Both our children are in July too! My daughter was born on the 12th and we sent her to kindergarten right away and she does very well. My son was born the 14th and is 4 we are planning to send him to pre-k which in our school system is a step above preschool but pretty much the same. We were told most boys do better this way. If his teachers said to wait I would trust them!

It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me, My birthday is on July 8th and I started school at five and got good grades, yet they ended up holding me back because of my age. So its probably better just to let them have fun for another year rather than send them to kindergarden just for them to just have to repeat it again the next year. Not that that always happens. I also feel it was alot easier for me to graduate at age 18 rather than 17, because I felt alot more prepaired and grounded for starting college soon after. I know this is only my personal experience but I hope it helps.

Talking about my own experience myself, my son Rayyan is only 27 months when I enrolled him in a playgroup which is meant for 3 years old, since his birthday in Oct, I asked the headmistress about the issue, she said it's okay and she is right, my son got a headstart now at 29 months he comes home knowing 1-10, sings simple song among other things, at . My two other children did have the same thing, I listened to my mother in law too much at that time she said "why send your child too fast, they will get bored", I hated myself for listening to her because now my children is not so 'bright' as Rayyan. Children from the age of 1-6 have a brain of a 'sponge' they tend learn a lot more at that age.

My son will be five in August. He has spent two years in preschool and is actually above average academically for kindergarten. He is not ready socially. I can't really put him in prek again. He has been telling me that he is really bored in school already. He will lose interest. Sending him to kindergarten is also not good because he is not ready socially. It is a very hard situation.

Research shows that having them repeat kindergarten is really not good. The kids end up having more behavior problems and lack motivation usually the second time around. However, working in the school system I have kids repeat kindergarten and they do really really well. So, I see a disconnect between research and what I have seen in the classroom setting.

What I am planning to do is send my child to a private kindergarten that focuses more on social skills and less on academics. If they do focus on academics, I refuse to have more tracing letters. My son has been doing that for two years and knows all of that stuff. I will make sure that the curriculum is pretty different between the private and public school. The following year, I will probably put him in public school. No matter what, he will be bored academically but hopefully he will still have fun because it will be new.

It is a struggle - a big struggle. I can't keep my child out because he learned the alphabet, the individual letter sounds, how to write his name, his address and phone number, along with counting to 100 because "I want to go to kindergarten." He has told me, however, he doesn't want to be the littlest in school. He really meant youngest and smallest - both (after asking him more questions).

I was a very young five year old, too. I was the youngest and always the runt. I should not have been placed in kindergarten when I was. The biggest problem was the same thing we may be facing with my son. I was in prek and then kindergarten at the same place. Kindergarten was boring for me. I ended up skipping a day. I was supposed to walk to school and decided I was sick of learning stuff I already knew so I just hung out in someones back yard for an hour. The police were almost called.

Academically I was ready, fine motor skills were weaker, and socially I was sad:( I started to get really sad in my first grade year. I was often alone. My mom told me that people treated me as the mascot because I was so little. They protected me but yet they didn't play with me. It sucked.

So, here we do our best to prepare our kids and I am know wondering if I prepared him too much. Should I have sent him to preschool this year? I don't know. I think he would have picked up on the information anyways. He is a very smart child.

In general, the leaders of the classroom are older. The research has shown that in the long run there is very little difference between children that didn't go to kindergarten early because of their age and the ones who entered kindergarten as an early five year old. I think it's by grade four, everyone is pretty much caught up (not accounting for learning disabilities). However, the problem is with the emotional and social skills. Sometimes those affects can be long term.

SOOO....I am in a hard situation right now. What I am going to do is really check out some places. I am hoping to find a challenging prek curriculum. It would be great to find a school that offers a program for young five year olds.