Education
Stay and Play: Retrospective on giving a second year of Kindy
Dr Rachel Kingsbury presents her honest retrospective on the pros and cons of giving a second year of play.
At the forefront of ‘big decisions’ currently consuming parents’ thinking is the hot topic of school commencement. The lack of a national consensus on start age means QLD parents are enrolling their Preppies anywhere within the compulsory parameters of 4.6 to 6.6 years. In terms of a child’s brain development the cognitive variance between those ages is enormous, so some 18-months ago I started the long think on when would be best time for my son to start Prep. I endlessly researched the short - and potential long-term consequence of starting Prep at four-something versus five-something, then did what I always knew I would do; I gave my son a second year of play.
Cons: YOU’LL WOBBLE
THE GIFT OF TIME
It’s rare to make a significant decision without wondering if you’ve got it wrong. Currently 1 in 6 Australian children are being giving a second year of play and it took courage to make a decision that went against the norm. In the first weeks, as my son’s peers moved ahead with school, I worried about whether I had irreversibly wrecked my child. I took a deep breath and focused on the long think that led to this choice. It passed.
It feels like the biggest gift I’ve given my son and myself. He gets to enjoy an extra year of play and I get to enjoy an extra year of him. Thirteen years of education is a long time, and it’s even longer if you’re a child that finds the social or academic demands of school tricky. Why rush?
YOUR CHILD MAY USE IMMATURE SPEECH FOR THE YEAR I had read ahead on this phenomenon, so I knew it would be transitory, but children who stay and play are more likely to access immature speech patterns than their Prep-enrolled, age matched peers. Gentle prompts – “use your big boy voice, buddy” – help to shift it, but this speech pattern resolves readily with school commencement.
YOU MIGHT BE CRITICISED I’ve been criticised for giving my child an unfair academic advantage. Honestly, I don’t think that I have. A child’s intelligence is largely predetermined by genetics, and from a school perspective natural intelligence tends to emerge around Grade 3. You can optimise your children, but you can’t significantly change who they will be.
YOU MAY SPEND THE YEAR DEFENDING YOUR DECISION The narrative around a second year of play continues to be a negative one, with phrases like “delayed entry,” “repeating,” “holding back,” or “well if you think he needed it.” My son doesn’t have any identified learning needs. He was recommended by Kindy to go ahead and accepted by Prep well before I made the decision to stay and play. It made the decision more difficult, explaining to others that I valued time with my child and loved the idea of giving him an extended childhood. If only to save other parents time, I can tell you that after reading every blog, attending numerous seminars, speaking with school-based colleagues etc., I identified no long-term negatives associated with giving children a second year of play. None. By midpoint of the year I was entirely happy with my decision. Having researched thoroughly I saw only long-term positives associated with giving a second year of play. Here’s a list of my pros, but others may experience different positives for their child.
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Pros:
Your Local Families Magazine December 2018 / January 2019
12 MONTHS OF EXTRA MATURITY School children develop social and emotional skills well beyond their primary years. In the classroom children need to respond to greater level of instruction, compliance, group-work, sharing, transitions, sitting still and having enough attention to learn. They will also be exposed to success and failure. These are mature concepts, and while age-appropriate immaturity is expected in the younger years, having a maturity advantage from late school commencement has been linked to better learning and behaviour outcomes.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ‘UNSCHOOLING’ The general idea of unschooling is learning led by a child’s natural curiosity. “What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child,” George Bernard Shaw. I have genuinely delighted in watching my son’s natural learning for reading, writing, the
