"He is a whole year older than your kid! That is 20% of your life when you are 5!"

That is a really good point. Our neighbors have a son just 6 months younger than Dylan, and there have been many periods in their lives when that tiny age difference suddenly becomes a HUGE difference developmentally.

So his friend/prom date Laura foisted a book on him: Looking For Alaska.

Ben loved it. He wanted to know what else John Green had written aside from that and The Fault in Our Stars.

Well, a year is a long time when you're a baby. It's actually still a long time at 5-6 for many kids

This is much on our mind right now, as this month we'll be deciding whether to enrol Ryan in school next year. He was born bang on the cutoff date, so in theory at least, he has the choice of either being the youngest in his class, or the oldest. (In practice, I expect there'll be some older redshirts.) His kindergarten supports him going next year; we have a preschool field officer (which is a thing, apparently) coming out to provide a second opinion.

I just got my first CSA batch, and it is strawberries (!!!) swiss chard, beets, kale, lettuce, scallions, and garlic scapes. Lets see if I can eat all of this. The strawberries are so good!

bt - we had the same thing with Em and we chose to start her and she is the youngest in her class. She is fine (great, even) in content and learning. However, developmentally she is behind. The ADHD accounts for some of that, but I really believe that if we had waited a year, she would be further along. Some of the ELA stuff is developmental as is some of the maths stuff and those are the areas that she struggles with. Also, I didn't do the calculations on that and Em will be 16 when she's a senior and she'll start college at 17. If she stays developmentally behind her peers, she could have some issues when she gets to college.

Could you give her a gap year before she starts college?

Possibly.

Anyone want an Emeline for a gap year?

Aims, I know lots of folks (including me) who started college at 17. NBD until senior year--if everyone else is 21 and you're not its a PITA. 'Ostly for the super young folks who didn't turn 21 until after graduation! Oh, plus if you needed parental permission for stuff because you weren't 18 yet. That was awkward. But she could do a gap year if she needs/wants. (Hah, gap year x-post!)

Em will be 16 when she's a senior and she'll start college at 17.

This was me, I had a November birthday and was always the youngest in my class. I never felt like it was an issue.

Casper is among the youngest in her class as well (she's gone to school in 3 states, with 3 different cutoff dates, but she's never been more than 6 weeks from the cutoff and in one state was 3 days from it), and I worried a ton about it when she was in 1st and 2nd grade and really struggling with reading. I still have some twinges, but she is quite successful socially and doing fine academically; you'd never pick her out as the youngest kid in her grade.

Dillo is a summer birthday too, which for boys often means redshirted, but schoolwork is easy for him and socially I think he'd be a little weird no matter how old the kids around him were. He was among the oldest in a mixed-age class this year and I was glad for it in theory, but as I said many of the other kids often seemed very young indeed!