School closures/delays?
in Students & Teens ·
Brian Jones8 said:Starting a new thread here...
I'm curious—how did your kids handle the delay? How did they take the fact that all their little friends started kindergarten while they’re still stuck hanging out at preschool?
My kid didn't technically get "held back" since she was born in May, but most of her old preschool crew moved on to kindergarten a full year before her. During her last year of preschool, they lumped her into this big mixed group with all the other kids who weren't starting school yet, and honestly? She absolutely loved it. She actually made some awesome little besties in that group.
To be totally real, I was freaking out when everyone else was heading off to school. I kept worrying she’d be constantly bugging me, like, "Mom, why am't I going to school yet?" And since our local YMCA programs were mostly geared toward the older preschoolers, I thought she’d feel left out and miserable. But man, was I wrong. It was actually the exact opposite. She was smart enough to realize, "Hey, I'm not a pre-K kid yet, I'll go next year," and she figured out that whatever the older kids were doing, she’d get to do it a year later. She actually picked up on the difference too—she noticed the older kids had different worksheets and more structured tasks. Honestly, she clearly preferred just having more time to play 🙂 this year.
We’re officially first graders now, and looking back, that extra year in preschool made a massive difference in terms of her maturity and just being ready for the grind of school. She was practically counting down the days until she could finally start. She isn't the oldest kid in her class by any means, but she sits right there with the older crowd and hasn't run into a single issue so far.