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Comment by CIPHERSTONE | Hacker News Reader

We started our son when he was 6 as opposed to 5 and we have zero regrets. It seems like the emotional development between 5 and 6 year old boy is generally pretty huge.

Grade-wise he mainly gets A's and a B here and there. Honors classes, etc.

While I don't attribute the age he started completely to this, I do think it had a rather positive impact (currently in 8th).

Conversely, I think I started kindergarten at either 4 or 5 and struggled/hated school my entire life. Even had to put up with Evil Nuns. #jake #elwood Food for thought.

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Just as a contrary (edit: or perhaps corroborative, depending on what we are attempting to show) data point, I was put in at 4 and was just fine, even in honors/advanced classes (not boasting, as if I could, just adding that circumstance).

Worth noting that my family, despite my parents breaking up around that time, was very supportive and, if not well off, at least not struggling financially. I went to public school K-12.

Seems things work both ways, but possibly the risks are greater in going in early than late — but, as usual, the outcome depends far more on other circumstances.

I'll second devindotcom's sentiment. This seems like a "frog no legs can't hear" [0] / "inconceivable" [1] explanation. I'm a Sagittarius/November baby and I entered Kindergarten in September at 4.5 years after 18 months or 2 years of pre-school. I remember my mother had to fight with the school (where she was a teacher's aide) to get them to take me "early". I had almost no behavioral issues all through school, was a career 3.75 GPA student, graduated 5th in my high school class (3.91 GPA) at a large East Los Angeles Public High School after taking a total of 4 AP classes while playing baseball for 3 years (lettering for 2) all the while volunteering as a youth sports coach in baseball, basketball, and flag football. I attended CSULA to study Computer Science (though I was accepted to my first school, FSU and my second school, UC Irvine) and I've since gone on to work for NASA/JPL and the Air Force. My brother, who is a Pisces/March baby entered school at 5.5 years, but was similarly accomplished (3.97 GPA in high school, Lettered 4 years in Baseball and 3 years in Football, attended UCLA). My parents always struggled a little bit financially, with my father seeing his last notable raise in the 90s while I was still in high school.

To put it another way, "I do not think you measured what you think you measured."

[0] http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-664362.htm...

[1] http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

Well, I'll give a contrary to your contrary. I started a year late (I begged my parents not to make me go to school yet), and I got straight A's through high school and have always been very self directed.

The point is, this is a study, our anecdotes are not.

A study which most probably might as well have concluded that it doesent really matter since the objective is to determine selfregulation which is so vague and slippery a term its not even funny.

Your anecdotal experience isn't contrary to the parent post's anecdotal experience. He never said that starting late hurt anyone's academic potential, all he said was that starting early doesn't hurt (which I believe, since I also started a year earlier as did my sister and my wife).

I think this goes to the idea of you judge readiness in the child, vs. just generically saying all children should go in at the same age.

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