The Kindergarten Decision Part 1: Should I send my twins with summer birthdays at 5 or 6?

While these events happened last year, I never recorded the experience, so here it is!

The twins have summer birthdays. So we as parents got the 'joy' of making the decision on whether or not to send the girls to Kindergarten when they just turn 5 (so they would be the youngest) or when they just turned 6 (so they would be the oldest).

I battled with this decision. I battled for several years actually.

The thoughts running through my mind were things like:
If I send them at an early 5:

• Will they be intellectually ready?
• Will they be socially ready?
• Maybe I should keep them home for another year, why rush it?
• If I have the choice why would I make them be the youngest ones in their class? Isn't being older, cooler?
• All their friends will get their license first! 
• They will start college too early- won't I want them around for another year?
• Will they be immature? Small? 
• I won't have to pay for care
• They may progress faster and be more challenged

If I send them at an early 6: 

•  Will I be holding them back academically?
• Will they be bored?
• Will they just seem too old for their class?
• Will they be huge?
• I will get to have them around for another year, but I would have to pay for care
• They will be the 'cool' older kids, they will get their license first etc!

I read research on the topic, made pros and cons lists, and drove myself crazy. Then I decided that I should just decide. I decided they were going to go when they were 5. Now ironically, most of the research and public opinion out there is that if a parent is questioning their decision, that most folks never regret waiting. However, as a wise person once told me, sometimes you just have to go with your gut. My gut said 5. I then did the non-scholarly thing and sought out research to back up my decision... and not the other side of this internal argument.

Check out what Maria Konnikova had to say about it in The New Yorker, Youngest Kid, Smartest Kid : 

"While earlier studies have argued that redshirted (red-shirted meaning holding them back a year so the child is older and potentially bigger) children do better both socially and academically—citing data on school evaluations, leadership positions, and test scores—more recent analyses suggest that the opposite may well be the case: the youngest kids, who barely make the age cutoff but are enrolled anyway, ultimately end up on top—not their older classmates. When a group of economists followed Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988, until the youngest turned eighteen, in 2006, they found that, at age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less." 

So since I ran with my decision to send them at an early 5 (knowing if it was an utter failure I could still sent them to Kindergarten again- albeit at a different school).

Furthermore, in February of last year, I found out that we "won" the lottery of for the Charter school of our choice (pretty scary odds with 40 spots available after sibling preference, and 400 applicants). So if I delayed the entrance into Kindergarten, the chance of us "winning" again may have been slim. This was Kindergarten decision Part I. The next challenge we confronted was that while we "won" a spot at this coveted school, we had only won ONE spot for the twins. Challenge/ Decision Part II will be posted next!