seems DD1 has fallen through the net and no one seems to have noticed.

DD1 mingles well within her year, and equally looks at home when hanging out with the girls a year below...although had she stayed down a year, she definitely would have been one of the stronger characters in the group. This is not the case in Year 1.

If DD1 had been born two days later, I wouldn't have bumped her up.


A friend of mine put her DD2 straight from Kindy to Year 1 because she was so advanced, and they had issues with the next teacher, and wanted to avoid her. now she is in Year 4 my friend is wondering if it was the right thing to do, not because of her academic results, but because she's in a different place as fas as maturity goes (compared to her peers).

[mysonroger]

oh yeah, and i just remembered , out of all the discussions i had with teachers about holding DD1 down because of her age , the main thing they discussed was their maturity levels in kindy and PP ....and not academia. They wanted to see that children can hold themselves and handle themselves in different situations...and that was a major contributing factor in their advice.

[sweetseven]

I know of a child that started school early in Queensland. He wrote a Get Well card to a friend in hospital - the sort of thing you would expect from an 8yo - when he was only 4yo. His parents spent something like $3000 getting him assessed and he was one of only four children permitted to start the school year early that year in Queensland.

Fast forward to year three, and he was being assessed for an autistic spectrum disorder. He was needing assistance in some areas, whilst his reading and maths were still way ahead of the rest of his class.

I don't have a lot of detail as the family were friends of friends, so we pretty much only saw eachother at birthday parties. I have no proof, and what I have said was what had been told to me during a few different birthday parties of our mutual friends children.

[RourkesMumma]

My experience in SA:
My brother thrived after my parents had him assessed by the principal at their request. His birthday is may 24 and he was supposed to stay an extra 12 months in kindy. It did mean he was the youngest out of everyone but emotionally they were all at the same level.
Only downside to it all was that he was the last to get his drivers license in high school and was always a passenger, which stressed my parents out...
But- he did work experience 3 times for an electrical company while in year 10 and was offered an apprenticeship in year 11. He did it school-based so he could finish the year then moved out of home to be close to his job. He was just 16 and a half and was working full-time. At just over 17 he now has his own workvan and with another apprentice does some jobs on his own! He'll be fully qualified before 19 and LOVES how it's all turned out

[mumsies]

Thanks everyone for your sharing your experiences. It's good to hear from a variety of people in a variety of situations. Social skills are so important as well as the physical ability to stay at school all day. I've worked in after school care and seen little preps who weren't ready and have to have a nap because they're minds and bodies can't take it. Which is the biggest factors we are looking at. I'd love to hear more about the observation and testing side of this. Have people gone and got their own testing for their kids (and is that costly or stressful?) or has it been through early childhood providers? Thanks again ladies!

[CeeLH]

Hi there
We are in WA where you start Kindy around 4y then PrePrimary then Grade 1. My DD has been assessed and is over the 130 points. Some of our story was well planned and executed other parts were pure instinct and a bit of luck. But I think we are so far a good news story.

We knew our daughter was bright from an early age. We followed her lead and let her experience lots of different things, people, experiences and places. We found ourselves with a very confident and independant girl! We put her in a high quality daycare from 2.5yo for 2 days per week. The daycare progressed her through the age rooms about 6months ahead of normal schedule. The daycare has a 'kindy' room run by a kindy teacher. Our DD started in there at 3.5yo. We had DD assessed by an experience psych organised through our state Gifted Association when DD was 4 and 2mths, just before she was due to start 'real' kindy. Testing was far from traumatic our DD loved it and was on a high for several days after. It cost us $860, this included a travel fee as psych is Qld based. In our follow up appointment and in light of her IQ score, we asked the psych if she thought DD was socially and emotionally appropriate for grade accelerating DD. She said yes absolutely.

So DD did not start kindy early she just skipped over it and went to PrePrimary. She is 5mths younger than the next youngest student. There is also a student in the class who is a year older (late starter due to health problems at birth). Acaedemically she is top of the class and been extending into grade 1 work, socially and emotionally she is far far far from the most needy student. she is everyones friend and everyone is hers. The teachers love her and the other parents have accepted her (yes that matters!) since doing parent help and getting to know her.

DD is the teachers first grade accelerated student and I think had some intitial reservations. Most teachers are not supportive of grade acceleration and cite social and emotional blah blah blah but the research shows that for many gifted children acceleration is a very valid intervention. There is actually no scientific evidence against it. We were just a month into the school year when the teacher pulled me aside and said "She is absolutely in the right place. It is like she has always been here."

We still have a long way to go and all children have different personalities, strengths and needs (but you know that). But I feel 100% that we have done the right thing by our daughter and she is a very happy, well adjusted girl.

Good luck.

[mim1]

The cutoff for Victoria when I was going through school was the end of June and I recall a girl in my class who had a birthday in June, months after everyone else's birthday. She always seems so immature. She didn't struggle academically at all, but she was very socially immature (not that others weren't, but she really stood out).

My dh is a September baby and he has an IQ well over 130 and he did really well at school, starting at age 5. He was speaking like an adult at age 2 (I didn't realise what his mum meant when she said that til our ds did the same thing!) and was reading and writing sentences before starting school. Sure he was different at school, but socially he was appropriately placed within the system and I think it was the right time for him to start.

As for testing, we were going to do it in the 2nd half of this year. The Krongold centre at Monash Uni was recommended to us and I looked into it. They have a 6 - 8 week wait list and then it involves LOTS of sessions for a full assessment (I think 6 or so sessions). Naively I thought it was like an IQ test for an adult where you just sit down and tick the right box & get a score at the end. No, this assessment is a lot more thorough and gives a lot more detailed information at the end, which of course is what we want from the whole process.

We decided to not go ahead with the testing this year. It would have meant appointments too close to the birth of bub #2 and we would have liked the assessment before deciding if he needed a 2nd year of kinder, but we'd left it too late for that we realised. So, we'll plan to do the assessment next year, early in the year, so we can get information that will help his kinder teacher works on his strengths & weaknesses in his 2nd year of kinder and then help for forward planning for school. It also takes away the distraction of a new sibling which might cloud the testing process a little. Our goal has always been to wait til close to school entry for testing, so that the information is relevant for the early years of schooling.

Forgot to add: testing for giftedness is not something Early Childhood teachers offer. It's done by a psychologist and involves multiple sessions. It's not a simple test. You can get it done through private psychologists or through other options such as the Krongold Centre at Monash Uni (research based psychologists). I think it costs about $600 through the Krongold Centre - ring them, they are very helpful.

[kw123]

I started school when I was four and four months but it didn't do me any harm..! I was always the youngest in class of course but I liked it! Meant I finished school and went to uni at 17 which I loved, although prob not for everyone. I was not gifted, but I did pass some basic tests and saw a psychologist before I was allowed to go... This was in Scotland though. 6 seems very old to me. Could be 19 before you finish school!!

[Turk EnJayDee]

I started school at 4 and I turned out ok. I also loved school from day one. It's an individual thing for each child.

If 'I' personally feel MY child is ready early, I will try to get her in early too.