If that's the concern, go to Northwestern. At least when I was there none of the Evanston bars bothered to card.

But explain Keith Richards to me.

Dark magic.

As Steven Tyler said, roughly, "drugs were ruined by all the kids doing them. Leave it to the professionals!"

explain Keith Richards to me.

He makes regular trips to a clinic in Switzerland to get his blood replaced. I read it on the Internet.

Emmett and Matilda are both September birthday (which is going to be the new cutoff in California), and I pushed them ahead.

It was never an issue with Emmett. A little bit of an issue with Matilda because she really wasn't reading until the very end of her first grade year, and a lot of her peers were already reading. But she did fine academically, and she's more than fine socially.

She is the smallest girl on her soccer team, though.

Both will start college at 17, but turn 18 within a few weeks.

From a baseball recruiting perspective, it's recently been shown to be advantageous that Emmett will be playing his entire year as a 17 y.o. senior. A year makes a huge difference in physical development for HS athletes and some kids are 19 y.o. seniors. They put up good numbers in HS but they don't develop as well, with very few of them becoming elite players.

The last time I looked at the research, the academic advantages of holding back disappear by third grade, and overall it's better to put your kid in a more stimulating environment earlier.

Of course, every kid is different and there are a number of excellent reasons for holding back for a year.

But explain Keith Richards to me.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I just realized I've had my tagline for a while. I think I need to do a little spring cleaning there.

Matt, could you hook me up with those links too?

Sure thing, I'll post in Natter if and when I track 'em down.

I was the next-youngest member of my graduating class, and I honestly think starting later on the three Ds (driving, dating, and drinking) kept me out of a lot of trouble.

I graduated high school at 17 and turned 18 about 2 weeks before starting college. Alcohol use was pretty widespread in my high school. I got more comment because I didn't drink around my peers (my choice) until I had one (and no more!) at a graduation picnic/party.

The drinking age was 18 then, so turning 21 was kind of a non-event.

My niece's birthday is in October, and she was 17 when she started college in the mid-'90s. She has said that the first couple of months were inconvenient because she couldn't do (or in some cases, needed parental permission to do) things that her 18-year-old classmates could do.

I got to eat a wild strawberry on my run this morning. Go me!

Urm, that's all I got. Should go run errands instead of lazing about on the internet. Or go wash the dishes from last night's cookie-baking and then run errands.

Leif skipped a year and is about a month and a half from the cutoff so he is the way youngest in his class, but still on the honor roll. He'll be sixteen when he graduates. He could probably skip another year academically, but he's doing well socially right now and being that much younger might cause problems there. It's a tough balance between not being challenged much academically and socialization.

Poor kid looked so tiny when he tried out for the middle school soccer team.