Should my son start school a year early?

Thursday, 03 April 2008 03:06

I've started the frustrating discussion with schools that respond to me as "another exaggerating besotted mother" and dismiss my attempts to have a dialogue with them. I was starting to get ready to battle for an early entry for Sam, but recently have rethought things and have decided we would wait.

Sam needs more challenge than he is getting in daycare. I worry that Sam risks getting a reputation of being ‘the disruptive child' with teachers who dislike him in their class when in fact, he may be bored.

Take storytime. The teachers say that Sam doesn't want to sit still. They read books to the other children who all sit still but Sam keeps fidgeting and wants to run off and do other things.

Sam likely has two issues with storytime. The first is that he has been able to read fluently since he turned 2 and prefers to read himself than to be read to. The second is that he seems to love rational, non-fiction and likes reading about things like the solar system, electricity and energy. He likes things like street directories and instructions on assembling objects. I think he finds the stories that we would read for a typical 3 year old not interesting.  I asked the teacher if he could read a book of his choosing while sitting within the group.... She was supportive of this and this kept Sam more content ....

Last week I went to pick Sam up and he was sitting on a stool by himself. The teacher explained that he was being disruptive, running from table to table, and throwing things and she made him to sit out by himself on the ‘naughty' stool. My poor Sam. I looked at the activities on the tables and I knew Sam would have had very little interest in them... (although yes, he shouldn't throw them....)

We think of ‘clever' on a normal spectrum. I think there is a risk that Sam is not in that normal spectrum, and therefore his teachers - at any age - may not see him as ‘clever' but as ‘disruptive' because he is not responding in a way we are used to.

And so to early school entry next year. My next step was to have Sam psychologically assessed if a professional third party view would help.

Then I looked at my little boy the other day. The one who still does things like running off down the road without thinking. Socially and intellectually, I know he'll be fine at school. But how safe will he be? At daycare there is relatively a large ratio of carers and a small confined environment. Primary school isn't daycare. There won't always be a carer watching him and a small space to keep him safe. I'm not sure that in the next 9 months my little boy would have matured enough to not run off and into trouble.

I know there are children who go to school at 4. For now, I think I'd rather have Sam safe even if it does mean he suffers for it intellectually. 

Maybe next year I'll have a go at it again... and then I'll try to battle for him to go straight into Year 1 and to skip kindy ....