I Wanna Be Sagated

The boys and I just spent the weekend at my girlfriend’s cottage on a nearby lake with her, another friend from college who came in from Florida, and their families. Somehow it came up during our campfire conversation that the following word was on one daughter’s third grade spelling list: sagacious.

What?! They had to tell me what it meant (as I am quite obviously not sagacious). This morning, I looked it up online and found that, as a vocabulary word, it’s more appropriate for high school juniors. This begs the question: do we really have to push our kids so hard?

Unfortunately, stories like these make me even more worried about Son #2 who, as the youngest kid in his school, was bumped up from pre-K to Kindergarten after our first parent-teacher conference last year. Suddenly, all of his preschool teachers’ words of advice, as they sat on the fence regarding his future placement, echoed in my head, “Just give him the gift of time.” Well, we gave him that gift and the school clearly thought we had made a mistake.

In an era when parents are holding kids back just so they can excel academically, be more mature (and therefore better) at sports, adjust well socially, or more effectively hone their leadership skills, our little guy is the odd man out. Although the immediate transition did serve him well in the sense that he instantly made friends and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, I’m already worried about the long-term ramifications of this decision.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story entitled, “When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?” which gave me more discomfort than reassurance. On one hand, a labor economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara found that the relatively oldest students are almost 12% more likely to enroll in four-year colleges or universities. On the positive side, according to James Heckman, a University of Chicago economist, “Skill begets skill; motivation begets motivation. Early failure begets later failure.”

I’m hoping that our little guy’s ability to read chapter books in Kindergarten, coupled with his early “success” in school both academically and socially, will beget later success, as well.

Only time will tell.