School districts around the country vary in their age requirements for starting kindergarten. Most suggest that children begin kindergarten in the first autumn after their fifth birthday. Yet your child's age alone is not as important a consideration as her age relative to her other classmates. Because children at this age are still maturing so rapidly, the youngest kid in the class is seldom as socially or emotionally mature as the older kids.
If your child turns five in the late spring or summer, she may have more difficulty adjusting to the changes of kindergarten than someone who will turn six in the late fall or winter. If your child then responds to this difficulty with negative behavior and poor social responses, her classmates may shun her and her self-esteem will plummet.
If you suspect that your child is a "young five" (in terms of maturity, not necessarily age), then you may decide it's best to hold her back a year. If you believe that regardless of her age relative to her classmates, your child has the social maturity to deal with kindergarten, then by all means enroll her.
Still not sure? You may want to take your child's social, cognitive, and motor skills into account. The following table provides a checklist in each of these three areas. Though your child certainly need not have mastered all of these skills by the time she enters kindergarten, she should have developed at least some of them. You might want to consider waiting a year unless you answer yes to at least a couple of questions in each area.
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