THE KINDERGARTEN DEBATE

After reading Gladwell's opinion and the opinion of Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, I'm stuck in the middle. Depending on your child, delaying kindergarten can be either a good or bad thing. Like Gladwell states, delaying kids from kindergarten make them the older kids in their grade, automatically giving them an accumulative advantage. Those kids may often be perceived  as gifted and above average.  Just like in sports, red-shirting your child puts them a step ahead. On the other hand, the young children of the grade start off with a disadvantage that carries with them onto college and grows in the process. But, like Wang and Aamodt say in "Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril", after awhile, the older kids get bored and start to careless and become less motivated. Meanwhile, the younger kids in the grade do better than the kids the same age in the lower grade because they had more time in school. This is where I'm stuck. These assumptions don't apply to everyone and I  can even see some counterexamples in our class. Unlike what Wang and Aamodt say, the older kids in our G&T class work hard and try to get good grades. In contrast, Gladwell states that the younger kids have a disadvantage and don't do well because they are far behind but in our class the younger kids do just as well as the older kids for the grade. Overall, I don't think there's any specific way to go. Delaying your child isn't necessarily better. I think the best a parent can do is base their decision on the needs of the child because every child is different.