School closures/delays?

They’ll finally stop acting like idiots once they actually learn how to read and write.

I don't get why everyone is in such a damn rush. There's always a seat available on a flight to Ireland or a bus heading to Germany, and at the IRS, they'll take your unemployment claim whenever you show up.

My daughter was born right at the end of January. For us, delaying her enrollment wasn't even an option because she had simply outgrown daycare. Honestly, it doesn't really matter how many years of schooling lie ahead or how long her career will eventually last; sometimes, you just have an intuitive sense that forcing a child to stay in preschool for another year would be nothing short of torture. I actually saw a heartbreaking example of this in a parenting group recently—a little one who was crying every single day because they just didn't want to go back to daycare anymore.

It’s just that for her, the transition was a total nightmare, and let’s face it, even first grade isn't exactly a walk in the park. Not to mention the actual school system or the curriculum itself... we won't even go there. But none of that changes the fundamental truth: she needed to move on from the daycare world and step into a new phase where the responsibilities and tasks are more substantial and better aligned with her developmental stage.

Gary Martin12 said:The daycare center boasts an incredible staff of specialists, yet I haven't heard a single word from them. I initially reached out regarding a speech therapist because my son was struggling with certain letter sounds and his speech was quite unclear. Suddenly, I was handed a referral for a psychologist too! The specialist concluded everything was fine, while the speech therapist just told us to join their long waiting list for treatment. We ended up doing all the exercises ourselves at home, and he actually mastered his pronunciation. Then, after finally reaching the top of that waiting list eighteen months later, they told us there wasn't much left for them to do with him.

I've noticed he isn't quite as quick or articulate as the other kids his age. I’ve scheduled a private evaluation with a speech pathologist to assess his readiness for kindergarten, so we'll see what they say. Hopefully, I'll get some solid feedback that gives me grounds to appeal the school district's decision. It seems like some kids don't even need to be held back just because they're in therapy, so I'm skeptical about how much I can achieve here, but I have to try. He has made such massive strides in the last six months that I truly believe an extra year of prep would only benefit him.

I am honestly just baffled. Everyone else seems to brag about how easily they requested a grade retention without any major hurdles or negotiations, yet I'm hitting a brick wall. Thanks everyone for the advice and comments!

So, essentially, the school doctor, the speech therapist, the educator, the psychologist, and the special education specialist all think there's no reason to hold him back—only you see it.
Just relax, maybe read to him, talk with him, watch some fun educational shows together, and I'm sure things will work out fine.

Michelle Nelson4 said:My daughter was born right at the end of January. For us, delaying her enrollment wasn't even an option because she had simply outgrown daycare. Honestly, it doesn't really matter how many years of schooling lie ahead or how long her career will eventually last; sometimes, you just have an intuitive sense that forcing a child to stay in preschool for another year would be nothing short of torture. I actually saw a heartbreaking example of this in a parenting group recently—a little one who was crying every single day because they just didn't want to go back to daycare anymore.

It’s just that for her, the transition was a total nightmare, and let’s face it, even first grade isn't exactly a walk in the park. Not to mention the actual school system or the curriculum itself... we won't even go there. But none of that changes the fundamental truth: she needed to move on from the daycare world and step into a new phase where the responsibilities and tasks are more substantial and better aligned with her developmental stage.

My son was also born in late January, so I never gave a second thought to holding him back. Like I mentioned in another thread, if a kid needs a break, let them take it! Instead of forcing them into a grade they aren't ready for, let them take a gap year after high school to wash dishes at a fancy restaurant in Paris. Or better yet, let them go meditate in Tibet. 😁

hiddendriver34 said:My son was also born in late January, so I never gave a second thought to holding him back. Like I mentioned in another thread, if a kid needs a break, let them take it! Instead of forcing them into a grade they aren't ready for, let them take a gap year after high school to wash dishes at a fancy restaurant in Paris. Or better yet, let them go meditate in Tibet. 😁

There’s a huge difference between a young adult wandering the globe or meditating after twelve years of schooling and a child playing in preschool until they're eight.

The whole point of delaying school shouldn't be about giving a kid more playtime or letting them dodge the system. It should be about using that extra year to actually master or sharpen the skills they need from their early education.
That's when a delay actually makes sense—for both the child and the educational system.

If a kid is ready for school by almost all metrics, keeping them in preschool for another year can actually backfire. It might be boring and unstimulating for them now, but it can cause issues later on. They might breeze through first grade because everything is so easy, but once things get tougher in second grade or later, they often lack the study habits or the drive to tackle more complex material independently. Since they're used to everything being effortless, they struggle when the workload naturally increases as they grow.

Susan James said:There’s a huge difference between a young adult wandering the globe or meditating after twelve years of schooling and a child playing in preschool until they're eight.

The whole point of delaying school shouldn't be about giving a kid more playtime or letting them dodge the system. It should be about using that extra year to actually master or sharpen the skills they need from their early education.
That's when a delay actually makes sense—for both the child and the educational system.

If a kid is ready for school by almost all metrics, keeping them in preschool for another year can actually backfire. It might be boring and unstimulating for them now, but it can cause issues later on. They might breeze through first grade because everything is so easy, but once things get tougher in second grade or later, they often lack the study habits or the drive to tackle more complex material independently. Since they're used to everything being effortless, they struggle when the workload naturally increases as they grow.

I hear you, I really do. But I feel like for a lot of parents pushing for this delay, that's exactly what they're after, which is why I brought it up.

Gary Martin12 said:The daycare center boasts an incredible staff of specialists, yet I haven't heard a single word from them. I initially reached out regarding a speech therapist because my son was struggling with certain letter sounds and his speech was quite unclear. Suddenly, I was handed a referral for a psychologist too! The specialist concluded everything was fine, while the speech therapist just told us to join their long waiting list for treatment. We ended up doing all the exercises ourselves at home, and he actually mastered his pronunciation. Then, after finally reaching the top of that waiting list eighteen months later, they told us there wasn't much left for them to do with him.

I've noticed he isn't quite as quick or articulate as the other kids his age. I’ve scheduled a private evaluation with a speech pathologist to assess his readiness for kindergarten, so we'll see what they say. Hopefully, I'll get some solid feedback that gives me grounds to appeal the school district's decision. It seems like some kids don't even need to be held back just because they're in therapy, so I'm skeptical about how much I can achieve here, but I have to try. He has made such massive strides in the last six months that I truly believe an extra year of prep would only benefit him.

I am honestly just baffled. Everyone else seems to brag about how easily they requested a grade retention without any major hurdles or negotiations, yet I'm hitting a brick wall. Thanks everyone for the advice and comments!

To be honest—nobody sees a reason for a delay (based on your posts, I wouldn't see one either), so clearly, there simply wasn't one. Not being able to pronounce specific letters isn't a valid reason for a deferral. Letter sounds alone won't cut it. I trust that if you have a solid team at your daycare, they would have certainly guided you toward more specialized evaluations if it were necessary.

The issue with delaying enrollment isn't just that a child is lagging behind in one area; it’s about determining if there is a genuine chance they can catch up—either partially or fully—within that extra year.
Let me give you a blunt example: a six-year-old (turning seven this summer) who hasn't attended daycare or preschool, with a stay-at-home mom and a father working in agriculture. The child performs slightly below average on most of the standard entrance assessments. What would a delay actually accomplish for a child like that? It's better for them to enter school now, because staying home for another year won't bridge those gaps. Besides, someone has to be below average. I know that might sound harsh, but it's just the reality...

And as for everyone getting their requests approved effortlessly—in my experience, those are usually the children who actually required the delay. You should be glad your child doesn't show the specific indicators needed for a deferral.😉

Gary Martin12 said:Experienced moms, I need some advice! Who should I contact if we disagree with the school district's decision regarding first-grade enrollment? During our evaluations at both the school and the Mayo Clinic, we requested a one-year delay, but we were turned down. They claimed my child isn't right on the cutoff date and is physically large enough. Honestly, the school staff didn't seem thrilled with the testing results either; they could see themselves that delaying would be the best move, yet we still got a "no." How do I appeal this? Should I draft a formal written request to send over? Is it too late since we've already completed all the medical exams?

This is coming from someone who actually started school at six because there weren't enough kids enrolling back then. You know, during those "dark ages." My kid was physically big, sure, but everything else seemed fine. Well, not really. We missed dyslexia, dysgraphia, motor skill issues... all of it. I read fast, so cognitive delays didn't catch anyone's eye. I should have listened to my gut as a mother. Now, with a kid in high school, it's way too late to fix it.

Look, you seriously have to account for the fact that the curriculum hasn't been the same thing for the last two years.

Everything's shifted, you know?

Like, so much stuff that used to be taught in first grade has been pushed back to second grade—stuff like actually learning how to write letters.
Some people were already saying on the forums that during the first half of the year, kids are basically just coloring and doodling all day. I guess they realized a ton of kids struggle with fine motor skills, 🤔so the whole setup feels like it was redesigned specifically for kids with special needs.

Maybe that’s why they aren't handing out as many deferrals lately.🤔
The experts see exactly what kind of mess the curriculum is now,
and they figure if a kid would've been held back under the old rules two years ago, they won't be today because everyone assumes they can somehow keep up with this new program.

Why would anyone want to delay starting school? To me, it’s such a milestone—something every kid should actually look forward to. I suppose the academic pressure on children today is much higher than when I started first grade back in 1984, but back then, the cutoff was just before September 1st once you turned six. There weren't many little ones in my class; most of us were a bit older. And honestly, elementary school isn't that hard. At least, it wasn't for me. Maybe first grade was a bit of a whirlwind since we were all still so restless, but I think I just got incredibly lucky with my teacher. I used to go to the after-school program, too. Personally, I actually preferred being in school over being in preschool. If nothing else, I didn't have to deal with those mandatory afternoon naps.

Brandon Newman95 said:This is coming from someone who actually started school at six because there weren't enough kids enrolling back then. You know, during those "dark ages." My kid was physically big, sure, but everything else seemed fine. Well, not really. We missed dyslexia, dysgraphia, motor skill issues... all of it. I read fast, so cognitive delays didn't catch anyone's eye. I should have listened to my gut as a mother. Now, with a kid in high school, it's way too late to fix it.

But honestly, times aren't that dark anymore. From what I hear, the specialists in the public preschool systems are actually quite good now, and parents can always just take their kids to a private speech therapist if they need to. So, I don't really think many children will slip through the cracks like that today.

mistyjackal842 said:Why would anyone want to delay starting school? To me, it’s such a milestone—something every kid should actually look forward to. I suppose the academic pressure on children today is much higher than when I started first grade back in 1984, but back then, the cutoff was just before September 1st once you turned six. There weren't many little ones in my class; most of us were a bit older. And honestly, elementary school isn't that hard. At least, it wasn't for me. Maybe first grade was a bit of a whirlwind since we were all still so restless, but I think I just got incredibly lucky with my teacher. I used to go to the after-school program, too. Personally, I actually preferred being in school over being in preschool. If nothing else, I didn't have to deal with those mandatory afternoon naps.

Higher expectations? Are you kidding me?! They’re spending the entire first grade just mastering print, then moving to cursive in second—and that’s not even touching the math, where they're already doing arithmetic up to 20.
When we were kids, we were doing both print and cursive in first grade, and we were counting up to twenty or even a hundred. By second grade, you absolutely had to know how to count to a hundred, have your multiplication tables down pat, and be fluent in both print and cursive.
The workload is way heavier now, honestly. No two ways about it.

mistyjackal842 said:Why would anyone want to delay starting school? To me, it’s such a milestone—something every kid should actually look forward to. I suppose the academic pressure on children today is much higher than when I started first grade back in 1984, but back then, the cutoff was just before September 1st once you turned six. There weren't many little ones in my class; most of us were a bit older. And honestly, elementary school isn't that hard. At least, it wasn't for me. Maybe first grade was a bit of a whirlwind since we were all still so restless, but I think I just got incredibly lucky with my teacher. I used to go to the after-school program, too. Personally, I actually preferred being in school over being in preschool. If nothing else, I didn't have to deal with those mandatory afternoon naps.

I've worked with kids for long enough now that I remember my own first year and all my other grades from the eighties quite clearly, and I can say with total confidence that there aren't any "higher demands" placed on students today.
In my opinion, today's curriculum is actually much more simplified.

The foreign language component they've added in the first three grades is mostly just coloring and singing songs; the content is pretty much similar to what you'd see in a preschool program, just with more exposure to the language. Back in '84, some of us were learning languages in international programs, and we were always singing and coloring pictures representing all sorts of different cultures. We definitely dealt with a lot more linguistic variety back then.
We also shouldn't forget that we had to learn multiple writing styles, and our language studies were very integrated from fourth grade onward—you had to be ready to read or write in different scripts at any given moment during class.
Nowadays, they just use the standard alphabet, and for the last couple of years, they haven't even started teaching cursive until second grade.

Oh, and they've added religious studies, which isn't mandatory, but can be demanding since it requires being able to read and write well.
And starting this year, computer lab is part of the mix, which I hear the kids find really fun.

Another issue is that kids today struggle more with motor skills and hand-eye coordination. They don't play ball as much, they aren't jumping rope, and many deal with weight issues and a lack of stamina. Plus, there are speech and writing difficulties caused by "screenitis"—that early, heavy exposure to tablets and phones.
It makes school hard for them.
For these kids, the academic demands feel difficult, sometimes even impossible.
But it's not because the school is too hard; it's because of how they developed leading up to age six.
For children like that, we really need to consider special education services or delaying school entry. That extra year in preschool could give them the chance to develop those foundational skills that parents might have neglected during those first six years.

I honestly can't say for certain if things were actually harder back in the day. I recently stumbled upon a digital scan of a first-grade reading primer from my own childhood. It was only about 50 pages long, and there was hardly any actual text in it—just little poems consisting of a few lines, like a cow reading the newspaper or something along those lines.

My kids, on the other hand, had a primer that was easily 200 pages! And that was just for the first semester. They’d spend four whole pages on a single letter, forcing them to practice print just so they could completely ignore it the next semester and switch to cursive. Even the poems come with glossaries of unfamiliar words. All of this in the very first grade! It's not like they're using basic everyday words like "mouse," "fish," or "dog"; instead, it's all this overly complicated vocabulary (which is such a massive leap from "my" old primer that stuck to short, simple words). How we managed to master print with only 50 pages while today requires 200... well, leaving it up to the school administrators to figure out, is still a total mystery to me.

In my day, we didn't even touch different scripts until third grade.

The new curriculum apparently teaches letters more slowly, though I highly doubt they've actually cut down on the amount of unnecessary filler text.

Michelle Nelson4 said:I honestly can't say for certain if things were actually harder back in the day. I recently stumbled upon a digital scan of a first-grade reading primer from my own childhood. It was only about 50 pages long, and there was hardly any actual text in it—just little poems consisting of a few lines, like a cow reading the newspaper or something along those lines.

My kids, on the other hand, had a primer that was easily 200 pages! And that was just for the first semester. They’d spend four whole pages on a single letter, forcing them to practice print just so they could completely ignore it the next semester and switch to cursive. Even the poems come with glossaries of unfamiliar words. All of this in the very first grade! It's not like they're using basic everyday words like "mouse," "fish," or "dog"; instead, it's all this overly complicated vocabulary (which is such a massive leap from "my" old primer that stuck to short, simple words). How we managed to master print with only 50 pages while today requires 200... well, leaving it up to the school administrators to figure out, is still a total mystery to me.

In my day, we didn't even touch different scripts until third grade.

The new curriculum apparently teaches letters more slowly, though I highly doubt they've actually cut down on the amount of unnecessary filler text.

All that extra filler text just got replaced by pictures, which is why you end up with 200 pages.
I actually had three different primers in first grade (I can't remember how many pages each was, just Good Morning 1, 2, and 3).

The texts in textbooks from third grade onward seem harder now because there isn't much bolding or color, and the sentence structures are so scattered that you really have to strain your brain to figure out what the author was trying to say or why they chose to bold a specific word.
But in terms of actual content, it's way less than before, and they expect much less from the students.
We used to study American history as a whole, but now they just focus on local state history. 🤷

Yeah, cursive didn't come until third grade, and starting in fourth, we’d read both styles depending on whether the teacher was in a good mood that day or whatever text happened to be in the textbook.

Well, good morning! (And wow, I just realized we’ve hit 94 pages already.) Just thinking about how much actual content is packed in here compared to those flimsy modern paperbacks you see in every Target or Barnes & Noble. It's incomparable, really.
It reminds me of when a kid gets assigned a teacher who expects absolute perfection—every single math problem solved, every little drawing colored in perfectly... 🙂

https://vdocuments.site/edo-vajnaht-...-c5a1kole.html

Michelle Nelson4 said:Well, good morning! (And wow, I just realized we’ve hit 94 pages already.) Just thinking about how much actual content is packed in here compared to those flimsy modern paperbacks you see in every Target or Barnes & Noble. It's incomparable, really.
It reminds me of when a kid gets assigned a teacher who expects absolute perfection—every single math problem solved, every little drawing colored in perfectly... 🙂

https://vdocuments.site/edo-vajnaht-...-c5a1kole.html

But then again, we had our own versions of "good morning" parts two and three back in first grade 😉😉
https://vdocuments.site/dobro-jutro-...vne-skole.html
https://zrno.files.wordpress.com/201...ro-jutro-3.pdf

I suppose everything taught in first grade today has been simplified as much as humanly possible, if you ask me. And I guess that same logic applies to second and third grade as well.

good morning 1 was what we used for the first half of the year, then for the second half we switched over to good morning 2—same thickness, though. We also had these workbooks to go along with both, plus these little A5 worksheets, you know, those super thick tear-out pads with the red covers. Oh, and there was a third volume of Good Morning too, which served as our reading book. And that was just for American language class.

https://vdocuments.site/135189027-ed...bro-jutro.html

We didn't even touch those extra worksheets, and honestly, the workbooks weren't even mandatory. Besides, we certainly weren't churning through two hundred pages of a reading textbook during the first semester, only to face another two hundred in the second. Not to mention how many times I found myself just completely baffled by the sheer nonsense of those little poems my kids had to deal with.

I mean, yeah—everything just feels so much more shallow these days. It’s all too easy, far too simplistic.😬
Honestly, if you look back, the textbooks used in the first, second, and third grades were pedagogically miles ahead of the junk they're pushing now.🙂
Nowadays, through fourth grade, it seems like kids are mostly just playing around and coloring; they might pick up a few bits here and there, I suppose, but it’s hardly challenging for them at all.
It’s actually been proven that overdoing the drawing, coloring, singing, and reciting can really just burn kids out.

But then again... I guess that's just life preparing them for the real world.🙂