I was an early bloomer and found school oppressively slow and unchallenging.

Glad it worked out for you. My life turned out just fine too, thanks. Varsity letters in football and golf, went to four year university, have a law degree. You are right, I don't credit skipping a grade. I don't think that my life would have been different academically if I had progressed with the others in my age group. I think it would have been easier socially. In age based sports I was playing with kids in lower grades and I was a big kid. Other kids' parents complained about me being a ringer. As a sophomore I dated an eighth grader and got an endless amount of **** for it. She was older than me. If I had another year of high school I'd probably have been all league in football. There is a pretty big difference between a just turned 16 year old and an 18 year old. When I went to college I wasn't even old enough to buy cigarettes until my second year, and didn't turn 21 until the end of my 4th year, meaning I got to hang out in a bar with my friends for exactly 4 days before graduation - I went to a party school where bars were a very big part of the culture.

There are other social examples, those just immediately come to mind.

Your child is just THREE years old right? I'm just very surprised that he is on an antipsychotic medication. Has he been diagnosed with autism or disruptive behavior disorder? It seems awfully young to put a child on a medication that has serious side effects. I mean if you're going to put a 3 yr old on it, why not a 2 yr old? Where do you draw the line? I read about an increasing trend in pediatrics of prescribing antipsychotics to young boys, particularly Risperdal. It's a little troubling imo.

Have you tried changing day care settings? Maybe the one he is at does not meet his needs. Three just seems awfully young. Half of the kids I know had meltdowns and tantrums when they were 3 yrs old. Couldn't that just be normal on the spectrum of 3 yr old behavior?

I'm not a big fan of putting any child on mood altering drugs to be honest, but especially any child younger than 10 yrs old. Holy moly.

And yes, hold him back a year. What would be the problem with that? I see only benefits for both him and his teachers.

Katy,

To be clear it's not fulltime daycare. It's babysitting while moms are working out. Maybe a couple hours a day.

'Autism spectrum' is what they're calling it. He fits the major criteria though the neurologist says it's very mild. He makes eye contact and interacts. He just has emotional overreactions that cause a danger to himself and others. All the time. There are tantrums, then there are, yes, psychotic episode tantrums. You'd have to see it to understand.

I think autism is getting overdiagnosed just like ADD.

But there's no denying the effect this medication has had on my boy. He feels better and says so. He doesn't sit in a corner rocking and drooling. He acts like other kids act.

He also has a wide range of personality disorder coming from both of his parental lines Both my parents were alcoholics, my wife has close relatives who have been institutionalized. So this is not something out of the blue with him. Almost more remarkable that his sister seems to have dodged the bullet.

just wanted to say that redshirting as a substitute for holding a kid back definitely made me laugh out loud in my office

You're joking? you're drugging a 3 year old kid?

Actions have consequences.

The first few doses are free ...

Update?

Thoughts on your experience?

He's calmed significantly as he's aged.

The heavy off label drugs didn't last long.
Late starting him in school was a great thing, imo. California will be changing to start kids later in life also, as I understand it.

Type 1 diabetes is what he deals with these days.

Grunching from the quoted response.

Agree with Wookie. My daughter (now 8-years old) and her best friend were the smartest kids in their preschool, but weren't allowed to move up to pre-K with the rest of their class because of age - October birthdays. It turned out fine. She doesn't even remember those friends. It helped, too, that one of the preschool teachers did extra work with them so they wouldn't be bored.

Four-years old is really young for Kindergarten, though you could be in an area where there is 4-year old and 5-year old Kindergarten. That's how it was when I was a kid, but where I live now, Kindergarten starts at 5 and the grade before it is called Pre-K.

If you feel better holding your son back, that's probably cool. He won't have any memory of it in a year. As Wookie said, it's better to be the oldest kid than the youngest. My Mom is a Halloween birthday and she said it was always better to be the first to get to do things.

Sample size of one (me)

BD Oct 30, so I was ALWAYS the youngest in my class, which I think in retrospect caused me some issues socially. They wanted to skip me from 1st to 7th grade, which thank god my dad laughed off.

I was VERY immature when I started college for the first time - flailed around at UCLA and didn't accomplish much. Got a job, worked a few years, went back to college, med school etc.

I think I might have been better off from a maturity/social standpoint being started a year later. OTOH, school bored the **** out of me until I got to college, and it might have been worse if I started older. Unless there was some compelling reason to have your kid start early, I'd let him grow up a bit. As other posters have noted, there are a lot of studies that suggest, for a bunch of different reasons, that it might be an advantage to him.

MM MD

My Mom skipped grades and graduated HS at 15. No social life at all. So when they wanted me to skip a couple grades she told them to GTFO.

If I've learned anything from Star Trek, it's that redshirting can be very dangerous.

Some book came out a fee years ago with research showing if you are the "old" kid in your class you re statistically more likely to succeed because you will be more mature, do better, and be more confident.

So now, at least in white yuppy circles, everyone's holding their kid back to try to gain this edge. So basically 6 is the new 5 for kindergarten.

op, you would probably need to hold your kid back 2 years for them to actually be the "old" kid in the class, cause all the parents with kids born earlier in year are finding loopholes to hold their kids back too.

Fwiw, our son was born in September and no way in he'll he is starting school right before he turns 5, so I am def part of the herd.